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

Establishing natural gas storage facilities beneath homes, businesses and parks doesn’t appear to be as popular as it once was. For some, it may be the not-too-distant memory of the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion in September 2010 that killed eight people and razed a neighborhood that gives them pause over a plan to inject 7.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas into sandstone in southeast Sacramento.   read more

Thirty-six California environmentalists, echoing the sentiments of a dozen members of Congress who preceded them, have asked federal authorities to short-circuit what is believed to be an imminent announcement that the state is moving ahead on a peripheral canal (or, in this case, tunnels) through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.   read more

What do Chevron and The Buckley School, a Southern California private, upscale K-12 complex nestled on 18 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains, have in common? They both benefit from millions of dollars in tax-exempt bonds issued by the nonprofit California Municipal Finance Authority (CMFA) and, in return, they “provide a public benefit.”   read more

It didn’t take long for astute state officials to determine that breaking into a home to seduce a child should not be classified a nonviolent crime, and so last week Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill reversing 10 changes like that made in October to facilitate the state downsizing its prison population.   read more

Elected Attorney General in the November 2010 election, Oakland-born Democrat Kamala Devi Harris wasted little time becoming a champion of gay rights and homeowner rights in the state.   read more

California has been in the forefront of states gearing up for full implementation of President Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act, and now that the U.S. Supreme Court has let stand its centerpiece, the individual mandate, and most of its other features it looks like the gamble may have paid off.   read more

Most of the 70 state parks that were on the chopping block earlier this year have at least temporarily avoided the guillotine despite a $31 million line-item budget veto Thursday by Governor Jerry Brown. The last-minute boost in park fortunes came from $10 million included in the budget deal signed off on by the governor.   read more

The city of Oakland is paying Goldman Sachs around $4 million a year as an insurance hedge on bonds that no longer exist, a deal that stretches to 2021 and the city wants out of now. The company would be happy to oblige, as long as it gets the $15 million termination fee agreed to in 1997 when Oakland signed the contract.   read more

It may be dishonorable to lie about your military service, but the Constitution protects your right to do so, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday in the case of a former member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in Los Angeles County. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court struck down the Stolen Valor Act.   read more

The Department of Motor Vehicles, the bureaucracy everybody loves to hate, has spent the past week explaining to frustrated customers why its newly retooled website has been up and down since Monday morning, or more precisely, not explaining.   read more

A week after Governor Jerry Brown joined a chorus of critics urging state regulators to reduce toxic flame retardants in furniture, the woman who heads the agency responsible for the 1975 fire-safety rule says she wants it scrapped.   read more

Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a Los Angeles County appeal of a decision requiring it to clean up polluted runoff that flows to the ocean, a beach report card from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) finds the state registered more beach closures and advisories in 2011 than the year before.   read more

While bankers, the Chamber of Commerce and the securities industry take their last shot at derailing state legislation to provide foreclosure-prevention relief to beleaguered homeowners, a new report shows nearly 700,000 Californians are at least 30 days delinquent on their mortgage payments.   read more

Faced with the prospect of having to pay millions of dollars in compensation for the 2010 pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is blaming the blast on a pipeline test it says it performed in 1956. The state Public Utilities Commission maintains that there is no record of the company doing such a test.   read more

Six years after Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Deputy James Mee arrested actor Mel Gibson on a drunk driving charge, endured an anti-Semitic rant by the star, clashed with his superiors over removal of the rant from the arrest report, denied leaking the report to the press and sued the department over his treatment by superiors, the officer has been told he’ll be fired.   read more

The city of Stockton failed to reach a deal with its creditors Tuesday, setting the stage for the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy in history. The Stockton City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday night to halt bond payments, whack its employee health and retirement benefits and move forward with bankruptcy proceedings.   read more