THIS TIME THEY MEAN IT. NO REALLY.
One of the items I came across while going through the stack was an item in the Daily News from last month. Apparently, the City Council is resurrecting the GANG CZAR concept once again. This time, it's Councilman Tony Cardenas who is reanimating the dead beast. He wants to create a new city division to supervise and coordinate anti-gang efforts. The article wasn't really clear on how this would be done because we suspect that Cardenas himself isn't really clear on how to do it.

Back in the Dick Riordan days, the Mayor and the Council tried to come up with gang czar model and came up with nothing. First they got together to figure out what the full time gang chief would do and where the money to pay him or her and a staff would come from. Then they figured they didn't have the money and decided to make it a part time position. Then they didn't have the money for that either and they couldn't figure out how to make the czar do something that wasn't already being duplicated by any number of other city departments. Then they just packed it up and went home. No gang czar.

While there's always hope, we get the feeling this new effort will end up in the same trash can of half-baked aspirations as the earlier proposal. We've got a few ideas on how to do this, but nobody is asking.

Cardenas wants to lick the gang problem and, at the same time, save the city some money. Famous last words from Cardenas. "I'm sure that we're going to find duplication. I'm sure that we're going to find inefficiency." In government? You think?