Where is the Money Going?
Small Window Opens on Secret Audit and Revocation of Blue Shield Not-for-Profit Status
Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported that it looked at documents related to a 16-page tax board report in June 2014 that was the basis for a decision in August to revoke Blue Shield’s tax-exempt status. But the report has not been made public and the decision wasn’t known until the Times reported it in March. read more
LAUSD Sued over Millions Not Spent on Needy Students
At stake are billions of dollars restored to school systems by the state in 2013-14 (post Great Recession) when the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) took effect. LCFF is a new initiative to get money to the neediest students, many of whom do not receive the kind of funding already directed at special education kids. read more
Sharing-Economy on Alert: Uber Driver Declared Employee, not a Contractor
The California Labor Commissioner ruled in a case that Uber owed driver Barbara Ann Berwick of San Francisco $4,152, mostly mileage money and toll costs, because the law says company employees get reimbursed for stuff like that. Uber lost the argument that the company was just an app developer and the drivers were independent contractors. read more
FedEx Settles Lawsuit with Employees It Called Contractors for $227 Million
The settlement, which must still be approved by the Ninth Circuit Court, covers 2,300 California FedEx drivers and 363 from Oregon who worked between 2000 and 2007, according to the Courthouse News Service. The drivers had to dress in FedEx uniforms, meet FedEx grooming standards, and drive a truck (sometimes there own) festooned with the FedEx logo. Yet, FedEx called them contractors, not employees. read more
Judge Tells California to Repay $331 Million Taken from Homeowners Bailout Fund
The money was California's share of a $25-billion settlement reached in 2012 with the nation's five largest mortgage servicers for helping crash the economy and destroying people's lives. The $331 million was supposed to be spent on counseling, consumer fraud education and assistance for people trying to save their homes from foreclosure. Wronged property owners were to receive loan modifications and principal reductions to save their homes. read more
L.A. Schools Misapplied $145 Million Meant for High-Need Students
A study by the University of California, Berkeley, says much of the money was spent on restoring staff positions that were not directly tied to instruction. State lawmakers had targeted the money at pupils most at risk of poor academic performance, a group that makes up 80% of LAUSD enrollments. But the report found “no coherent strategy for distributing dollars to schools serving the pupils that generated these new revenues.” read more
Walmart Truckers Win Class-Action Suit for Lost Minimum-Wage Work
The Walmart manuals require that drivers must not drive within 10 hours of a previous stint. The compensation for that mandatory layover is $42, or $4.20 an hour. The drivers said it was Walmart’s way of having a very cheap security guard on site with the truck. Walmart argued that the workers weren’t working during those 10 hours, but the judge cited California code that defined hours worked as “the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer." read more
3 California Hospitals Make Top-50 List of Price Markups for the Most Vulnerable
Gerard Anderson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-author of the study, said: “There is no justification for these outrageous rates, but no one tells hospitals they can’t charge them. For the most part, there is no regulation of hospital rates and there are no market forces that force hospitals to lower their rates. They charge these prices simply because they can.” read more
A New Way to Take Advantage of Desperate Borrowers Is Trending in California
Californians have long been big fans of payday loans, short-term borrowing of under $300 at an annual rate of 459%. That adds up when you’re paying $15 to borrow $100 for two weeks. But lately, California borrowers have been borrowing more dollars under even more onerous conditions.
Auto title loans increased in California 140%, from 38,148 to 91,505, between 2011 and 2013. read more
Federal Court Says Attorney Can't Rip off Pot Dispensary, Even if It Is Illegal
Although marijuana is dirty enough to make the Obama administration cringe, it was not dirty enough for the appellate court judges. They cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s Johnson v. Yellow Cab Transit Co. case that stated unclean hands “does not mean that courts must always permit a defendant wrongdoer to retain the profits of his wrongdoing merely because the plaintiff himself is possibly guilty of transgressing the law.” read more
U.S. Supreme Court Lets Alameda County Make Big Pharma Pay for Drug Disposal
Alameda is the first county in the nation to make drug manufacturers pay at least a part of the cost of encouraging people to do the right thing and giving them a means to do it. That means setting up collection points for prescription drugs, publicizing the locations and disposing of the drugs. read more
ER Visits Soared after State Cut Medi-Cal Dental Coverage for Adults
Researchers concluded that the loss of coverage resulted in 1,800 additional trips to emergency rooms in the state. Dental care in ERs is not good. For the most part, it consists of antibiotics and pain killers; not a very good health outcome. The study’s lead author, Astha Singhal, said, “The major takeaway [from the study] is that there are unintended consequences that need to be evaluated when you make policy decisions.” read more
335 California Dental Providers Post Suspiciously Amazing Medi-Cal Numbers
Two-thirds of the suspect medical providers claimed an extreme number of procedures a day, including one who billed for 1,000 services a day on 97 separate days. The average is 24. His personal record was 1,658 in one day. That's one service every 17.4 seconds, assuming an 8-hour workday. Two dentists averaged 500 services a day and 229 averaged 76 a day. One dentist averaged 862 services per day. read more
Sony Hackers Show How L.A. County Government Works
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) wanted $125 million from the county to help pay for a $600-million expansion. Board member Michael Lynton was CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment and a frequent associate of L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. The supervisor asked for and received a $25,000 contribution for a SuperPac he founded and later voted in favor of giving LACMA the money. The story does not allege a quid pro quo. That would be wrong and illegal. read more
Legislative Analyst Sees Brown’s Big Revised-Budget Boost and Raises Him $3.1 Billion
The Legislative Analyst projected the state would clean up collecting capital gains taxes from wealthier individuals. That’s been the story so far in 2015, and they are sticking to it. “We are clearly on the upward slope of the state’s revenue roller coaster,” the Analyst warned, without explicitly saying some folks might lose their lunch or suffer heart palpitations on the way down. "No one can reliably predict many of the key variables that affect California finances." read more
L.A. Votes to Gradually Raise the Minimum Wage to $15 by 2020
Although the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour in 1968, that would be the equivalent of $9.25 today. Workers have lost ground on wages even as productivity has skyrocketed. If the minimum wage were pegged to overall income growth in the American economy, the minimum wage would be $21.16 an hour. read more