The Chron has a pretty strong editorial lambasting Mayor Brown for the latest developments in the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup. Like me, they wonder why it's so danged expensive to expunge arrest records:

The city legal department can't perform the task because it will be defending the city in the numerous lawsuits filed by those arrested. However, it is not clear why it should cost the taxpayers $484 each time a private lawyer perfunctorily asks the city's chief municipal judge to order a victim's arrest record erased.

The challenge will be for the private lawyers to make certain the records are actually expunged. A Police Department spokesman said the municipal courts were the custodian of the arrest records. A court official said the police had the records, and the police officials in charge of the records referred all questions to the police spokesman who had denied their existence. Good luck to anybody trying to get the city bureaucracy to accomplish anything.