POWERFUL FRIENDS… Generally, Squid likes rumors—starting them and hearing them. But recently, Squid heard one that made Squid’s cold blood boil: According to some cephalopods in the know, Monterey County’s LOCAL AGENCY FORMATION COMMISSION (LAFCO) planned to skip over Commissioner VINCE DIMAGGIO, next in line to chair the commission, and, in his place, appoint Seaside Mayor and Commissioner RALPH RUBIO.

Squid wasn’t surprised. Some of DiMaggio’s recent votes angered the city reps who sit on LAFCO. DiMaggio supported Carmel Valley residents’ right to vote on incorporation and he opposed the move by Greenfield officials to greatly expand the city’s future growth area without first negotiating an agreement between Greenfield and LAFCO. These were smart votes in Squid’s opinion, but neither vote gave DiMaggio popularity points with the commission’s mayors, who voted in the majority on both issues and decided to quash a CV incorporation vote of the people, and to let Greenfield sprawl. And so, according to the rumor mill, at the May 21 LAFCO meeting, some of the commissioners planned to pass over DiMaggio and appoint Rubio.

Luckily, they didn’t. DiMaggio is now the proud commission chair. Should his house end up covered in toilet paper, Squid’s gonna point Squid’s tentacles towards the mayors.

KIND OF BLUE… Despite the barrage of Squidmail, Salinas Police Chief DAN ORTEGA has something else in mind for his top two cavorting deputy chiefs, other than the rumored termination.

(Boy it’s tough to be a public servant. Look at ol’ STEVE MCMAHON over at MONTEREY PD. Guy lost his badge over some woman he cyber-sexed. Oh, all right, so she was a key witness in a murder. Does that make the heavy breathing any less entertaining?)

Chief might just be irritated that he was the last to know, considering he and the undercover lovers were regulars in Oldtown for coffee.

Frankly, Squid couldn’t give a crustacean’s butt who beds whom over there. But that’s just Squid. “Maybe they won’t get fired for sex, but if the chief wants someone out, they’ll be out,” a tipster says. “This is all about their integrity to him.”

Another insider says there’s pressure on either or both to resign: “That’s stupid…[The shaggers] get a good payday. Would you quit if your boss was pretending to be pissed off at you for morale purposes?”

Truth be told, Squid gets handsome raises and Atta-Squids for particularly bad behavior. But whatever. Squid’s hoping it’s all hype. Cuz really, the cop rules for sex are gettin’ tough to follow.