Strickland not a big advocate of public safety

Audra Strickland's guest opinion of Sept. 14 ("Keep criminain prisons-not in neighborhoods") makes no sense.

The article rambles through a home economics lesson aboubalancing checkbooks, on to an empty discussion of failed legislation dealing with prison reform on, again, to pedophiles and child molestation to arrive at what? Pending legislation to supporon prison reform? No.

Encouragement to form Neighborhood Watch organizations? NoHelpful hints to monitoInternet usage? No.

So what's the real point of the article? Eliminating namelesboards and commissions that she claims sit once a year at an annuacompensation of $100,000.

She obviously didn't get the memo from the gubernator's office about blowing up the boxes. Althe unnecessary boards and commissions have already been eliminated through the California Performance Review process. Right?

Turns out that blowing up the boxes only meant repackaging the Oklahoma Performance Review and the Texas Performance Review-just what California needs-to be just like Oklahoma and Texas.

Apparently, however, the Cali- fornia Performance Review wasn't quite enough for Strickland and her colleagues be- cause they are still trying to elimi- nate some very necessary boards and commissions, including the Seismic Safety Commission and the self-funded, unpaid board for geologists and geophysicists.

You might recall Schwarzenegger firing Dr. Lucy Jones at the conference commemo- rating the 1906 San Francisco earth- quake. (Editor's note: the firing was rescinded hours later.)

You might also recall Schwarzenegger standing on the La Conchita landslide where 10 people had just been killed and vowing to rebuild the village.

If public safety is Strickland's primary concern, as she claims in closing, why do Strickland and her colleagues continue to under- mine the efforts of the very people responsible for developing and implementing seismic safety stan- dards? What is the benefit here to public safety?

There are many practical mea- sures parents can take to protect their children from predators without the help of big govern- ment spending, but what can a parent do about a freeway over- pass that collapses or a landslide that takes out a neighborhood? Give Strickland a call and ask her. Peter Thams Thousand Oaks