The council unanimously directed City Attorney Mike Feuer’s office to write an ordinance that would change the zoning code to ban the practice of well “stimulation” until the council is convinced that state and federal regulations protect residents and drilling is in compliance with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. “I think we all can agree unregulated fracking is crazy,” Councilman Paul Koretz, one of the authors of the motion, said before the vote.   read more

The indictments date back to incidents captured on video in December 2010 and January 2011 and released two months later by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi. The footage appears to show narcotics officers making two separate drug arrests after entering rooms without permission or a warrant. Other footage shows officers walking out of rooms with what appears to be bags of personal possessions, including a laptop computer, that were never logged as evidence.   read more

Most of the software programs being used in the project are off-the-shelf commercial products that need few modifications. They will be used for accounting, procurement and cash management. But software that will replace the current process for creating the governor’s budget and legislative budget documents is not. That software is proprietary and requires significant configuration. Apparently, it has not gone well.   read more

Imperial farmers are growing vast amounts of the hay for export to China and other countries. In doing so, the state is indirectly exporting billions of gallons of water overseas, due to alfalfa’s water-hungry biology. “It’s a huge amount. It’s enough for a year’s supply for a million families — it’s a lot of water, particularly when you’re looking at the dreadful drought throughout the South-west,” said University of Arizona's Robert Glennon.   read more

Heinrich, himself, explained to CIR why prison sterilization made sense (after being told the doctors were paid $147,460 by the state), “Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children—as they procreated more.”   read more

Famously liberal California doesn’t have a single Republican statewide officeholder, and Democrats dominate both houses of the Legislature. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise to the casual observer that six of California’s seven sitting Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican governors. Last week, one of them, Justice Joyce L. Kennard, an appointee of Republican George Deukmejian, announced she would retire in April.   read more

Five years after people in the city of Paramount began complaining about burning metallic odors and unusual illness, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) told the community that Carlton Forge Works has not been a good neighbor. At a town hall meeting last month, AQMD officials said testing at and around the metal parts manufacturing facility discovered elevated levels of nickel, chromium, hexavalent chromium and cadmium.   read more

It was the first significant haul of contraband since the 2011 California law banning the traditional Chinese delicacy was fully phased in last July. DFW Lieutenant Patrick Foy told the San Francisco Chronicle the fins came from “probably thousands of sharks.” Tens of millions of sharks die a slow death annually from “finning.”   read more

The history of the airport, as told by airport officials, roughly breaks down five decades starting in the ‘60s as: “Early Regulations and Litigation,” “More Controversy More Regulation and More Litigation,” “Continuing Controversy Resolved,” “Controversy Rekindled” and “Controversy Over Runway Safety.”   read more

The California Coastal Commission, scrambling to get up to speed on recently revealed offshore fracking activity, received a briefing from its staff Wednesday that showed, in passing, federal approval of four more previously unknown fracking permits. The new fracks, pending at Platform Gilda off the coast of Ventura County, would add to the 12 confirmed instances of hydraulic fracturing in federal waters.   read more

Responding to a record number of dangerous idiots in the nation aiming lasers at aircraft last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced last week it is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for anyone who helps catch them. That could be a bonanza for Californians and, more specifically, residents of the Los Angeles–Burbank–Van Nuys region, where the most incidents were reported last year.   read more

The Temecula Downs Event Center is scheduled to host the state’s first running of the bulls on June 21, giving participants an opportunity to careen through Galway Downs while being chased by 24 antagonized animals weighing up to a ton. Unlike its inspiration in Pamplona, Spain, there will be no bullfight afterward. They are illegal.   read more

The lawsuit alleges that Bowen erred in 2011 when she decided that the state’s new prison realignment, meant to relieve overcrowding in part by reclassifying some parolees as being under mandatory supervision or post-release community supervision, did not, in fact, change their status. She still considered them parolees and governed by laws that forbid their voting.   read more

The car, which did not resemble descriptions of the vehicle being sought, turned out to have two Hispanic women, 47-year-old Margi Carranza and her 71-year-old mother, delivering newspapers on their regular early-morning route, rather than a burly African-American ex-cop. The older woman was shot twice in the back and her daughter suffered superficial wounds.   read more

Six months after taking his seat at the beginning of 2013, Congressman David Valadao introduced legislation which would have effectively stalled completing segments of the project near his hometown of Hanford in the San Joaquin Valley. One month later, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed an ethics complaint against him because the rail route he was fighting skirted hundreds of acres owned by his family’s dairy farm.   read more

“Simply put, there’s not enough water in the system right now for customers to expect any water this season from the project,” California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Director Mark Cowin said in announcing the news. The cuts will mostly affect people in Southern California and the Central Valley.   read more