Legislative sausage factory: Back scratch of the day

Los Angeles mayor (and Gavin Newsom’s chief rival as a wannabe future governor) Antonio Villaraigosa has been promising to have the Los Angeles police force hit the 10,000 mark—long a kind of political holy grail in LA—by this year. And to help him, State Senator Kevin de Leon, in one of those “gut-and-amend” bills, is trying to crank out last-minute legislation to enable the transfer of 97 LA Department of General Services personnel to . . . the police department. Mission accomplished! That is, if the pols Villaraigosa is counting on do their thing by midnight tomorrow and Gov. Jerry Brown signs. Capitol Alert