The governor’s decision to withhold more than $100 million to revamp the closed El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility into a re-entry facility for state prisoners is not necessarily permanent, a state spokesman said Monday, but local officials want more clarity about what the state intends to do with the place long-term.

“I’m a little confused” about the state’s intentions, said Frank Mecham, county supervisor and former Paso Robles mayor. He said he hopes the governor doesn’t plan to “leave it as a big white elephant, gathering weeds and dust.”

Meanwhile Paso Robles City Councilman Fred Strong has disinterred an old idea: asking the state to sell the land to Paso Robles for $1, so that “we could repurpose it in any number of possible ways....”

Joe M. Vega, 58 of Paso Robles, passed away on Saturday, September 10, 2011 at his home. Joe was born in March of 1953 in San Jose and had been a resident of Paso Robles for 40 years. He was a Correctional Youth Counselor at the Paso Robles Youth Authority for 29 years and was active in the Correctional Peace Officers Foundation and a long time member of the Union CCPOA. Joe was passionate about his community and was an active long time member of the Bearcat Boosters.

Joe is survived by his wife, Veronica Vega; daughters Sonya Vega, Joanna Vega and Renee Vega; grandchildren Anthony Vega, Gregg Vega, Samantha Vega-Chambers and Isaac Townsend; and sister Carmen M. Martinez...

The California Highway Patrol has released new information about a crash that killed a local CHP officer Sunday night.

Investigators say at about 5:45p.m. Sunday, Officer Brett Oswald was responding to a report that a vehicle had collided with a tree on South River Rd. near Spanish Camp Rd. The 47-year-old had arrived at the scene and found the vehicle was actually just abandoned there...

The Paso Robles City Council will consider tonight whether to throw its support behind the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to use the former El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility as the preferred site for a 500-bed, joint re-entry facility to house inmates from San Luis Obispo, San Benito and Santa Barbara counties.

The re-entry facility, to be located at the former boys school site on the same site as a 1,000-bed medium risk facility and 80 to 200-bed fire camp, would be constructed from the ground up and house male, low-level inmates older than age 50 nearing parole. The council's approval of the conditional resolution of provisional support is tied to a separate, yet parallel issue involving jail funding for the counties who are involved in the re-entry proposal.

In order for the funding to move forward, the counties must provide the state Corrections Standards Authority a package that includes resolutions of support for the reentry sites by all the counties and the city on Thursday, Sept. 18…

Officials from Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and San Benito counties will go before a state prison review panel Sept. 18 to convince the state to fund the construction of a tri-counties "prisoner re-entry facility" in Paso Robles.

The idea behind the facility is to address the high rate at which released state prisoners commit new crimes. The facility would offer drug treatment and job training, for example

If the project gets built, all three counties would receive millions of dollars in conditional grants from the state to subsidize local jail projects…

I think I can now fairly say that both North County cities, Atascadero and Paso Robles, are about equal to each other in many respects.

For example, Paso is now fretting about the proposed prison complex that looms in its future. And Atascadero is debating the proposed Wal- Mart that hangs over its future. Paso Robles already has a Wal-Mart, while Atascadero already has a hospital for the criminal mentally ill. And state prison officials are striving to calm Paso Robles' prison worries, while Wal- Mart representatives are trying to calm Atascadero's big-box jitters.

There is a difference, though. The state can pretty much put a prison wherever it wants, no matter what a little city like Paso Robles says…

It is nearly certain that a 900-inmate state prison and 100-inmate fire camp will be hosted at the closing El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility site, attendees of two public meetings this week learned. But the fate of a proposed regional re-entry prison — with 250 inmates who would be paroled to San Luis Obispo County and San Benito County — is up in the air.

Re-entry prisons are places where inmates within one year of their release date receive training, education and counseling to help them prepare for their release into everyday life.

Several things must happen for the re-entry plan — part of a statewide effort to cut down on inmates returning to jail after they are released — to move forward…