ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

The union voted to freeze workers’ defined-benefit pension fund and replace it with a defined-contribution 401-k type plan. The deal paves the way for $8.7 billion in subsidies to Boeing that the state of Washington offered through 2040 as an inducement to stay in Puget Sound. The contract also reduces future wages, ratchets up employee healthcare costs and extends the contract eight years, guaranteeing labor peace through the length of a contract to build Boeing’s new 777X aircraft.   read more

The Lantern, Fairview and Porterville developmental centers were each cited during Medicaid recertification surveys last year for failing to meet around half of the required Conditions of Participation (COPs) and having between one and four patients in “immediate jeopardy.” The decertification warning is the latest chapter in a saga of woe stretching back more than a decade.   read more

The 20% average reading matched the lowest reading on record. Based on these measurements, the Department of Water Resources projected that the State Water Project (SWP) will only be able to deliver 5% of the 4 million acre-feet of water requested for calendar year 2014 by 29 public agencies. Those agencies supply water to more than 25 million Californians and nearly a million acres of irrigated farmland.   read more

On the day after the Boston Marathon attacks, a gunman or two entered two manholes at a power station just southeast of San Jose and severed fiber optic cables. 911 service was cut to the area and AT&T cellphone service was disrupted. Someone then shot up the place with a high-powered rifle, pumping more than 100 rounds into several transformers. Cooling oil leaked out and the overheated transformers shut down. No one was injured and the disruption of electrical power was minimal.   read more

Governor Jerry Brown signed 11 pieces of gun-control legislation last year and vetoed seven, but the new law with arguably the most firepower was passed by the Legislature in 2011 with an activation date of January 1, 2014. AB 809 took effect with little mainstream media fanfare, requiring sellers of long guns to run background checks on buyers and submit the information to the state for storage in a database. It is basically the same procedure the state runs for its handgun registry.   read more

The court ruled 7-0 that despite his illegal presence, Garcia can be admitted to the State Bar, but it also said federal laws will restrict where he can be employed and the type of work he can do. For instance, he can’t be an employee of a law firm, corporation or government entity. That covers a lot of ground, although he can provide his legal services for free or outside the country.   read more

City College of San Francisco, facing closure in July, dodged a bullet Wednesday when a Superior Court judge ruled the school couldn’t lose its accreditation until a trial was held on the accusations against it. The city attorney made it clear he thought the commission’s action was politically motivated by people trying to “restrict the mission of community colleges by focusing on degree completion to the detriment of vocational, remedial and non-credit education.”   read more

On the heels of a study showing an alarming spike in the consumption of sugary sodas by California adolescents, a new study shows the state could save $100 million on healthcare costs annually if it taxed the drinks an extra penny per ounce. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco calculated that such a tax would reduce diabetes and heart disease 10-20% and be especially beneficial to African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and people with limited income.   read more

Water interests want more water and—in case it wasn’t clear before, the BDCP makes it clear now—that includes oil and gas drillers using hydraulic fracturing. In answer to the question “Will water pumped from the Delta be used for fracking in the Central Valley?” the answer from the BDCP was yes. “Fracking presumably would be an ‘industrial’ use of water.”   read more

“You have my telephone number connecting with your telephone number. There are no names,” the president told Charlie Rose on PBS. But two graduate students at Stanford University conducted a small study and quickly determined that it was irrelevant whether the NSA database of metadata had names, because the associated names were readily obtainable.   read more

In its 2007 ruling, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said that the county had a secular purpose, not a religious one, in removing the cross from the seal. It reasonably wanted to avoid getting sued by the ACLU for violating the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. But that was before years of conservative uproar over the War on Christmas and the rise of the radical right.   read more

In a letter to Sentinel Offender Services, LLC, the department accused the company of failing in five critical areas of service: equipment failed; monitoring was sketchy; cases were prematurely deemed inactive; equipment hookups were slow to happen; and case files lacked basic information. Among those tracked by GPS, according to the Los Angeles Times, are “repeat sex offenders, domestic abusers who had violated restraining orders and violent gang members.”   read more

The southern California city of 27,000 is looking at a $4 million budget deficit. The city council appears philosophically opposed to raising revenues. Two-thirds of its $10.6 million city payroll was spent on police, a high percentage partially because that is who is left. The city has laid off two-thirds of its staff in recent years.   read more

The operator of nearly 100 private colleges has more than 200 lawsuits pending against it, including a case brought by California’s attorney general claiming fraudulent marketing practices aimed at recruiting students. Wells Fargo is by far the biggest shareholder in the company, with 11.6 million shares. Corinthian’s second and third largest investors are the investment management firm BlackRock Fund Advisors (4.5 million) and investment adviser Royce & Associates (4 million).   read more

Times reporters took a stroll along the Hollywood and Santa Monica faults and found 18 projects that had been approved without state mapping during that fallow period, including apartments, condos and an office building. Fourteen were in Los Angeles and four were in Santa Monica. These numbers are dwarfed by the total number, 1,400, of buildings sitting on or near the faults.   read more

Lists like NBC’s and ones easily crafted at the Controller’s website are often delivered in a context-free environment that aids the cause. For instance, the list of 25 top city and county wage earners included 21 doctors. Some might construe that to be more of an issue about the health care industry than bureaucratic waste. Others might find it more relevant that total wages dropped or were flat for all six state entities from 2009-2012.   read more