Features

LA Times evacuated after
bomb threat; suspect cornered 

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Times building was evacuated Monday night and surrounding streets shut down after the newspaper received a bomb threat and police cornered a person at gunpoint inside the building. 

The man was trapped on the building’s first floor and had not taken any hostages, said Officer Jason Lee, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman. He couldn’t immediately say how many people were evacuated. 

“We’ve got the individual contained in a particular segment of the Times building and we’re awaiting the response of our SWAT personnel and our crisis negotiation personnel in an attempt to get this matter resolved safely,” Lee said. 

Police had learned the man’s identity by Monday night but were not releasing it, said Lt. Horace Frank, another police spokesman. He added that the man was not a newspaper employee. 

Five-second kiss: Prison system
eyeing new inmate visit rules 

SACRAMENTO — Prison inmates will still be allowed to kiss visitors for more than five seconds at a time. 

There will be no prohibition on children over age 7 sitting on their incarcerated parent’s lap. 

And the Department of Corrections has dropped a proposal to bar drug offenders from touching their visitors during the first year of their imprisonment, despite concerns that visitors will surreptitiously pass illegal drugs. 

“We got rid of a lot of things that were considered objectionable” by inmate relatives and prisoner rights advocates, department spokesman Russ Heimerich said Monday. 

The department has been trying since last year to rewrite inmate visitation regulations. It is reworking the rules again after relatives, advocates and some state lawmakers raised objections at public hearings this spring. 

The latest version drew criticism Monday from Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, who said the department wants to impose too many restrictions on attorneys who visit inmates. 

Bill Simon unveils
child-care proposals 

LOS ANGELES — GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon on Monday announced proposals for improving child care in the state, including tax credits for businesses that expand their child-care facilities. 

The state is facing a $23.6 billion budget deficit, but Simon said he believed such credits would stimulate economic growth that would outweigh any revenue reduction from a decrease in tax collections. 

“It’s going to stimulate it by allowing businesses that would not have otherwise been able to grow, to grow,” he said. “... I don’t believe there would be a substantial reduction in revenue.” 

Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, Simon’s opponent in the November election, last year signed a bill extending two tax credit programs for employers. One rewards employers who establish or construct child-care programs, and another benefits employers who contribute money to child care for their employees. 

Simon did not specify how the employer tax credit he envisioned would differ from those already in place, and another proposal he unveiled Monday — to give a tax credit to working families for child-care costs — also is already being implemented by the state. 

Aides said later that Simon wants to expand the child-care tax credits already in place for working families and employers. 

“Bill Simon’s go further than the current ones on the books and provide more people with more access to child care,” said Simon spokesman Mark Miner. 

While short on specifics, Simon made it through his speech without facing questions about his tax-returns or other issues that dogged him through a rough recent stretch in the campaign. In the past two weeks Simon’s campaign staff was restructured for the fourth time and he bowed to pressure to release his tax returns, only to face criticism for making the returns available for just an afternoon to a limited number of reporters. 

“Child care has too often been a target of Gray Davis’ mismanagement and failed leadership,” Simon said outside the Para Los Ninos Child Development Center in downtown Los Angeles, as children swarmed a playground behind him. “The state’s fiscal crisis, a crisis of Davis’ own making, has made every tax dollar precious, but there is no excuse for not exploring innovative ways to provide more care for the same amount of money.” 

A knot of college students outside the center’s gates chanted and held handmade signs labeling Simon a “tax cheat.” Similar groups, sometimes organized by college Democrat groups, have showed up at his events for weeks. 

Simon’s proposals also included consolidating child-care programs under one state department and increasing the number of people eligible for subsidized child care by structuring co-payments on a sliding scale based on income. 

He called for more partnerships between the public and private sectors to improve child care. Para Los Ninos, which runs 15 child care centers in Southern California, is a nonprofit supported 61 percent by government funding and 39 percent by foundation and corporation money, private donations and other sources. 

Aides to Davis dismissed Simon’s proposals as short on substance and said the governor has a strong record of support for child-care programs. Blanca Castro, spokeswoman for Davis’ department of social services, said childcare funding has increased by 62 percent since the governor took office. 

“Those of us who, unlike Mr. Simon, can’t afford British nannies know that Gray Davis has significantly increased funding for child care services for low-income working families,” said Davis press secretary Roger Salazar.