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 Southern California city is the first in the state to make the request now, according to Reuters, although other entities have pulled out in the past. Canyon Lake officials notified the $256-billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) on April 4 that it is willing to pay a $661,000 termination fee to drop out.   read more

The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upholds a lower-court decision that detainees are entitled to one of the most fundamental rights in the United States, having one’s day in court. The government has six months to provide a hearing to immigrants awaiting deportation proceedings that establishes they are a flight risk or a societal danger, or it must let them go, the appellate court ruled.   read more

A report (pdf) by the auditor found that the state failed to collect $22 million generated by the plates over two years, ending in mid-2012, and that money dispersed wasn’t always spent properly. The auditor found that the DMV “potentially undercharged” plate owners $10.2 million, failed to collect another $12 million from retention fees related to the plates and overstated its costs for administering the environmental fund by $6.3 million.   read more

Acceptance of California high school seniors at UC schools dropped 2.2% for Fall 2013, according to university sources. Only 60.6% of those 99,132 students who applied for admission were accepted. Five years ago, the admission rate was 70%. Conversely, 22,761 students from out-of-state, or 21% more than last year, were admitted. Non-Californians pay almost three times as much for tuition ($36,078) as the $13,200 California residents pay.   read more

Senate Bill 515 would have capped the number of these predatory loans that a customer could take out to four per year, established a database to track payday loans, allowed more time for loans to be repaid and limited the availability of a loan based on the borrower’s income. But the Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee buried the legislation on a 5-3 vote.   read more

The busing tactic coincided with the state’s decision to slash funding for mental health services. Between 2009 and 2012, Nevada cut mental health spending by 28%. Prior to those cuts, the state’s funding for those services was already well below the national average.   read more

San Francisco officials approved hundreds of new taxi permits this week for drivers working in the city, but this response to longstanding complaints about the dearth of cabbies outside of downtown may pale in comparison to the recent game-changing introduction of Internet app-driven ride-sharing services to the area. Hailing a cab with a smartphone app is much faster than waiting for a cab service to dispatch someone from its fleet.   read more

“For many years, the PUC has been celebrated as a leader in representing taxpayers and for promoting innovative and green technologies,” the report says. “There has been little attention and limited resources directed toward reliability, and even fewer toward safety by the Legislature and the Commissioners. Because safety is considered to be ‘off the radar screen’ of most Commissioners and legislators, it is considered to have little cache for PUC staff and managers.”   read more

Six years after agitators began complaining that large electronic billboards scattered around Los Angeles were a blight on neighborhoods, a threat to public health, a distraction to motorists and illegally approved by the city―and four months after a judge ruled they had to be turned off―77 brightly lit billboards went dark.   read more

Tutor Perini Corp. has a history of bidding low and fighting hard for cost-overruns as a project progresses. While nine out of 10 public works projects historically go over budget (pdf), The Bay Citizen found that 11 Tutor Perini projects completed since 2000 cost, on average, 40% more than original bids. Local governments ended up spending $765 million more on the projects than originally anticipated. One project ended up 107% over bid.   read more

“Southern California Edison is seeking to shortcut the license amendment process by urging the NRC to declare that a license amendment that would enable the restart of the San Onofre facility at 70% power involves no significant hazards,” the lawmakers wrote. “We believe that granting this request would put public safety at risk.”   read more

Unhappy with claims by the U.S. Navy that radiation levels on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay are suitable for expanded civilian development of the former naval base, journalists at The Bay Citizen gathered their own soil samples and had them analyzed by an independent laboratory. The results showed levels of radiation up to three times higher than what the Navy had claimed.   read more

An analysis by the public-interest group Prison Law Office indicated that nearly half of security-based lockdowns in California prisons between 2010 and 2012 were aimed at specific racial or ethnic groups. And then there are those pesky signs above cell doors in a number of prisons―color-coded white for whites, red for Southern Hispanic, Green for Northern Hispanic, blue for blacks and yellow for Other, who are mostly Asian.   read more

State lawmakers in California, unhappy at the Boy Scouts of America’s prohibition against gay membership, are considering legislation that would remove the organization’s tax-exempt status if it doesn’t change its ways. Although state Senate Bill 323 is most certainly aimed at the Boy Scouts and their ban on gays, the legislation names 22 youth groups that “shall not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or religious affiliation.”   read more

Miles (from Long Beach) and MacCraig Warren (from Compton) filed suit in federal court alleging that US Airways discriminated against them last year when airline employees said they couldn’t be seated in first-class while wearing jeans, hoodies and a baseball cap, according to Courthouse News Service. After getting on the plane, Miles Warren couldn’t help but notice that sitting in first-class with them was the white passenger, still wearing his jeans and hoodie.   read more

Billionaire William Koch, brother of Koch Industry billionaires David and Charles, won a seven-year battle with California internet entrepreneur and sometimes-billionaire Eric Greenberg over a multimillion-dollar purchase of wine. Koch began his pursuit after purchasing 17,000 bottles of Greenberg’s wine collection at a Zachys Wine & Liquor Inc. auction in 2005 for $3.7 million. He quickly discovered that 24 bottles worth $228,603 were filled with cheap wine.   read more