JohnRusso.com

Cool Websites

These are a few of John's favorite and most often-visited Web sites:
(Note - You will leave this site - remember to come back.)

The New York Mets

Oakland As

Oakland Raiders

New York Giants

Golden State Warriors

Chelsea Football England

Footy Football

Oakland Museum of California

The Crucible

Peralta Hacienda Historical Park

Housing and Economic Rights Advocates

Center for Responsible Lending

Public Advocates

Youth Radio

Jump the Shark

Travelzoo

National League of Cities

National Football League

Major League Baseball

Los Angeles Times

SF Gate

ANG Newspapers Group

Consumer Reports

League of California Cities

Sports Business Simulations

Meet John

John Russo was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, a construction worker and a dressmaker, arrived in the United States from Europe five months before he was born. He graduated with honors in Economics and Political Science from Yale University and earned his law degree from New York University School of Law.  John has lived in Oakland since 1987and is the proud father of twin boys.

As the first-elected City Attorney of Oakland, John Russo has transformed the City
Attorney’s office into a dynamic, effective advocate for the City and its residents, while saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars with aggressive courtroom work.  John created  the award-winning Neighborhood Law Corps, an innovative model program in the state where neighborhood-based attorneys fight blight, drug dealing, and other quality of life issues in the poorest areas of Oakland, creating healthier, safer neighborhoods. The Neighborhood Law Corps program was just honored October 6, 2005 with a statewide Helen Putnam Prize and Grand Prize Award from the League of California cities for innovation and achievement as a new urban model.  John led efforts to implement “Megan’s Law,” in Oakland, ensuring that parents are notified when dangerous sex offenders are present around our schools and neighborhoods. Click here for new 2005 information and services available from the Oakland City Attorney’s Office on the Megan’s Law program.

As a former Oakland Councilmember, Russo also championed crucial issues such as zero tolerance for sexual harassment, protecting the rights of free assembly and speech in Oakland’s public areas, combating crime while stopping Constitutional abuses by law enforcement, and writing new open government laws.

While serving as Oakland’s Finance Committee Chair on the City Council, John’s work led to a balanced budget, cuts to bureaucratic waste and protection of the programs Oakland needs.

Russo is also a local leader with statewide experience. As President of the League of California Cities, John successfully championed the effort to return billions of dollars in tax money from the state to our local governments protecting essential services such as after-school, health, and public safety programs. In the Assembly, John will be a leader for our area on issues such as affordable housing and environmental justice; health care; and fixing the state budget.

Education NOW!

Dramatic, long-term reform and immediate action is needed to help the hundreds of thousands of students and families being short-changed of quality educations.  Improving our public schools is the most important issue facing our community today.

Despite some recent gains, Oakland’s public education system continues to fail our children.  Consider the facts:

• The Oakland Unified School District has the lowest average API scores among comparable districts such as those in Orange County and Sacramento County – almost 100 points lower! 

• In fact, 52% of Oakland 9th graders do not graduate from high school.

• 90% of Oakland high school graduates do not have the classes needed to get into our own state college system, the UC and CSU schools.

Take a look at a couple of fascinating articles about small schools, one from http://whatkidscando.org/ and a related item from the San Francisco Chronicle.

The small schools model is an innovative new program that that has been successfully implemented in Los Angeles, New York, Washington State, and other urban school districts across the nation.  The concept of small schools is based on the premise that, in contrast to large, factory-model schools, smaller schools of 400-500 or less creates a more intimate learning environment where teachers are better address the educational needs of students. 

I am in favor of expanding the successful small schools model further in the East Bay, and throughout California, to address the issues facing our schools and improve education for our children.

Access to excellent and affordable health care

We have a duty to ensure access to basic and catastrophic health care services to all people – regardless of ability to pay.  Rising medical costs are not just a moral issue.  These costs damage the competitiveness of California’s businesses and the increase and spread of communicable diseases threatens our very way of life.

My only sister died of cancer when she was only 47 years old.  Our family suffered and mourned this terrible loss and has always wondered whether better testing and earlier diagnosis might have saved her.  We are such a rich country; we have to do a better job keeping our citizens healthy.

It is long past time that California have a universal, single-payer health insurance system, based on residency – not tied to a job. 

The state's fiscal deadlock will continue to drain healthcare financing and programs. In the meantime, the economics of healthcare have changed dramatically, putting our public and nonprofit community hospitals and healthcare systems at risk.  We must:

• Ensure that all of our local hospitals are seismically safe and able to function in a major catastrophe
• Assist those most vulnerable who are uninsured – such as seniors on fixed incomes and children – to receive the healthcare they need.
• Make prescription drugs affordable to retirees and seniors
• Keep nurse to patient ratios low

The following article notes that a major factor in Toyota's recent decision to build a large, new auto manufacturing plant in Canada is the fact that Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ than U.S, workers, thanks to Canada's taxpayer-funded health care system. Click here for details.

Russo's anti-pesticides law sets standard

As an Oakland City Councilmember, I drafted and passed the original legislation in 1997 to ban the City’s use of unsafe toxics, one of the strongest municipal anti-pesticide ordinances in California.

As the father of two young children, I feel strongly about this issue.  Since 1997, further studies have shown that exposure to glyphosate herbicides — Monsanto’s Roundup, which City Hall is currently considering reusing, a common brand -- has been linked to genetic damage to laboratory animals and increased risks of cancer, miscarriages, and attention deficit disorder in children. 

We all want our children, pets and family members to be in an environment that is healthy, safe and free from toxins. Herbicides like Roundup are carcinogens. In the last five years, three studies have linked exposure to them and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer. Additionally, a 2001 study associated using glyphosate herbicides in the three months prior to pregnancy with an increased risk of late miscarriages.  These toxins can also stay in our environment for years, infecting our urban streams and causing genetic damage to wildlife. 

Read these articles about Oakland's anti-toxics law:

San Francisco Chronicle, 4/5/5

San Francisco Chronicle, 4/6/5

The Tribune produced an excellent series of articles on toxics that we encounter in our lives every day. Read it here.

Unique issues for our youth and children

Early exposure to addictive substances – drugs, alcohol, and smoking – are healthcare issues for our children that follow them into adulthood.  And it is not just an issue of drinking or smoking by teenagers – studies have shown that mere exposure to these substances influence young children.

As Oakland City Attorney, I’ve been on a campaign to reduce the number of liquor stores that are near our schools and I’ll continue to lead efforts to crack down on liquor stores who sell cigarettes and alcohol to minors and fight the drug dealing that occurs at these sites.

Oakland

John Russo is running for Assembly with a focus on improving education and on issues affecting Oakland’s neediest children.  More than half of Oakland’s 9th graders don't graduate from high school, and more than 85% of our sophomores are still not proficient in algebra and English.

As Oakland City Attorney, John Russo created the award-winning Neighborhood Law Corps program, awarded a statewide prize for innovation and achievement on October 6, 2005. The program sends young legal advocates into Oakland neighborhoods to fight blight, shut down drug hot spots, and eliminate unsafe nuisance businesses. The program has made a real difference in many of Oakland’s neediest areas, creating healthier, safer neighborhoods.

John Russo has been a champion of women’s issues. He has fought for tougher penalties and new laws for sex crimes and sex slavery. He worked to implement “Megan’s Law” in Oakland – ensuring that parents are notified when there are dangerous sex predators near our schools and in our neighborhoods -- and fought the use of toxics that could endanger pregnant women in our area. As a member of the Assembly, he will continue to fight and advocate for women’s rights.

John Russo has been active in public service in our area for more than 10 years, serving on Oakland’s City Council before becoming Oakland’s first elected City Attorney. He is a principled leader who gets results and has the experience and knowledge we need representing us in Sacramento. 

Russo Named California Lawyer of the Year

OAKLAND, Calif.  - In its March 2004 issue, California Lawyer Magazine named Oakland City Attorney John Russo as Attorney of the Year for Government/Public Policy. The eighth annual prestigious CLAY (California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year) Awards for 2003 honored 34 attorneys in 13 separate fields who had a significant impact on the law.

The CLAY Award recognized City Attorney Russo for his advocacy and innovation in public law while saving taxpayer money. "As lead defense counsel for the city of Oakland, Russo settled a civil suit alleging widespread police misconduct for $10.8 million, only $2.2 million of which came from taxpayers, with the rest paid by excess insurers. Despite this payout, he managed to reduce city spending on lawyers and lawsuits by $3.5 million compared with the previous fiscal year.

"On the local level, Russo's innovative, privately funded Neighborhood Law Corps helped overcome blight by, among other things, entering an agreement with Union Pacific Railroad to clean up illegally dumped trash along railroad tracks, which will save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in cleanup costs over the ten-year period of the agreement."

The award also recognized Russo for winning an appellate ruling upholding the city's anti-predatory lending ordinance and successfully petitioning California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi to investigate ZIP Code discrimination in auto insurance.

"There are some achievements made by California lawyers that have such far-reaching impact that they cannot go unrecognized," said the magazine's editors. "The lawyers selected as Attorneys of the Year for 2003 substantially influenced public policy or a particular industry, brought about a significant development in their field of practice or in law-firm management, or achieved a notable victory for a client or for the public in a difficult, high-stakes matter."

Your opinion counts

Click on "comments," below, to tell us what you're thinking.  After John has had a chance to read these comments, the best may be posted right here. (To be considered for publication, you will need to log in.) If you don't care to have your message considered for posting, just use the e-mail link in the column to the left.

Ethics Commission Sees the Light

Ethics Commission Sees the Light

Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission has seen the light and is now considering another amendment to the city charter which would allow put the question for future council salary increases before the voters.  How kind of them to ask the taxpayers who foot the bill if they want to do so.  So far, no word on whether the commission is prepared to put term limits before the voters.

They are apparently as yet undecided whether to require full time service for full time pay of $60,000 a year plus $550 per month car allowance for council members and $575 for vice mayor.  Section 305 of the current charter and Section 1201 already contain language that can easily be used to describe the job as full time.

It’s too bad the commission didn’t think to request putting the recent 63 percent raise before the public before it was ratified by the Oakland City Council, creating a dilemma for at least one council member, John Russo, who has always been opposed to a pay raise for council members.  He has publicly voiced his strong belief that serving as an elected public official is a civic duty, a public service, or even a calling and that the application of corporate or professional scale pay rates is inappropriate. 

Whenever the compensation issue has come before the council his tenure, h has spoken out and voted against even small pay increases, and when outvoted, declined to accept the increase and passed it on to a charitable organization.

Russo argued against the creation of the Ethics Commission, warning it would be an invisible and unaccountable vehicle for a pay raise.  Nevertheless, the voters approved its creation, and sure enough, just about their first order of business was a skyrocket increase in council salaries – just what Russo had warned against when out on the hustings campaigning against Measure J. 

When, in the late spring of 1997 the commission held hearings on salary hikes, Russo was the only member of the council who testified before the commission against the pay raise. 

Once the Ethics Commission had adopted and proposed the new salary of $60,000 a year, which with its attendant increases in insurance premiums, retirement payments with the city paying both the employer and employee share and other benefits boost the cost of care and feeding of the council by more than $300,000 a year, or about $1,200 per working day.  Since the council is not yet considered full time, that’s more than $150 a working hour. 

The city attorney ruled that the recommendation of the commission had to be voted up or down, that the council had no discretion in the matter, nor could it in any way alter or amend the increase concocted by the commission.  The city attorney said, according to her reading of the city charter, the council had to ratify the recommendation of the commission, conveniently forgetting the well-established rule of public law that neither a city council nor the legislature nor the Congress can delegate its law making authority. 

In any event, Russo was in a pickle.  He wanted to vote against the pay raise as he had consistently done in the past.  But as the city attorney explained it, the vote was not for or against the pay raise.  It was purely a ministerial vote to ratify a decision made by a commission created by a vote of the people amending the charter which the city attorney said removed any discretion from the council.  She said they had to ratify it by voting yes, like it or not. 

That seems a strange way to do legislative business, but this is Oakland. 

Russo is a proponent of responsible, accountable government, as are some other members of the council.  Neither he, nor those couple of others bow to political opportunism.  Consequently, when he voted to ratify the decision of the Public Ethic Committee, he did the responsible thing. 

Speaking of the way our City Council does business, let me offer my congratulations to our new Vice Mayor Ignacio De La Fuente.  He was elected to the office by the members of the council when Nate Miley resigned as vice mayor a year before his term expired.  By tradition, the post rotates among council members on the basis of seniority.  There was much protest that the appointment of the new vice mayor-who-would-be-mayor was not an inside political job to give a boost to what some political observers say is his faltering campaign.  “Heaven’s no, no way…” describes the pious denials heard from council members almost in unison.

Unfortunately, Councilman Nate Miley blew the cover by saying, “It will allow him to chair the meetings and demonstrate his talents as a future mayor.  People will have an opportunity to see how he would govern the council and convene meetings and things.”

Word on the street is that there was union pressure from many quarters including headquarters in Washington to make the change.  As in the last presidential election, unions are expected to chunk big bucks into the Oakland mayoral race to ensure the election of the vice mayor who would then become one of organized labor’s “poster boys.”  That’s one of the reasons that the vice mayor derided Jerry Brown’s several suggestions for campaign contribution and expenditure limits, calling them “stupid.”

Randy H. Hamilton is visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley.  He lives in Oakland.

-- Randy Hamilton, Oakland Tribune, Monday February 2, 1998.