GROUNDS FOR A DEAL: Governor Arnold’s threat to stage a fire sale of state-owned facilities reminds me of the last time he proposed this. Earl Warren Showgrounds was on the hit list but nothing came of his grand plan to auction off all sorts of the public’s assets. But, as everyone keeps saying, these are trying times, so maybe he’ll try it.

Back in the 1950s, the state bought 136.5 acres of the Park Ranch as a place for the Santa Barbara Horse and Flower Show. Sacramento then magnanimously handed off 82 acres to the city to add to its community golf course and 10 acres for Adams School. Let’s hope that if Arnold auctions off Earl Warren he won’t want to also repossess the 19th hole and the school library. The state giveth and the state taketh away, I guess. Seems to me that someone suggested a while back that Earl Warren would make a wonderful place for Schwarzenegger Condos. But don’t expect the Showgrounds to be sold off without one heck of a battle by putter-waving golfers, posses on horseback, and the gamblers who flock to satellite betting on the nags.

PROBE INTO FIRE: Investigators seeking the cause of the multimillion-dollar Jesusita Fire are tight-lipped, but according to word around town, they’re examining a key clue: a pile of broken rock at the spot where the blaze broke out. Did a power tool being used to clear brush along the trail strike sparks that touched off the fire? Investigators are also said to be quizzing people known or believed to have been in the vicinity when the fire began. A long swath of cut brush was found along the trail near or at the spot where a tiny blaze exploded into a giant one shortly before 2 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5. So far, no one has come forward — publicly at least — to admit sparking the disastrous fire. But one might assume that investigators have ID’d the brush-cutters and chatted.

RAISE FOR DA? Radio talk show host Ernie Salomon, known for his indignant blasts, was on the horn wondering why the Board of Supervisors was considering giving a raise to ailing District Attorney Christie Stanley. “She’s a lovely lady, but how do you give a raise to someone who isn’t working?” Ernie asked. Christie, fighting lung cancer, has reportedly made few appearances at her office in many months, handling the job by phone at home. One of her last known public appearances was March 6 when she sat on a rolling office chair, wheelchair-like, to receive a Woman of the Year plaque from state Sen. Tony Strickland of Ventura. When a proposed hefty pay hike to $210,765 a year from the present $179,899 showed up on the supes’ agenda Tuesday (Stanley was not present), it got shot down by surprised supervisors. “It came out of nowhere,” one official told me. Bad timing in view of a tough economy, the official said.

NO PRIZE: Strickland, who ran that sleazy, highly dubious “I’m an environmentalist” campaign to beat Hannah-Beth Jackson last year, is probably not giving any awards to former longtime aide Jose “Joel” Angeles. The latter, now chief of staff for Strickland’s Assemblywoman wife Audra, is facing criminal charges for allegedly attacking protesters at a Ventura County political event. He supposedly yelled, “You are atheists. You are not American, you are cowards. If you step foot on this curb you will go down.” A 69-year-old Episcopal priest complained that he was body slammed, wrecking his shoulder.

LA VISTA SADNESS: Among the many sad stories from the Jesusita were two on La Vista Road, where homes of Channel 3 reporter Martha Bull and Dee MacGillivray, widow of a former mayor, burned down. Martha and husband Jon took all possible fire prevention measures, but “a wild ember got through a vent under the house and it burned from the inside out,” newsman John Palminteri told me. Dee’s late husband, Don MacGillivray, was mayor in the 1960s when I covered City Hall, and went on to become a state assemblyman. My heart goes out to Dee, 88, who lived in her beloved adobe home for so long.

SARA SIGNS OFF: Sara de la Guerra — whoever that may be — has made the last of 1,111 posts on his or her zesty BlogaBarbara site. Sara’s pithy posts elicited long strings of hearty agreement and angry rebuttals, many actually to the point and factually correct, others just rants. Still, Sara stirred a savory stew that brewed up public discussion of the issues. Sara managed to keep “her” identity secret, all the better to shield “her” from the slings and arrows of attackers. Even the News-Press, often a target, failed in its campaign to find out who it is.

GRAPES OF WRATH: Santa Barbaran Thomas (Thom) Steinbeck, son of author John Steinbeck, voiced “profound disappointment” after the U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to hear his appeal of a lower court ruling. That court held that the author’s descendants couldn’t recapture copyrights to some of Steinbeck’s greatest works.

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