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

Times Publisher and CEO Austin Beutner, who will be in charge of the group, said the two papers would maintain separate editorial departments. Jeff Light, president and editor of the San Diego paper, extolled the virtues of consolidation but included a blunt warning: “The business opportunity, and the journalistic opportunity, is very big. . . . Without a doubt, there will be some savings—which, unfortunately, is another way of saying layoffs.”   read more

Neighbors who have been battling the cement plant for decades agree on the seriousness of the offenses, but weren’t thrilled with Lehigh’s punishment. “The penalty is too small when you consider this facility has been using Permanente Creek as its personal sewer for mining waste and toxic runoff for more than 80 years,” Paula Wallis, a neighbor whose property backs up to the creek, told the San Francisco Chronicle.   read more

Chevron provides 10% of Kern County irrigation needs with recycled water from its oil drilling operations. The standards for measuring the toxicity of the water are two-decades old and predate many of the chemicals used in modern extraction techniques, like hydraulic fracturing. That changed last year with new fracking disclosure laws and regulations.   read more

Speaking of his critics on the Delta project, Governor Brown told the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) this week, “Until you put a million hours into it, shut up, because you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.” His remarks, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, were greeted with laughter and applause.   read more

Brandon Kiel left his calling card at the Santa Clarita sheriff’s station (in northern Los Angeles County), which correctly identified him as an aide to California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Googling his name turns up the same information, but he doesn’t surface as an official with the Masons until after he was arrested with two other people on charges of impersonating a police officer.   read more

Fees are a big part of the bank’s bottom line. The complaint says they are a “virtual fee-generating machine.” To facilitate payment, the suit alleges, Wells Fargo moves customer money from one account to another without permission, puts customers in the hands of collection agencies when unauthorized account fees go unpaid and fouls up their credit ratings with derogatory comments to credit agencies.   read more

The State Water Resources Control Board adopted sweeping water restrictions Tuesday that will strongly encourage homeowners to crisp their lawns and urbanites to cut their water use 25%, on average, as per Governor Jerry Brown’s executive order on April 1. The regulations will take effect in the summer, when outdoor sprinkling usually accounts for 50% to 80% of residential water use.   read more

Councilman Mike Posey told the conservative website Breitbart, “It’s a freedom issue. . . . Litter from plastic bags is caused by misuse and not use, and I object to punishing everyone because some people choose to litter.” Posey is talking about the estimated 10 billion plastic bags that California dumps in the environmental every year. The city staff projected that the number of plastic bags in use locally each year could increase from about 5.1 million to 104 million after repeal.   read more

Critics say there is no surplus water for diversion to the aquifer, the aquifer will be drained, the pipeline will cut across sensitive federal property and the ecosystem will take a big hit. Conservationists lost their initial court cases that argued the environmental impact report and groundwater management plan were deficient and challenged the role of the Santa Margarita Water District in Orange County in approving them.   read more

The state Department of Justice (DOJ) said it had spent 40% of the $24 million allocated but has only seized weapons from 17% of the people and might reach half by the deadline in June 2016. Officials asked for understanding, more money and another three years at a state Senate budget subcommittee hearing last week.   read more

“Anyone interacting with law enforcement should announce that they are reaching for a phone, and that they are attempting to access the app to record the exchange,” the ACLU warns. Some would say users’ safety relies, to some extent, upon how the police respond to some a pronouncement, although it is against the law for them to grab and destroy a camera or videographer.   read more

Thousands of students stranded when the already diminished, for-profit Corinthian Colleges, Inc. closed for good last month are stuck in a bewildering, expensive, painful morass. The U.S. Department of Education is helping by publishing a list of comparable institutions suitable for transfer within a 25-mile radius of their closed Heald, Everest or Wyotech schools, which includes for-profit schools under investigation by state and federal authorities.   read more

Caltrans publicly expressed concerns in May 2011 that the project might cause vehicles to queue up on surface streets waiting to hop on the ever-clogged 101 Freeway. In December 2012, after reading the city’s draft EIR, the agency conveyed a series of “major concerns” about its traffic analysis. “The city was not entitled to disagree with Caltrans,” the judge said.   read more

The Center for Competitive Politics argued that its donors’ First Amendment freedom of association was abridged by having to convey information to the state that puts them at risk of public attack. The argument was somewhat undercut by the fact that the state is simply asking for the same information already furnished to the IRS for tax purposes and, like the IRS, pledges to keep it private.   read more

City Controller Ron Galperin’s audit said the trust operators “have a cavalier attitude toward the use of public money” and blamed an “environment of lax oversight and inadequate financial controls.” The trusts accumulated an $11.3 million surplus as of June 30, 2014, but can’t document why it wasn’t spent and don’t have a plan for spending it.   read more

California wage earners of the non-supervisory sort are 89% more productive than they were 25 years ago, but their real wages have increased just 3%. “Low-Wage California: 2014 Chartbook” calculated that real wages, after inflation is taken into account, declined 6% for the lowest 10th percentile of wage earners between 1979 and 2014. It was worse for the lowest 20th percentile, -12%, and the lowest 30th percentile, 10%.   read more