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

Prisoners “languish in jail for months even after the court has ordered them committed for competency restoration,” according to a lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court. The suit blames the state Department of State Hospitals (DSH) and the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) for backlogs that cause long jail incarcerations.   read more

Despite “very troubling allegations” about federal regulators’ oversight of pipeline safety, or lack thereof, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said San Francisco cannot blame them for the 2010 San Bruno blast that killed eight people and leveled a neighborhood. The court said, “We have no authority to compel agency action merely because the agency is not doing something we think it should do,”   read more

To get around the fact that cultivation, sale and possession of marijuana remain federal crimes even as a state-sanctioned medical marijuana industry flourishes, Board of Equalization (BOE) member Fiona Ma has suggested creating a state-run bank for pot growers and sellers. They would be able to deposit and withdraw money, write checks and have credit cards.   read more

This has been going on for awhile. Then-Public Defender Kenneth Taniguchi told the Fresno County Board of Supervisors in 2009 that his office was maxed out and would have to begin declining cases. The office had 78 lawyers. The low point was 2012, when the office had just 50 lawyers among 79 employees. The office now has 66 attorneys   read more

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a complaint Thursday asking the Sacramento County Superior Court to kill the EIR’s certification and stop the state from handing out well-stimulation permits based on it. “We had a promise from the Legislature that we’d have a real scientific review and a real report, and they’d make a decision based on science, and that didn’t happen,” the Center’s Climate Law Institute Director Kassie Siegel told ThinkProgress.   read more

Just one in 10 enrollees graduates. Only one in five of the graduates passes the state Bar exam and earns an opportunity to compete for a job in the totally over-saturated legal job market. This is overwhelmingly a California story. The state is home to most of the nation’s unaccredited law schools because California is one of the few states that lets people take the bar exam without graduating from an accredited school.   read more

Just 37% of Republicans in the state believe the effects of global warming are being felt, compared to 73% of Democrats and 65% of independents. Thirty-one percent of Republicans said the effects will never be felt. Only 26% of Republicans think the threat is very serious.The skepticism mirrors national ideological and political splits over perceptions of climate change.   read more

The state does not require water agencies to report leaks and, consequently, not a lot do. The survey found that six out of 10 retailers combined leaks with unbilled or unauthorized water use in accounting for missing water. The four retailers that do measure leaks separately reported numbers three times better than the world champion of leak stoppers: Israel.   read more

The higher compost fees are a mighty encouragement to restaurants and stores to chuck their compostable food products in the bin headed for the landfill. According to East Bay Express, that prompted Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan to blast out emails a couple weeks ago to city officials claiming, “We did NOT approve charging more for composting than for trash. . . . This is NOT in compliance with the Council's approval.” Indications are she is wrong.   read more

TRIP deems 74% of major urban roads in the San Francisco-Oakland area to be “poor.” That’s the worst large metropolitan area in the nation, followed closely by Los Angeles-Long Beach (73%) and Concord (62%) in the Bay Area. The report calculated that the lousy S.F.-Oakland roads cost an average driver $1,044 per year. Two years before, 56% of the roads were rated poor and cost drivers $782.   read more

The sticking point appeared to be money. The committee wanted a commitment in writing from Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh that cost overruns would be covered by public funds, a commitment his constituents did not want him to make. After months of public finger pointing, behind the scenes negotiations and reminders by Olympic officials that folks on the West Coast were eager to host the games, the end was acrimonious.   read more

Mitsubishi manufactured the vibrating steam generators and hundreds of tubes that leaked a small amount of radioactive steam shortly after installation. For its part, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries claims the most it could owe is $137 million and said in a statement, “The allegations and demands made by those parties disregard the history of the contract negotiations and performance and are factually incorrect, legally unsound, and inappropriate.”   read more

Before Tuesday, people in Los Angeles were barred by California law from manufacturing, selling, distributing or bringing into the state the kind of large-capacity gun magazines used in recent mass shootings. But they could possess them. Not anymore. The city council voted 12-0 to join San Francisco and Sunnyvale and close the loophole.   read more

“You will find little progress since last year and, in some cases, regression,” the authors of the report warned in the intro. Availability of information on a website is one-third of a state’s grade. The other two-thirds involve a complex review of laws and regulations that states pass facilitating and compelling transparency of health pricing information. The report also analyzes how effectively the laws are applied.   read more

Uber has paid lobbyists 10 times more in 2015 than the limousine industry and four times more than the taxi industry. The company spent 10 times more money ($474,182) on lobbying in the state capital during three months in the summer of 2014 than it spent in any prior three-month period. Lawmakers were considering how to make the company do proper background checks and carry enough insurance.   read more

“This draconian measure will likely cause 100 million extra gallons of water to be wasted because many of the 15 million annual park visitors who had previously taken short beach showers will now go home to take much longer showers,” petition author Jonathan Greenberg argues. He says the average shower at the beach is an icy quick rinse using 1.2 gallons of water, while the more leisurely warm shower at home consumes 17 gallons.   read more