Only 17% of workers who complained to the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) about being rooked by their employer and won actually collected any money between 2008-2011. Workers were able to collect just $42 million of the $282 million DLSE said they were owed.   read more

Bitcoins are called “the currency of the future” by virtual money enthusiasts who have embraced the online substitute for credit cards that is popping up at small retailers around the country. The California Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) calls use of them an illegal money transaction and issued a cease and desist order to the Bitcoin Foundation.   read more

California’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) rejected arguments from its own Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) that Cal Am shareholders should foot the bill. That didn’t happen. Instead, a deal was cut that passes $48 million of the bill to Cal Am customers in Monterey County. The State Coastal Conservancy will kick in another $25 million and $10 million will come from federal grants and private donations to cover the reconfigured cost of $83 million.   read more

San Jose’s lawsuit confronts the exemption—the “dark side to this storied institution”— head-on. “Baseball is big business in the United States with combined 2012 annual revenues of $7.5 billion,” the suit argues. “Whereas baseball may have started as a local affair, modern baseball is squarely within the realm of interstate commerce.”   read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that the country will need to spend $384.2 billion over the next 20 years to upgrade the infrastructure necessary to provide Americans with clean drinking water, and more than 11% of that work needs to be done in California.   read more

When California began moving 880,000 children from Healthy Families to save money and allegedly provide better, more coordinated care, parents of children who received Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) were told insurance coverage would continue. Turns out, that is not the case.   read more

It probably won’t bring supporters of the Keystone Pipeline XL to their knees, but San Francisco State University (SFSU) has joined a growing number of schools in the country that won’t invest money in coal and tar sands companies. The school announced on Tuesday that its foundation, with assets of $51.2 million, voted in May to also consider pulling all its investments in fossil fuels.   read more

Democratic Assembly members Mariko Yamada and Bob Blumenfield introduced Assembly Bill 518 in February to restore permanent funding to the program and last month the Assembly unanimously approved it. But Yamada refused to sign off on a Senate Health Committee amendment that would allow more for-profit companies to provide the care and the bill died without a vote this week, according to Dan Walters at the Sacramento Bee, after an “awkward conversation” with Democratic members of the panel.   read more

Before Democratic state lawmakers and Governor Jerry Brown reached agreement Monday on key state budget items, they fended off GOP legislators, huddled with lobbyists, negotiated with interest groups, studied polls and gathered anecdotal evidence of the popular will. But they lacked what the once-bankrupt city of Vallejo had for its budget deliberations—a Top 12 list of preferences from the residents.   read more

In 2004, about 13,000 acres were consumed in the Power Fire in the Eldorado National Forest, east of Sacramento, which began after a crew of workers were careless with their cigarettes in a heavily wooded area under extreme hazardous fire conditions. It cost Quanta Services Inc., which PG&E had hired to trim trees and brush around a utility distribution line, $45 million.   read more

Five California charities made the Top 50 list, based on the money paid to fundraisers. Their average rank is 37.8. Not the worst of the worst. However, the five charities are more prominent in the %-Direct-to-Cause category. Their average rank is 22.2, based on the percentage of funds going directly to the cause.   read more

As for the financial side of things, the Los Angeles Times had this to say in a Q&A summing up issues surrounding the San Onofre closure: How much will this cost? “It remains unclear.” Who will pay for these costs? “It has not been determined.” What is known is that customers and taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars if Edison manages to avoid picking up the tab.   read more

The U.S. Senate, House and Obama administration are battling over competing plans as a July 1 deadline approaches that will trigger doubling of the current, subsidized 3.4% Stafford loan rate. That would cost 550,928 California college student loan borrowers $543.8 million (or $987 each) annually, according to the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG).   read more

Ontario charged that “chronic neglect and mismanagement” by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) is costing the local Inland Empire airport a ton of money and threatening its very existence. The “dire and increasingly urgent” situation cost the Ontario area at least $540 million and 10,000 jobs in 2012, according to a legal claim filed in April by the city. The claim was a precursor to the lawsuit filed Monday in Riverside County Superior Court.   read more

It doesn’t take Carmageddon or Carmageddon II to make life hell on the almost-always-jammed 405 Freeway running from the Westside of Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley and beyond. A 14-month delay in completion of the $1-billion freeway-widening project, and its accompanying $100 million cost overrun, will accomplish the task very nicely.   read more

Although the project has been under active consideration for nearly a decade, critics say there has never been a proper cost-benefit analysis, and that the latest blizzard of numbers is inadequate. Restore the Delta, a group that opposes Governor Jerry Brown’s plan, said the estimated cost of tunnel construction alone has tripled in the past three years.   read more