Plaintiffs in the lawsuit argued: “Defendants baldly assert that if the labor pool for their garage, garbage and city park crews is reduced, then ‘CDCR would be forced to draw-down its fire camp population to fill these vital MSF positions.’ That is a red herring; Defendants would not be ‘forced’ to do anything. They could hire public employees to perform tasks like garbage collection, garage work and recycling.” The court seemed to agree.   read more

The multi-stage Dependent Eligibility Verification (DEV) project was launched in March 2012 to find out how many of the 730,000 health dependents were cheating. It was thought that as many as 29,000 ex-spouses and other ineligible dependents might be involved. Judge Albert Gilbert of the California Second District Court of Appeal, amon others, took it personally. "I am not a crook," he wrote CalPERS.   read more

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California, has put together a guide for Making Smart Decisions about Surveillance and made it available to residents, community leaders and, based on special emphasis given questions in the introduction, law enforcement officials. As part of the guide, the ACLU included a model ordinance that cities and counties can use to ensure surveillance projects don’t do all the horrible things their proponents probably hope they will accomplish.   read more

LAUSD didn’t have a problem with attorney W. Keith Wyatt when he successfully defended them in a lawsuit by blaming a 14-year-old girl for having sex with a teacher. But they do have a problem now after he told public radio station KPCC, “She lied to her mother so she could have sex with her teacher. She went to a motel in which she engaged in voluntary consensual sex with her teacher. Why shouldn't she be responsible for that?” The district fired Wyatt on Friday.   read more

The California Supreme Court unanimously declined to review a lower-court ruling that the S.F. ordinance’s broad requirements of public disclosure don’t apply to the Ethics Commission itself when it is consulting with the city attorney’s office. Ironically, the decision revolved around the commission’s refusal in 2012 to reveal 24 memos between it and the city attorney’s office over proposed Sunshine Ordinance regulations.   read more

Manteca (pop. 71,067), south of Stockton in the San Joaquin Valley, took a two-pronged approach to ridding the community of homeless people last week by denying them any kind of habitat, including a hammock, on public or private property, and augmenting state bans on public urination and defecation with a local one of their own. Manteca is obviously not the first city to try and cure a problem with the homeless by driving them into someone else’s backyard.   read more

Two investors charged that Freedom was playing favorites by preparing to sell 14.3 acres of prime real estate near company headquarters for at least $45 million. That would benefit Silver Point Finance LLC, which holds the mortgage on all Freedom real properties. They accused Silver Point of having “undue influence” over the company. That kind of talk has the whiff of an owner and creditors jockeying for position before bankruptcy.   read more

The map, from the California Geological Survey, is a follow-up to a draft map of the Hollywood fault released in January that shocked city officials and developers―of what would be the storied area’s tallest development in history―by estimating it lay directly in the fault’s path. The developer immediately hired his own engineers to trench the site, and their conclusion was that the fault should be removed from the map.   read more

Su exploited loopholes in the student visa system to secure permission from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for her unaccredited, for-profit Silicon Valley school to enroll foreign students while she disguised how many students she was collecting money from at any given time. Tri-Valley had no requirements for admission or graduation . . . and flourished. She targeted Indian students who were eager to enter the U.S.   read more

After three months of improvement in conservation over the past year, September’s gallons-per-capita use among residential customers served by 400 urban water agencies was 10.3% lower than the previous September, but August over August improvement had been 11.6%. Governor Jerry Brown had asked for 20% declines in his January Emergency Drought Proclamation.   read more

Wright was convicted of eight felonies by a jury in January and was sentenced to three months in lockup. He can thank his former fellow lawmakers for facilitating his jail break last Friday by failing to relieve the overcrowded conditions in the penal system that are forcing reduced jail time. California has been trying to meet years of federal court directives to reduce its state prison population by shifting the assignment of certain low-level offenders to already overcrowded county jails.   read more

The lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tried to block construction of a highway project that would link the port directly to Interstate 405 until the welfare of the neighborhood was, at least, taken into consideration. The court said no. Federal law allowed local, state and federal agencies to ignore the impact of pollution on the Wilmington neighborhood and just use a regional analysis.   read more

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has a backlog of more than 11,000 complaints related to long-term health care facilities, many of them with “relatively high priorities,” according to a report issued Thursday. The state auditor found 370 of those involved situations where patients were in “immediate jeopardy―indicating a situation that poses a threat to an individual’s life or health.”   read more

After making mortgage payments on her condo for 16 years, Kilgore refinanced with a “pick-a-payment” loan through World Savings. The next day, she realized she’d agreed to a bad loan and tried to get it rescinded, but World Savings wouldn’t agree. Kilgore’s loan was eventually acquired by Wells Fargo and was kicked out of her condo. That meant that Kilgore was unable to receive subsidies to run the oxygen concentrator she needed to breathe because she didn’t have a permanent address.   read more

The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported that the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) detected methylene chloride at levels four times the average found in Southern California cities but doesn't know where it is coming from. The chemical is a common industrial solvent used for many purposes including: paint stripping, vapor degreasing, printing, foam manufacturing and electronics manufacturing.   read more

There is very little oil drilling in tiny San Benito County and, as far as anyone knows, no fracking. But that did not stop the county from becoming the first in the state to put a fracking ban on the November 4 ballot for voters to decide. They have since been joined by the counties of Santa Barbara and Mendocino, according to Paul Rogers at the San Jose Mercury News, in an effort to do on a piecemeal basis what advocates for a statewide ban failed to do in the Legislature.   read more