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

Napa County is losing its longtime public health officer to the state. Dr. Karen Smith. Governor Jerry Brown's appointee as director of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) succeeds Dr. Ron Chapman, who resigned at the end of January. The department is the lead agency in California providing detection, treatment, prevention and surveillance of public health and environmental issues.   read more

Investigators found a disorganized mess at the Oakland VA; what they didn’t find were records of the 13,184 unprocessed informal claims or the 2,155 identified as requiring additional action. “We also could not confirm that only 537 informal claims remained to be processed following the special project team’s review,” the OIG said, blaming “poor record-keeping practices.”   read more

The 82-year-old, three-time LAUSD superintendent completed his U-turn last week when he told a gaggle of reporters, “I don't believe we can afford a device for every student.” Cortines said the district really never had a solid plan for how the computers would be integrated into the school system and how the district would pay for them. He advocated a more balanced spending approach and said he wanted a $1 billion in bond money to fix up dilapidated campuses.   read more

Attorney General Harris responded to concerns of the Service International Employees Union (SEIU)/United Healthcare Workers West, pleas at public meetings and 14,000 written comments that Prime had a history of eviscerating services for low-income patients while whacking employees’ pay and benefits. Prime registered its objections to the conditions put on the sale by Harris and said it had to think over the deal.   read more

While the high homicide rate reflects badly on the state's correctional institutions, it is not half the suicide rate of 20 per 100,000 prisoners. Death by homicide is even with deaths related to alcohol and drugs in state lockup, a place where one might expect access to be somewhat limited. Illness is by far the greatest cause of death in California prisons, where the overall rate is 228 per 100,000.   read more

Rice won. But to be fair to the other candidates, it must be said, this was not a head-to-head battle with early frontrunner California Attorney General Kamala Harris, former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or any of the other presumed Democratic candidates in this bluest of blue states. It was a poll of how “inclined” people were to vote for a particular candidate and they could be inclined toward more than one.   read more

Will Kempton has shuttled between public and private positions in transportation, public service and government affairs for 40 years. His return to the public sector as executive director of the California Transportation Commission (CTC) in January followed a three-year stint, with the same title, at the nonprofit advocacy group Transportation California.   read more

The drug-resistant bacteria CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae) was found on two pieces of equipment used in a “complex” endoscopic procedure that they underwent at the hospital between last October and January. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cites a report on their website that CRE “can contribute to death in up to 50% of patients who become infected.”   read more

About one-fifth of the city’s 6,730 miles of pipe date back to 1930 or earlier. Those should all be toast by 2030. About 6% of the city’s pipes are graded “D” or “F” by the DWP. More than 40% of those pipes are at least 85 years old. The city spends $44 million a year to replace about 21 miles of pipe but needs to spend about three times that much for the next 10 years to replace 435 miles.   read more

A handbook containing the restrictions, which take effect August 1, “effectively removes civil rights protections guaranteed to all Californians,” the legislators wrote. The church would require around 500 administrators, teachers and other staff to formally agree that “adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations” are “gravely evil.”   read more

The group is the inaugural chapter of an organization that its sponsors, two “queer women of color and avid trans allies,” hope inspires the creation of other chapters devoted to promoting “culturally-inclusive values” among young girls, 8-11 years old. One story in the right-wing media criticizing them asked in a headline, "When Do Brownies Become Brownshirts?”   read more

Norman B. Smith died in 2012 because he smoked marijuana. But it wasn’t the drug that killed him. Smith was taken off the organ transplant list at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles just weeks before he was to get a new liver because he used medical marijuana. He died within a year.   read more

There have been an explosion of local laws that are meant to harass and punish homeless people, rather than restrict anti-social behavior, according to a new study out of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Ninety percent ban begging and panhandling and 20% ban food sharing. That last one is problematic for anyone arguing that the laws are aimed at preventing unsocial behavior like urinating in public.   read more

While the company hailed the “important step” in the regulatory process, it was not enamored of the suggested conditions attached to the approval by the judge. Essentially, they are an order that Comcast fix a laundry list of problems that critics and the company’s Internet customers have complained about for a decade. Many of them have to do with providing better broadband service to poorer communities.   read more

A new report by the independent state Legislative Analyst's Office acknowledges there are legitimate reasons why a lot of the haul—90% are cash assets—will never be claimed, but argues that the $400 million in annual revenues swept into the General Fund is acting as a powerful disincentive for the state to do more.   read more

In a memo last month, the city said it had been hearing complaints for three years, but they’ve gone from “occasional” reports of brown water to “numerous” complaints about black water during the last six months. The water company assured residents that the black gunk coming out of their taps “can be unsightly and concerning,” but they should rest assured that it “is safe to drink.”   read more