creilly's blog

The Merced County civil grand jury's final report for this year is now available to the public.

To read it, go here.

The grand jury is a panel of 19 local citizen volunteers. Its job is to investigate complaints of wrong-doing by local public officials and agencies. Anyone can file a complaint with the grand jury and almost anyone can serve as a juror.

The official candidate list for Merced County's Nov. 4 election was finalized this week.

The Sun-Star has reported on most of the bigger races, but if you're interested in the complete list, check it out here.

A coalition of family members of U.S. Penitentiary Atwater correctional officers has launched a Web site to demand safety reforms across the federal prison system.

The group, named Friends and Family of Correctional Officers, formed earlier this month in response to the stabbing death of USP Atwater Correctional Officer Jose Rivera.

The site demands a number of changes that officers say could have prevented Rivera’s death.

The Sun-Star rarely publishes stories that rely on anonymous sources. In the two-and-a-half years I've worked here, I have agreed to withhold sources' names three times.

The most recent was a story that ran last week about failed safety policies at U.S. Penitentiary Atwater, the federal prison where inmates stabbed to death a 22-year-old correctional officer last month.

Jim Sanders, a Merced city councilman now vying for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors, thinks his recent vote to declare the Central Presbyterian Church a local historic resource may be among the reasons he won fewer votes than his opponent, Hub Walsh.

On June 3, Sanders and Walsh beat out three other candidates running for the county's District 2 Board of Supervisors seat. Walsh won 39 percent of the votes cast. Sanders took in 26 percent. That means both men will advance to a November runoff.

Discussions among Merced County's five supervisors rarely get heated, but they did today.

The subject, of course, was money.

Each year, each supervisor gets a pot of money -- this year it's $100,000 -- called "special project funding." They're allowed to allocate the money to any community project in their district, as long as the majority of the board approves the expenditure.

Typically, supervisors split their money among several projects: $1,000 to help re-roof a community center, $5,000 to clean up graffiti, $2,000 to fix the high school pool, and so on.