August 2007 Archives

In a split vote, L.A. Unified's new school board agreed to pay health benefits to part-time cafeteria workers - a decision that will cost the cash-strapped district $105 million over three years and could force layoffs of other workers to cover the expense. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

Board members who voted against the plan Tuesday said it could set a dangerous precedent and open the floodgates for other unions demanding full health benefits for their members.

Since the district's preliminary budget has already been submitted to county education officials without the benefits package, Superintendent David Brewer III has about a week to find $30 million in his 2007-08 budget to pay for the first year of the plan. The district's budget must be finalized by Sept. 10.

Public health professionals and environmentalists on Thursday urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen ozone-pollution-control standards in Southern California, saying it would dramatically reduce the death rate caused by smog. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

At an EPA hearing in Los Angeles - one of five hearings scheduled nationwide to consider strengthening proposed air-quality standards for ozone pollution in smog - speakers said the higher standard would reduce the mortality rate from 14 to two people per 1 million residents.

"Here in California, we have eight of the 10 most ozone-polluted counties in the entire nation," said Jason Barbose, an advocate for Environment California.

Southern California officials are bracing for a federal judge's ruling that could cut back the local water supply from Northern California by up to 50 percent. Alex Doubuziniskis in the Daily News.

U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger could rule as early as today after hearing evidence this week in a case brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council that, to protect the endangered smelt fish, could force the state to temporarily shut down pumps in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta.

Local water officials have not ruled out the possibility of rationing if the judge orders drastic cutbacks.

"Conservation, rationing - those are the types of things that are always on the table to look at," said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies water to Los Angeles and other cities and water districts serving about 18 million residents.

Immigrants and their children will account for more than half the country's population growth over the coming half-century, according to a study released Thursday.Lisa Friedman in the Daily News.

The examination of new census figures by the Center for Immigration Studies found that U.S. population levels, currently hovering around 301 million, will shoot up to 468 million by 2060. California alone, meanwhile, could be home to more than 60 million.

Immigrants - both legal and illegal - as well as their descendants are expected to make up about 105 million, or 63 percent, of the national increase.

"It's important to understand where we're headed in population size and why. The why is largely, but not exclusively, immigration," said Steven Camarota, author of the report.

The Children's Museum of Los Angeles has been bogged down by poor planning, little oversight and lack of donations, raising concern that local taxpayers might get stuck with the bill, according to an audit released Wednesday. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

The cost has ballooned to $53 million for construction and exhibits for the San Fernando Valley's first major museum, pitched to city leaders seven years ago as a $10 million public-private partnership.

Public dollars have covered nearly 70 percent of the cost so far, and the building is expected to be completed within a few weeks.

Now, the museum's board needs to drum up $22 million in less than two years to install the exhibits for an opening by March 2009.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and L.A. Unified leaders Wednesday touted their "historic" partnership as the key to transform the city's most-challenged schools and the catalyst to reform the entire beleaguered school district. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

The product of months of negotiations between the mayor's education team and the school district, the plan calls for Villaraigosa to manage two families of schools under a five-year contract.

If the schools don't meet goals for test scores, graduation and dropout rates, they'll be forced out of the partnership.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to back a bill aimed at preventing "surrogate stalking" of children -- legislation that was written to curtail the activities of admitted pedophile Jack McClellan who posts online locations to watch children.
McClellan, who moved to Southern California this year, has been ordered by a judge to stay more than 30 feet away from places where children gather anywhere in California. He has not been accused of assaulting children, but has been public about his attraction to young girls and posted pictures of children and addresses of good locations to watch them on his website before it was shut down.
The bill, AB 534, by Assemblyman Cameron Smyth, R-Santa Clarita, would make it a misdemeanor to publish information that is intended to assist in the commission of a crime against a child, such as posting online locations of where children can be found.
The announcement was an unusual show of strong support by the governor because he rarely publicly announces positions on pending legislation before they get to his desk.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and L.A. Unified will unveil a partnership today that calls for the mayor to oversee two families of schools under a five-year contract that will not be renewed if the schools don't meet goals for test scores and graduation and dropout rates. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

The partnership - which if successful can be expanded to include more low-performing schools - appears to model charter schools, giving each campus greater control over budget, hiring and curriculum.

The schools in the partnership will report to a nonprofit created by the mayor - the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools - rather than the local districts, but the LAUSD board and the superintendent will maintain ultimate control.

The city and county of Los Angeles are showing strong signs of improvement after a wrenching recession early this decade, as poverty has begun to decline and median household incomes are on the rise, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. Beth Barrett in the Daily News.

Median household income in the county rose 6.3 percent from 2005 - to $51,315 - while the percentage of residents living in poverty dropped from 16.3 percent to 15.4 percent last year.

The county improvements, mirroring similar gains in the city and statewide, also are expected to be reflected in the San Fernando Valley when Census Bureau figures for the region are released.

Foreclosures soared an annual 246.8 percent in the greater San Fernando Valley during July as trouble with adjustable rate loans continues to mount, a university research center said Tuesday. Gregory J. Wilcox in the Daily News.

"This is an ominous sign," said Daniel Blake, director of the Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge. "There are a lot of possible (loan) resets out there, and we don't know the extent of them."

The foreclosure spike is happening to a great degree because many homeowners with spotty credit took out adjustable rate loans with low initial payments and they are not able to afford higher payments with their interest rate increases.

And credit-worthy buyers who extended their finances with adjustable rate loans so they could buy better homes are also encountering trouble, said Blake.

A new federal law now being implemented in California will require nearly 1 million Medi-Cal beneficiaries in Los Angeles County to submit proof of citizenship and identity to obtain or maintain their benefits, officials said Tuesday. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

The benefit reductions, a result of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, were intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving health benefits.

But county officials, who are preparing to implement the program in the next few months, say the law has had the unintended consequence in other states of preventing many U.S. citizens and legal residents who can't locate the required documents from obtaining or continuing to receive health benefits.

Expressing frustration with the decertification of Los Angeles County's voting system, Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack said Tuesday she will retire at the end of the year.Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

McCormack, who has been in public service for 30 years and run county elections for the last 12, said she decided to retire for several reasons, including frustration with what she believes are unwarranted concerns about the vulnerability of election systems to hacking and tampering.

"My mission has been to expand voter services, and I don't want to preside over the dismantling of popular voting services," she said.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to announce as early as Wednesday plans for a major partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District that would give him control over two groups of low-performing schools. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

The plan would include significant support from teachers and communities in order to deflect opposition from the teachers union, and would give each school in the group greater local control.

The partnership, details of which have not been officially released, falls short of Villaraigosa's initial goals of having a key role in running the nation's second-largest school district with direct control of three clusters of schools.

While illegal-immigrant advocates and hard-liners warn that Congress' repeated failure to pass immigration law could have dire consequences for the economy, one industry is profiting handsomely from the political gridlock. Lisa Friedman in the Daily News.

Since 2004, lobbyists on K Street have raked in more than $8 million from companies and trade organizations seeking help bending Congress members' ears on immigration issues.

The number of firms seeking help from former Capitol Hill and White House insiders has nearly doubled in the same time, and spending has soared to $2.5 million for the first six months of this year alone.

A Los Angeles city plan that would make it easier for residential developers to put up bigger buildings is being decried by a county supervisor as a trigger for a "demolition derby" that would reshape the face of the South Valley and Westside. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

The city's proposed "density bonus" rule would let developers build taller, larger buildings if they include low-income units.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a former city councilman who spearheaded a successful anti-density ballot measure in the 1980s, predicts the density bonus would "take a wrecking ball to some of the most beautiful, quaint neighborhoods in Los Angeles."

City planners and developers say Yaroslavsky is exaggerating the potential impact.

Tipoffs: Ed Boks feeling heat; Rocky Delgadillo getting no respect.

Immigrant rights activists' attempts to rally around the recently deported Elvira Arellano met with little success Saturday when a downtown march failed to generate broad support for the second week in a row. Tony Castro iin the Daily News.

A crowd estimated at only 500 to 1,000 people, carrying large photographs of Arellano and her 8-year-old son, Saul, and signs reading "I Am Elvira" and "Keep Families Together," marched from Broadway and Olympic Boulevard to a rally at the U.S. Federal Building on Saturday afternoon.

"We are here in solidarity with Elvira to re-energize the movement for immigration reform," said college student Mary Lou Cabral, one of the marchers.

The sky over Afghanistan is a piercing blue, a stark backdrop to the Black Hawk helicopter skimming over the rough desert terrain. Daily News.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Princeton Soh grips the controls, his sturdy hands commanding more than 8 tons of green and gray metal. He squints and locates his target

There he is. A boy, working in the fields on his hands and knees.

Soh nods to his gunner, a signal that it's time for him to briefly take his hands off the 27-pound, gas-operated M240D machine gun.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed an overdue state budget, protecting education and public safety but vetoing $702million - mostly from social services - under pressure from Senate Republicans. Steve Geissenger and Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

The governor called it "a good budget," which also pays down California's debt and creates a $4.1billion emergency reserve fund. But many lawmakers, of both parties, were less enthusiastic.

Overall, Finance Department officials said the governor's latest 51 line-item vetoes from the 2007-08 spending year, which began July 1, totaled $527 million for health and human services.

]Seeking to elevate performance at Los Angeles Unified schools, Superintendent David Brewer III said Friday that he will hold administrators accountable for the first time with new evaluations, dropout and test-score benchmarks, and districtwide reviews. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

In his first official back-to-school address to thousands of administrators, Brewer vowed a cultural revolution this year in the 708,000-student district.

"Failure will no longer be an option at LAUSD," he told nearly 2,000 principals, assistant principals and LAUSD administrators gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

With less than two years left in office, Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick said Friday that she's concerned that many of her office's recommendations from previous audits of city agencies have not yet been enacted. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

And after eight years on the City Council and six years as controller, Chick said she's tired of city leaders wringing their hands over the same problems - gangs, affordable housing, traffic - without coming up with long-term solutions.

"The clock has always been ticking and now it's a time bomb," Chick said. "I do not want to leave City Hall as a frustrated person. I want to feel I was successful in the things that matter the most to me. I'm not going out defeated."

Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez plans to introduce Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's health care reform plan next week to test whether it can win the two-thirds vote necessary for passage. Associated Pres in the Daily News.

"Our goal here is to push health care forward," Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Nunez, said Friday. "But we need to see what level of support there is for the governor's plan, and the only way to do that is to bring it to a vote."

Two days ago, Schwarzenegger came out against a Democratic health reform bill, saying it placed too great a financial burden on employers.

An ambitious effort by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to sell surplus property to help ease Los Angeles' strained budget has been stalled for nearly a year as City Council members have balked at parting with sites in their districts. Beth Barrett in the Daily News

While Villaraigosa had touted the plan as a way to generate as much as $58million over the next few years, council members' reluctance means that not a single parcel has been sold out of 252 properties tagged for potential sale.

"People feel territorial about property in their district and want to be part of the process," said Gil Duran, the mayor's spokesman

Fewer English-language learners in Los Angeles schools are passing the California High School Exit Exam on the first try, even though the overall student passing rate remains relatively steady, according to results released Thursday. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

The number of L.A. Unified School District English-learners who passed the English portion of the exam on their first try dropped to just 27percent - down from 49percent two years ago and 30percent last year.

Just 32percent passed the math portion of the test, down from 47percent in 2005 and 34percent last year.

The drops reflect a statewide decline among English-learners, with just 36percent of California's 10th-grade English-learners passing the English portion of the test - down from 42percent in 2005.

The outgoing head of the Federal Aviation Administration urged business leaders Thursday to "get going" and express their opinions about modernizing Los Angeles International Airport, but some saw her comments as a thinly veiled effort to support expansion. Art Marroquin in the Daily News.

While using such phrasing as "I'm not going to tell you what to do," FAA Administrator Marion Blakey gave some audience members the impression that she supports a plan to move one of the airport's northern runways toward Westchester.

"Fix the airfield now," Blakey said during a luncheon hosted by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger voiced skepticism on Thursday of a Republican proposal to change the electoral college system in California.

At a Westside news conference, Schwarzenegger said he has not taken an official position on the proposal being advanced that would change the winner-take-all system of apportioning electoral votes to a proportional vote based on returns in congressional districts.

"As an athlete, I don't like to see the rules changed in the middle of the game," Schwarzenegger said. "That's generally in principle, how I feel about it. But, I haven't looked at it in detail."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger voiced skepticism on Thursday of a Republican proposal to change the electoral college system in California.

At a Westside news conference, Schwarzenegger said he has not taken an official position on the proposal being advanced that would change the winner-take-all system to a proportional vote based on returns in congressional districts.

"As an athlete, I don't like to see the rules changed in the middle of the game," Schwarzenegger said. "That's genreally in principle, how I feel about it. But, I haven't looked at it in detail."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger voiced skepticism on Thursday of a Republican proposal to change the electoral college system in California.

At a Westside news conference, Schwarzenegger said he has not taken an official position on the proposal being advanced that would change the winner-take-all system to a proportional vote based on returns in congressional districts.

"As an athlete, I don't like to see the rules changed in the middle of the game," Schwarzenegger said. "That's generally,
in principle, how I feel about it. But, I haven't looked at it in detail."

In a political maneuver aimed at giving local districts more power over the burgeoning charter-school movement, California lawmakers have crafted a bill tying increased funding to restrictions on opening new charters. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

The legislation has sparked an outcry among charter operators, who note that the bill would restrict the authority of the state Board of Education to approve new charters and give more control to local school boards that might be hostile to charters.

But they are particularly incensed that the bill includes $18 million for facilities grants for charter schools in low-income areas - meaning that if charter-school advocates oppose the policy change and defeat the bill they also will end up cutting their own funding.

"This is just a sneak move," said Mike Piscal, founder and CEO of Inner City Education Foundation, which runs nine charter schools in South Los Angeles.

The budget adopted by state lawmakers this week yanks $1.3 billion from California's public transit pot, forcing officials to consider fare hikes, service cuts and project delays to make up the gap, transportation advocacy groups said. Sue Doyle in the Daily News

The decision essentially eliminates 40 percent of the money transportation officials thought they would have to spend this year. It takes money from projects to widen roads, develop rail systems and expand bus fleets to meet the needs of the state's 33.8 million residents and prepare for the 26 million more forecast to be living here by 2050.

"This budget will mean more single-passenger cars on the road," said Emily Rusch, transportation advocate with the California Public Interest Research Group. "We need more transit, not less, to keep our cities moving."

The $145 billion budget expected to be signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week will give $1.9 billion to public transit, said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state Department of Finance.

The Metropolitan Water District will begin adding more fluoride to Southland drinking water - including in the San Fernando Valley - despite concerns by some activists that too much of the chemical may cause health problems. Susan Abram in the Daily News.

State and federal officials have long advocated fluoridated water to prevent tooth decay, and MWD officials voted to add fluoride at district plants four years ago.

In October, officials will begin retrofitting five treatment plants - including one in Granada Hills serving the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys - to boost the fluoride levels.

Riding high on a global warming action plan he wants to take statewide, California Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wednesday he's thinking about running for governor when the job opens up again in 2010. Sacramento Bee.

"The thought has certainly crossed my mind, but I haven't really come to any conclusion," Brown said over coffee in a meeting with The Bee's Capitol Bureau staff.

Meanwhile, Brown said, he's moving. He and his wife are in escrow on a house in the Oakland hills, he said, above the flats near downtown where they live in a one-room loft. Helping prompt the move: Ten homicides within five blocks of his residence since he's lived there.

Think the ratings of President Bush are the worst ever? Take a look at what the public thinks of Congress.

A new Gallup Poll finds Congress' approval rating the lowest it has been since Gallup first tracked public opinion of Congress with this measure in 1974. Just 18% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 76% disapprove, according to the August 13-16, 2007, Gallup Poll.

That 18% job approval rating matches the low recorded in March 1992, when a check-bouncing scandal was one of several scandals besetting Congress, leading many states to pass term limits measures for U.S. representatives (which the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional). Congress had a similarly low 19% approval rating during the energy crisis in the summer of 1979.

Community College Trustee Warren Furutani, a former member of the Los Angeles school board, announced his candidacy today for the state Assembly seat vacated with the election of Laura Richardson to Congress.

“I am excited at this opportunity to run for the 55th Assembly District,” said Furutani. “I believe that my 40 years of experience working in our community and 15 years as an elected official make me uniquely qualified to represent the District in Sacramento.”

Furutani is currently serving his third term on the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees – the largest community college district in the country. He also served two terms on the Los Angeles Board of Education – the largest school district in California.

Housing experts painted a grim picture of Los Angeles' real-estate market Tuesday as City Councilman Richard Alarcon called for city, state and federal funds to help bail out city homeowners who can't pay their mortgages. Kerry Cavanaugh and Gregory J. Wilcox in the Daily News.

Warning that the region is embroiled in a foreclosure upheaval, Alarcon said he's also considering asking lawmakers to declare a state of emergency to direct state and federal money to counseling and loans for people about to lose their homes.

"We're in a crisis. We don't need bureaucrats who are going to sit on their thumbs and not get things done. Who do we go to in federal government to ask for emergency assistance to help solve this crisis?" Alarcon asked city housing officials Tuesday during an emergency hearing on foreclosures.

"It seems to me we'd better kick the federal government in the butt to get into action to help us solve the problem, and I don't think we're doing any kicking now."

The hearing came as economists were chewing on new default numbers that show the trend is worsening. Foreclosures hit a record level in California last month and officials said 1,074 homes were foreclosed on in Los Angeles County - up more than 600 percent from last year.

Less than two years after legal battles were settled over the proposed expansion at Los Angeles International Airport, opponents charged Tuesday that officials are using recent safety problems to revive debate about the need for enlarging LAX. Beth Barrett in the Daily News.

The controversy erupted after airport commissioners voted this week to broaden a $2 million, six-month study on the safety of the north runway to include what LAX needs to accommodate a new class of jumbo aircraft.

But Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl and critics said the move opens the door for relocating north runways closer to businesses in Westchester, disrupting the heart of that area's business district and violating the "spirit" of the legal settlements in 2005.

"This just increases the suspicion that the safety studies are really about justifying expansion," Rosendahl said of the new study parameters. "They changed the focus of the new study from safety to enhancement and capacity.

California's third-longest state budget impasse ended Tuesday when Senate Republicans finally agreed to a series of side deals and grudgingly granted the single vote needed to get the government machinery back in motion. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

The $145 billion budget passed through the Senate by a 27-12 vote, the narrowest possible margin.

"It's a tight-fisted budget for California, but it's also a budget that those of us who believe in the compassion of the people of this state can be proud of," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nu ez, D-Los Angeles.

The end to the lengthy stalemate means the state will resume payments to nursing homes, child-care centers, state employees and others who were left without their primary source of income.

Winners and losers in the long budget battle. San Francisco Chronicle.

Los Angeles. Department of Animal Services officials said Tuesday they've reached milestones with a high number of number of stray pets adopted and a low number euthanized - claims immediately refuted by critics of the agency. DailyNews.

At a City Hall news conference, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa praised the department and its general manager, Ed Boks, who was hired 18 months ago with the goal of making Los Angeles a "no-kill" city.

"We knew it wouldn't be easy or fast to become a no-kill city," Villaraigosa said. "But we are seeing that Los Angeles Animal Services is the No. 1 animal-adoption agency in the United States. We have adopted out more animals than we have euthanized. We are euthanizing fewer animals than at any time in our history."

With Republicans launching an effort to change how the electoral college works, Democrats are fighting back with their own proposals, as detailed in the California Majority Report:

Take that! Just a few days after Republicans filed an initiative to steal California's electoral votes by splitting them by Congressional districts, key Democrats fired back by filing two new initiatives with the Attorney General aimed at presenting Californians with real electoral college reforms. The initiatives, which would enact a national popular vote system, would represent real and fair reform of the process used to elect the president of the United States, according to their sponsors.

***New York Times weighs in with an editorial.

California lawmakers ended the nation's longest budget impasse Tuesday, agreeing to a $145 billion spending plan that eliminates the state's persistent deficit and addresses the myriad concerns of holdout Republicans. Daily News wire services.

The deal emerged quickly after the Assembly and Senate failed to agree on a budget late Monday night and ends a stalemate that has lasted more than seven weeks beyond the start of the fiscal year.

It will free up billions of dollars in payments to a variety of social service agencies that rely on state funding, as well as to community colleges and some education programs

As one of four undocumented immigrants taking refuge in churches across Los Angeles County, Juan hasn't been able to step outside the four walls of San Pablo Lutheran Church in more than three months.
Connie Llanos and Rachel Uranga in the Daily News.

But for the Guatemalan immigrant, who has lived in Los Angeles for the past 15 years, the hardest part has been not spending more time with his two young daughters.

"It is hard not to get that laughter when you come home from work, or those hugs," he said Monday at the church.

Juan, whose last name church officials would not disclose, has been thrust into the heart of a nationwide debate after 32-year-old Elvira Arellano was arrested and deported late Sunday when she left the sanctuary of a Chicago

Do you think churches should provide refuge to illegal immigrants?
Past poll results
Yes
No

More than seven weeks after the legal deadline to pass the state budget, lawmakers thought they had a deal on the $140 billion package late Monday, only to see it fall apart and force everyone back to the negotiating table. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

The Senate and Assembly had scheduled and then canceled votes on the budget at 10 p.m. Monday, after legislative leaders had earlier in the day indicated they had a deal. They continued to negotiate late into the night.

Both political parties blamed each other for the failure.

"We thought we had some tentative agreement and that didn't pan out," said Senate Republican Leader Sen. Dick Ackerman, R-Tust

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will announce today that he wants Interim Fire Chief Douglas Barry to take over the post permanently and continue efforts to reform the beleaguered Los Angeles Fire Department. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

After interviewing candidates inside and outside the LAFD, Villaraigosa decided he wanted Barry and persuaded the 32-year department veteran to stay on the job, sources said.

Barry's performance since being promoted to interim chief in December was praised by individual firefighters and their union.

"If the last eight months are any indication of Chief Barry as fire chief, I'm extremely optimistic," said Steve Tufts, president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City.

Los Angeles City Councilman and former Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks announced today that he intends to run for county supervisor. He pulled the paperwork necessary to fundraise for the June 2008 primary and November 2008 election to fill retiring Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke's seat.

Parks, who is the council's budget watchdog, said he is eager to work on the county's health care, human services and foster care. And despite the challenges _ including potentially overseeing the reform of King-Drew Hospital _ Parks, 63, said he is willing to postpone retirement.

"I have some relaxation scheduled somewhere about 2012," Parks joked. "The last thing I want to do is not use the time and energy now, when I can, and look back and see that there was something I could have done but didn't."

The list of new inductees to the California Hall of Fame were announced Monday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver as part of the annual program by the California Musuem for History, Women and the Arts.

Tennis star Billie Jean King, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame last year, released the list of honorees for this coming year.

The 2007 California Hall of Fame inductees:

Ansel Adams, Milton Berle, Steve Jobs, Willie Mays, Robert Mondavi, Rita Moreno, Jackie Robinson, Jonas Salk, M.D., John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Taylor, Earl Warren, John Wayne and Tiger Woods.

The California Hall of Fame formal induction ceremony will take place on Dec. 5 at the California Museum in Sacramento.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed nine judges to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the governor's office announced today. The appointees are Terry A. Bork, Gregory A. Dohi, Marguerite D. Downing, Elizabeth R. Feffer, Lesley C. Green, Elaine Lu, Georgina Torres Rizk, Elia Weinbach and Melissa N. Widdifield.

The appointees include five Republicans, three Democrats and one decline-to-state, and the compensation for each position is $171,648. Two of the appointments are to fill new positions created by state legislation and the other seven are to fill vacancies created by retirements.

Four hours after arriving at her Los Angeles hotel from the Philippines, a jet-lagged Lolita Magno was thrown into a nonstop schedule of orientations, training sessions, paperwork and getting documents both for her new life in America and her new job teaching science at a Los Angeles Unified school. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

Despite pangs of homesickness and the uncertainties of a foreign environment, Magno knows she's begun a three-year journey that will offer her invaluable experience and knowledge she'll take back to her students in the Philippines.

Terrorists and terrorist sympathizers in Los Angeles and around the world are using proceeds from counterfeiting, drug trafficking and other crimes to fund global activities, authorities said Friday. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

The news comes as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is expected to release a Gallup study on consumer behavior and data today showing counterfeiting and piracy costs Americans $250 billion annually.

Chamber spokeswoman Katie Wilson said counterfeiting of everything from CDs, DVDs and handbags to medications, cigarettes and toothpaste is one of the biggest problems in the nation.

When lawmakers return today to the Capitol for their final four weeks of work this year, they likely will confront not only a contentious budget standoff, but face more than 900 other bills - some that deal with vital issues and many that are sure to fuel passionate debate. Steve Geissenger in the Daily News.

The question is: Can they get to them?

It's clear the first order of business for the Legislature will be the budget. Senate leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, has gone as far as to say that his house will not deal with any legislation until a budget bill is signed.

But even if the budget is resolved quickly, it's assumed that hashing out a health care bill - important to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders - will then become the focus. Next is a bill pushed by Perata and the governor to put a multibillion-dollar, San Joaquin Delta restoration bond on a 2008 ballot.

Tipoffs: Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger goes local in trying to get state budget passed; Home Depot and neighborhood councils.

More than a decade after California voters approved legalized medical marijuana, an explosion of dispensaries and patients has cities and counties scrambling to regulate the operations. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

In Los Angeles - where the number of dispensaries soared from just a handful to more than 200 in the past two years - stunned city officials recently passed a moratorium on new clinics until they can develop guidelines.

Hundreds of other cities up and down California have no regulations at all on medical marijuana dispensaries, including at least 28 where clinics or delivery services are operating, according to a Daily News analysis.

Los Angeles Unified's teachers union stepped into district-reform efforts this week, proposing a charter-like model that would give campuses greater control over budgets, hiring and curriculum. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

If it gains support, the United Teachers Los Angeles model would become the only formally approved alternative to the increasingly popular charter-school movement, which has drawn interest from more than a dozen San Fernando Valley schools.

Under the union's proposal, schools would receive at least 95 percent of funding from the district but would also get full control over expenditures, hiring, curriculum, class schedules and professional development.

An illegal immigrant who sought sanctuary in a Chicago church to avoid deportation and separation from her 8-year-old American son left for the first time in a year to campaign Saturday for immigration reform.
Associated Press.

Elvira Arellano, speaking at a downtown church, said she was not afraid of being taken into custody by immigration agents.

"From the time I took sanctuary the possibility has existed that they arrest me in the place and time they want," she said in Spanish. "I only have two choices. I either go to my country, Mexico, or stay and keep fighting. I decided to stay a

he California Republican Party has secured commitments for $3 million from two wealthy GOP patrons to help pay off the party's remaining debts from the 2006 election. Sacramento Bee.

The funds will come from Republican financiers, Paul Folino and Larry Dodge, donors with close ties to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The party spent millions helping re-elect Schwarzenegger in 2006, including paying for television ads, and the governor had promised to help pay off those debts.

"I am doing great," said Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party. "I had a $3 million week this week. It's a great development for our party and really helps us move into the fall and do what we need to do for the 2008 campaign."

About three dozen members of the Los Angeles National Impeachment Center brought their case to try to get the Los Angeles City Council on record in favor of impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney _ but failed to get the council to vote on the matter.
Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who said he favored seeking impeachment, was unable to get another council member to second his plan to have the council take a stand. Eighty-one other cities have endorsed impeachment, including San Francisco, West Hollywood and Culver City, the activists said.
"I do favor impeachment," Rosendahl said. "I have said from the start that this president and vice president brought us into this war based on lies."
At the same time, Rosendahl urged the activists to take their case to federal officials.
"They are the one who will decide this, not us," Rosendahl said.

Los Angeles may have won the court fight over sludge, but Kern County folks aren't happy that L.A. will continue sending its treated human waste to Green Acres Farm, south of Bakersfield, where it's used to fertilize city-owned land.

Bakersfield Californian Columnist Dianne Hardisty took aim at Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa this week, firing off a letter reacting to his statement that he hoped the two communities could "work together to address the best interests of the residents of Kern and Los Angeles counties."

Dear Antonio,

I hope you don't mind me calling you Antonio. After all, you want to be our good neighbor. And we simple folks in these here parts don't stand on much formality.

Good neighbors around here don't dump our problems on our neighbors. Just because the feds told you to quit dumping your crap into the ocean because it was killing the fish, you shouldn't come up here and dump it on us.

Go figure, Antonio. (Are you sure you don't mind me calling you that? Trust me; some folks around here are calling you much worse.) If your crap was killing the fish, what do you think it is doing to us?

To make sure the tsunami-sized population surge headed our way doesn't cripple the regional transportation system, Los Angeles County officials said Thursday we may have to start paying road tolls, higher gas and sales taxes and steeper transit fares. Sue Doyle in the Daily News.

With fewer transportation dollars coming from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., transit officials say the very motorists and passengers who will be clogging the system are a reliable source of money for new projects.

The bill?

Officials said some $30 billion for transit and highway projects is needed by 2030 to address the county's congestion problems.

It could mean adding tolls, increasing regional sales and gas taxes, raising public transit fares and developing public-and-private partnerships to expand the transportation infrastructure. The projects will be needed to accommodate the county's expanding population, expected to grow from 9.6 million to 13 million residents by 2050.

Countrywide Financial Corp.'s financial trouble deepened Thursday, forcing the nation's biggest mortgage lender to tap an $11.5 billion credit line to fund operations. Gregory J. Wilcox in the Daily News.

Company officials issued reassurances that they were dealing with the credit crunch, and that homeowners with Countrywide mortgages would not be affected.

Still, the move sent the company's stock - and worldwide financial markets - on a roller-coaster ride that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge more than 340 points before finishing down just 15.

Billed as a chance for San Fernando Valley political and business leaders to address common issues, Thursday's annual VICA luncheon focused on concerns about the impact of the nation's weakening economy on the local business climate. Julia M. Scott in the Daily News.

During the fast-paced Q and A session at Beverly Garland's Holiday Inn, many business owners worried about the potential ripple effect of layoffs at Amgen in Thousand Oaks, credit troubles at Countrywide in Calabasas, and the roller-coaster stock market.

The fate of AmeriTel in Northridge is tied to the health of the local economy as the company installs and upgrades telecommunications systems for area businesses, owner Scott Murphy said.

"If they cut back from fear, then we lose," Murphy told the 250 participants at the Valley Industry and Commerce Association luncheon.

Thirty-five years of political indifference, bureaucratic mismanagement and professional incompetence, coupled with happenstance and whimsy, brought me full circle last week from the March 27, 1972, opening of Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital to its Aug. 10, 2007 closing. Betty Pleasant in the Wave Newspapers.

I was there when that hospital — such a towering source of pride and jobs to a community in dire need of both — was dedicated and formally opened in 1972, and I was there again when it died from the incurable disease of abject failure. The hospital is located a couple of blocks from Sweet Alice Harris’ home and she, too, attended its opening ceremonies. And as luck would have it, the hospital’s final day found Sweet Alice, Eldora Winston and me on a serendipitous odyssey that ended with us being the unwitting witnesses to another historic moment.

With Republicans trying to change how the electoral college apportions votes, California's top Democratic leaders, labor, and fundraisers are launchign their own effort to defeat the proposed initiative.

The California Majority Report has the details about Californians for Fair Election Reform, a Democratic-sponsored committee being formed to campaign against the GOP plan.

Among those on the committee are U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, Senate President pro Tem Don Perata, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.

Longtime Los Angeles Democratic operative Mitchell Schwartz has jumped on the Obama train.

The founder of the Bombay Company public relations firm, which coordinated the online media campaign for former Vice President Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Schwartz will serve as California State Director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

In a statement Thursday, Schwartz praised the Illinois senator for opposing the Iraq war ``from the start,’’ adding, ``it’s not enough to change parties, we’ve got to transform politics.’’

Schwartz has worked on nearly every presidential campaign since 1984, and served in 1992 as Bill Clinton’s New Hampshire state director. He also served on campaigns for Sen. Barbara Boxer, former Gov. Gray Davis and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villraigosa.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the field of Republicans running to capture Calfiornia's delegates in the Feb. 5 primary election next year, but former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is gaining on his, according to the most recent California Poll

Arizona Senator John McCain, who was in a strong second position earlier this year, has dropped to fourth place as Romney and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson have both made significant gains in GOP voter support.

Giving Sunland-Tujunga residents a huge victory in the nearly three-year fight to keep Home Depot out of their community, the Los Angeles City Council yanked the improvement center's building permit Wednesday, sending it back to the drawing board to come up with a better plan. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

The decision will delay the project up to a year while the company mulls whether it wants to install more traffic controls, add landscaping and limit operating hours or abandon the Foothill Boulevard site.

"It's really refreshing to see our council totally and completely understand us," said Debby Beck, a Sunland-Tujunga resident. "I just hope it's a new era for the Building and Safety and Planning departments taking a more careful look at projects."

Home Depot, which has threatened to sue if its permit was revoked, would not say Wednesday what it would do next.

And the vote drew sharp criticism from business leaders, who said the city was changing the rules in midgame and sending a bad message to companies and retailers that want to locate in L.A. and provide sales tax revenue.

Los Angeles Unified students made little academic improvement in test results released Wednesday as district officials acknowledged that significant work lies ahead in getting all students prepared for college. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

More than two-thirds of district students in nearly all grade levels are not proficient in English-language arts, according to 2007 Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR, results.

And while more students achieved proficiency in math - particularly in the elementary grades - the numbers still lag far behind those typical in the state.

Test results also showed no inroads in efforts to reduce racial achievement gaps.

With near-gridlock squeezing Los Angeles motorists, city officials called Wednesday for development of a strategic plan to try to ease the problems. Daily News.

Council members Wendy Greuel and Jack Weiss introduced the proposal, calling on the city Department of Transportation to work with Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The plan would review everything from freeways to traffic lights to try to help untangle traffic woes consistently identified as one of the most significant problems facing the city.

"We have the MTA and its overall regional plan, but there is nothing we can point to as our overall vision for dealing with traffic," Greuel said.

Wearing pink arm bands to show their support for the use of medical marijuana, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday asked for information on other cities' success in stopping clinic raids by federal agents. Daiily News.

Voicing frustration with city efforts to develop operating guidelines for the clinics and protect them from raids, the council also asked the Los Angeles Police Department to review its policy on cooperating with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

"We know we have no control over the federal government, but I don't think we should play a role in helping them raid clinics we have authorized," Councilwoman Janice Hahn said.

The two Republican members of the Los Angeles City Council called on their party membrers to end the deadlock in Sacramento and vote to approve the state Budget.

Councilmen Greig Smith and Dennis Zine issued a joint statement urging Republican Senators to end their dispute and rely on the promises of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cut excess sepending.

"Senators, do what you were elected to do," Smith and Zine said. "End this partisan gridlock and pass the budget so that we can continue to provide critical services to the community of Los Angeles and all of California."

Forty-five days into the fiscal year, the California Senate has failed to pass its annual spending plan, raising the possibility that government services will be shut down.

The two said millions of Los Angeles residents rely on State funds for such critical needs as hospitals and health clinics, colleges and physical rehabilitation programs, all of which will be impacted in their ability to serve the public if a budget is not passed.

He can't stand spending one more minute in traffic.

And after commuting all week to work at Warner Center, Divine Hicklin usually stays home on weekends to take a break from battling the bulging bottlenecks on the roads. Sue Doyle in the Daily News.

"When the weekend comes, I want to stay home, in my pajamas, in front of my computer and away from traffic," said the downtown Los Angeles commuter. "I do it all the time."

Whether behind the wheel or sitting on a bus, Los Angeles commuters spend about 93 hours a year stuck in traffic. And those like Hicklin often end up feeling so wiped out by the gridlock, they're becoming increasingly inclined to stick - whenever they can - to their own little neighborhoods on weekends.

Home sales across Southern California remained weak in July, falling an annual 27.4 percent to their lowest level for that month since 1995, but the median price did move up to match March's record, an industry tracker said Tuesday. Gregory J. Wilcox in the Daily News.

Despite the sales slide, the median price gained 3.7 percent from a year ago to $505,000 across the six-county region, driven by more transactions in the market's higher-priced areas, said La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems.

Los Angeles County was the only market to see an annual price increase, rising 5.3 percent to $547,500, the second-highest median on record.

City help on the way?

With a growing number of homeowners facing potential foreclosure in a slowing housing market, Los Angeles officials agreed Tuesday to study creating a special emergency loan fund. Daily News

As part of the move, the City Council's Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee also said it wants to find $100,000 to help pay for a second effort by Operation Hope to educate and help at-risk homeowners.

But reluctant to follow a proposal by Councilman Richard Alarc n to tap into the city's Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the panel said it instead wants to review whether to develop guidelines and look for other sources of funding.

Cynics often complain that lobbyists own City Hall, and on Tuesday they acted like it.

During the council meeting Tuesday morning, some council members were surprised to find lobbyists for Home Depot encamped in the backroom of the City Council chambers, talking with council staffers and summoning council members and staffers to meet with them.

Councilwoman Jan Perry saw the lobbyist meeting and asked them to leave, adding that it seemed rather inappropriate.

The City Council is set to consider Wednesday whether to let Home Depot continue construction on its new Sunland-Tujunga store or revoke the building permit and order the company to spend up to a year studying the traffic and environmental impacts of the new location.

In the first half of the year Home Depot spent nearly $600,000 lobbying City Hall. On Tuesday the company had as many as six lobbyist wandering the third and fourth floors (where council members meet and have their offices.)

Also lobbying this week, is the Do-It-Center, a competitor in Sunland-Tujunga that has sought to block the big-box store from moving into the neighborhood.

A trio of Los Angeles County lawmakers added their names today to the list of local electeds endorsing Sen. Hillary Clinton for president.

Assemblymen Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys; Mike Eng, D-Monterery Park; and Ed Hernandez, D-Baldwin Park, announced their support for the senator.

Other California elected officials supporting Clinton include Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Former Assemblyman Keith Richman can now begin collecting signatures for his controversial initiative to reform the state's pension and health benefits system, the Secretary of State's office announced today.

The measure would reduce pension and retirement health care benefits paid to public employees who are hired after July 1, 2009. It includes provisions to raise the public employee retirement age; restrict early retirement; and increase the requirements to qualify for benefits, among others.

Richman and the other proponents have until Jan. 10, 2008 to collect the signatures of 694,354 registered voters.

San Joaquin Valley Senator Dean Florez questioned Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's "green credentials" Tuesday, arguing that the mayor isn't being so environmentally friendly by sending L.A.'s treated human waste to a farm in Kern County.

His comments come after a judge overturned a Kern ballot measure that banned the import of L.A.'s sewage sludge. An ambitious fellow Democrat, Florez led the ban-the-biosolids campaign, which portrayed L.A. leaders as "sludge peddlers" dumping their unwanted waste in rural Kern County.

But Villaraigosa and other officials have argued that the city's sludge is safe and that using it to fertilize farmland is the environmentally-friendly way to deal with it. And he expressed hope this week that the two counties can work together on the sludge.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-El Segundo has demanded the Customs and Border Patrol brief her in Washington next week on the glitch that left thousands of travelers stranded at LAX this weekend.

``At a time of heightened risk, it is critical to screen visitors entering our country, but our systems must be fully functional and such glitches are completely unacceptable,’’ she said.

Harman chairs the Homeland Security subcommittee on Intelligence. The briefing will be in conjunction with the Homeland Security subcommittee on Border Security.

The high-stakes fight over a Home Depot in Sunland-Tujunga will reach a showdown Wednesday when the City Council decides whether the giant retailer can open its new store or must go back to the drawing board. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

Community activists have been sending e-mails and handwritten letters to council members, hoping to persuade them that Home Depot should have to further study the environmental and traffic impacts before converting a vacant Kmart on Foothill Boulevard into a home-improvement store.

Home Depot lobbyists, meanwhile, have been calling individual council members to explain that the retailer followed city rules and shouldn't have its building permit revoked.

Moving forward with plans to convert Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital to a clinic, Los Angeles County supervisors ordered Monday that workers at the beleaguered center be evaluated for competency before they are reassigned to other facilities. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

After a special three-hour public hearing, the supervisors took the initial steps to get the hospital reopened within a year, but said they first had to guarantee its 1,600 workers are qualified.

"We can't allow the poison we had at MLK to poison the rest of our facilities," Supervisor Gloria Molina said. "I know it's a tough thing to say, but somebody has to say it.

Hoping to fire up a residential building boom in downtown Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed a measure Monday streamlining city zoning law and offering developers incentives to build bigger buildings in the city's urban core. Daily News.

The measure creates an urban planning zone for downtown that runs from the Harbor Freeway to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and allows residential developers to construct larger buildings if they provide units for low-, moderate- and work-force-income residents.

It also establishes basic regulations eliminating setbacks and other existing zoning requirements, which have generally been waived for new construction.

Read on for full article:

A few months ago, the smart money was that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa would be the likely Democratic candidate for governor in 2010 and probably would become the first Latino governor in more than a century. Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee.

That, however, was before he admitted to having an affair with a local television anchorwoman -- an admission that may lead to a very messy divorce case.

Infidelity per se may no longer be a barrier to higher office, but the situation has generated some sharp criticism of Villaraigosa's judgment -- enough that his gubernatorial ascension is no longer the semi-sure thing it had appeared to be. A figurative question mark has replaced the exclamation point behind his name.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will convene a special meeting today to discuss the future of Martin Luther King Jr.- Harbor Hospital, which failed its latest federal inspection and is being reduced to an urgent care center. Daily News.

A 13-member team from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services inspected the hospital for more than a week in late July. The county was notified Friday that the hospital, formerly known as King-Drew Medical Center, failed to meet eight out of 23 conditions of compliance with federal standards.

The failure means the federal agency will not renew the hospital's participation agreement, which expires Wednesday, resulting in the loss of $200 million in federal funds a year -- more than half the hospital's annual budget.

The developers of a 5,800-home transit utopia proposed for the Newhall Pass want to include a futuristic people-mover that would transport commuters 30 stories down to a subterranean Metrolink platform. Judy O'Rourke in the Daily News.

The plan by Palmer Investment envisions commuters living in the Las Lomas project, perched atop the San Gabriel range between Sylmar and Santa Clarita. They would reach the Metrolink platform on elevators cored through a mountain to an already-built rail tunnel 100 yards below.

The concept is unique, say Metrolink officials, who have seen sketches but no actual plans and are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Tipoffs: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the dog days of summer; state legislators cash in on lack of budget.

When state Democratic leaders from around the country meet this weekend in Vermont, the California chairman, Art Torres, expects to be peppered with the sort of questions that have been clogging his in-box for weeks. New York Times.

What is this about Republicans trying to change the way Electoral College votes are allocated in California? Is there a countereffort by Democrats in the works? What does it mean for presidential candidates?

Frustrated by a system that has marginalized many states in the presidential election process, or seeking partisan advantage, state lawmakers, political party leaders and voting rights advocates across the country are stepping up efforts to change the rules of the game, even as the presidential campaign advances.

In California, this has led to a nascent Republican bid to apportion the state’s electoral votes by Congressional district, not by statewide vote, in a move that most everyone agrees would benefit Republican candidates. Democrats in North Carolina are mulling a similar move, because it would help Democrats there.

Developers have paid nearly $5million in traffic fees over the past two decades to help ease congestion on Ventura Boulevard, but the city hasn't spent a dime of it on actual transit improvements, the Daily News has learned. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

While the Department of Transportation spent $120,000 to plant trees and install furniture along the San Fernando Valley's main drag, some $1.4 million went for administrative expenses - nearly triple what the city law allows, according to a review of records.

The rest of the money has gone unused.

Most council members and community activist groups said they had no idea the large pot of money was available, nor did they know why it hadn't been used to improve traffic flow on the Valley's main east-west artery.

This was to be the year of big ambitions in California politics.

In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, ever eager to put his stamp on outsized ideas, proposed a $12 billion overhaul of the state's health care system. It would provide universal coverage and give relief to the state's 6.5 million uninsured, a bold plan he hoped would become a national template. Associated Press in the Daily News.

At the same time, he wanted a $5.9 billion makeover of California's complex network of reservoirs, pumps and canals to help the state weather future droughts and accommodate an ever-expanding population.

And to increase competition for legislative seats, the moderate governor also sought to reform the way legislative districts are drawn.

It now appears the year may be more a bust than a breakout.

Jerry Brown, forever the political enigma, is once again in the spotlight - this time at the center of a strange battle over global warming and the state's stalled budget. Steve Geisenger in the Daily News.

It may seem odd that Brown, who as attorney general doesn't have any say in budget deliberations, has become the Senate Republicans' public enemy No. 1 in the budget showdown.

But, then, this is Jerry Brown.

In pickups, cars and caravans of buses, thousands of Republicans converged on the Iowa State University campus here Saturday for the Iowa Straw Poll, a part-carnival, part-political event. And Mitt Romney walked away with the first prize of the campaign. New York Times.

Romney, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, won with 32 percent of the vote cast, Republican officials said. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, came in second with 18 percent.

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who had waged a concerted effort to undercut Romney among conservative voters by challenging his recent shift to oppose abortion, among other issues, drew 15 percent.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, who did not compete in this contest, came in 10th out of 11 candidates on the ballot. He drew 101 of 14,302 votes cast.

Tracking one of the biggest educational issues facing Los Angeles, five teams of high school students Friday released results of their own study into why students drop out. Daily News.

The findings, from surveys of dozens of students, showed common themes ranging from a lack of engaged teachers and student boredom to frustration and outside community pressures.

A high dropout rate - anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent, according to various studies - has plagued the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Federal officials dealt a fatal blow Friday to long-troubled King-Harbor Hospital, announcing that the public medical center had failed a critical inspection and would lose the $200 million it needed to continue operating. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

The emergency room was permanently closed late Friday, and Los Angeles County officials plan to halt in-patient services at the landmark hospital within two weeks.

"It's very distressing to have to close a hospital that we worked so hard to preserve," said Dr. Bruce Chernof, director of the county Department of Health Services. "It's a blow to patients, my staff and the community at large.

The crowd gathered in Hollywood on Thursday for a first-of-its-kind Democratic presidential forum on gay issues could barely contain its excitement at the milestone. They cheered. They gave standing ovations --- even to the longshots. Variety.

But the elephant in the room --- in this case, a hip, comfortable living room set of earth tone carpet and olive green sofa and chairs --- was still gay marriage, and the fact that none of the leading contenders support it.

The occasion was a two-hour forum sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign and Viacom’s Logo, which covered the event live and streamed it on its website. Although it was the third debate in a week for the Democratic field, the event was viewed as ground-breaking for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

With city officials and celebrities creating a splash of summer scandals, the Los Angeles Unified School District is setting out to teach all of its employees how to distinguish between right and wrong. Naush Boghossian in the Daily News.

And leaders of the behemoth public institution, which is occasionally pelted for lapses in ethical standards, hope a new $25,000 ethics-training video will be one of the keys.

The 30-minute video, created as a mock television show, raises ethical questions that fall into what it dubs "The Gray Zone."

South Carolina Republicans on Thursday moved their 2008 presidential primary to Jan. 19, triggering a chain reaction among Iowa, New Hampshire and other early voting states that could push the first balloting into December 2007. Associated Press in the New York Times.

South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson made the announcement with officials from New Hampshire, whom he called allies in protecting the traditional early states' voting order.

''We are here to stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends in New Hampshire to reaffirm the important role that both of our states play in presidential politics,'' Dawson said.

South Carolina had scheduled its Republican primary for Feb. 2, but at a news conference with New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, Dawson said the change to Jan. 19 was needed to protect South Carolina's first-primary-in-the-South tradition.

Six of the eight Democratic presidential candidates are scheduled to participate in a forum tonight on issues affecting the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans. Daily News.

The candidates will appear separately in alphabetical order, each answering questions for 15 minutes at a Hollywood television studio.

Topics are expected to include same-sex marriage, the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy barring openly gay and lesbian individuals from serving in the armed forces, hostility and discrimination in the workplace, and partners' health care and inheritance rights.

The impact of California's six-week overdue budget has trickled down to the community level, with $3 billion in paychecks and bills going unpaid by month's end. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

Among the most vulnerable are nursing homes, child-care providers and other small operations that depend on the state for the bulk of their income.

Some 11,000 nursing homes and adult day health care providers have missed one weekly Medi-Cal payment totaling $228 million and will miss another totaling $212 million today. That makes it tough, operators say, to pay salaries or other bills.

"We are hurting really bad right now," said Eduardo Gonzalez, owner of the Fillmore Convalescent Center in Ventura County, which has missed a $46,000 Medi-Cal payment due from the state.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials said Wednesday that the utility has begun an internal review into its safety and oversight roles at the Crandall Canyon coal mine in Utah that caved in Monday and trapped six miners. Beth Barrett in the Daily News.

While the DWP has no ownership interest in the mine, the department is part of a two-member oversight panel for the mine as the representative of the Intermountain Power Agency.

The Intermountain Power Agency is a group of Utah utilities and other power customers - including the DWP. The other panel member is Utah America Energy, co-owner and operator of the mine that collapsed.

high-desert dog rescuer slated to run a controversial pit bull "academy" for Los Angeles has said she would reopen a Nevada cathouse to fund her fledgling doghouse. Dana Bartholomew in the Daily News.

Tia Torres of Agua Dulce told a Nevada newspaper of plans to restore her defunct bordello property, which burned last week, into a "Garden of Eden-type" brothel.

While the owner of Villalobos Pit Bull Rescue says she was joking, she could easily become the brothel's next madam if funds aren't forthcoming.

"If things don't happen soon, I may have to open up a cathouse to take care of my doghouse," said Torres, 47, whose comments had L.A. talk shows buzzing this week.

City Controller Laura Chick called Wednesday for major belt-tightening at City Hall, saying a year-end spending spree had drained reserve funds and left Los Angeles in precarious financial shape. Daily News.

In her report on the fiscal year ended June 30, Chick said the city's contingency fund had been depleted; its emergency fund is $11 million short of the $122 million required under city policy; and its reserve fund is $90 million short of expectations.

With the state budget now six weeks overdue and two weeks since the state Assembly approved its version, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is rejecting a proposal the lower house reopen the spending plan.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman, Nunez said he had no plans to bring the Assembly back into session until Aug. 20, when it will meet as expected.

"You have demanded that the Assembly reconvene to renegotiate on the budget, and you and your members have personally maligned me and the members of this house during the past two weeks," Nunez wrote.

"I want to be clear: the Assembly's work on the budget is complete and I will not convene the Assembly until August 20, in accordance with Joint Rules. Any clean-up legislation on the budget can be considered at that time."

The exchange was just part of a series of events on Wednesday as legislators continued to dicker over the spending plan. Republicans were expected to cite environmental issues as part of the reason to hold up the spending plan, while Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata indicating he will not allow any other legislation to be heard until the budget is resolved.

To see Nunez letter, keep reading:

A big city mayor with his eyes on the governor's mansion runs into messy personal problems with a divorce and questions over his dating habits. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa? No. Look north, to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is up for re-election and is facing a difficult campaign, says the S.F. Weekly
It begins:

"Except for insurgent Matt Gonzalez entering the race at the last minute and nearly pulling off an upset, Gavin Newsom's 2003 campaign for mayor came off perfectly.

"Consultants Eric Jaye and Jim Ross helped cook up a ballot initiative centered on the then-hot issue of homelessness. The hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the initiative did not count against the $500 limit on individual donations to the mayor's own campaign. The money, and the Care Not Cash message, helped push Newsom ahead in the home stretch.

"In 2007, the reverse is true: Aside from polls saying Newsom enjoys about two thirds voter approval and faces no viable opponent, the mayor's re-election campaign is unfolding disastrously.

That's because this fall's campaign for mayor is a preamble to his likely bid for the 2010 race for governor. "

The Los Angeles County agency charged with protecting the region's children has misspent millions of dollars on unnecessary and overpriced supplies, violated county spending limits, and has such a shoddy inventory program that it can't account for all its equipment, according to an audit released Tuesday. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

In one incident, auditors said, the Department of Children and Family Services bought more than 3,000 toner cartridges for $800,000 in June 2006 - enough to last for three years.

Yet auditors noted that the agency still ordered an additional $450,000 in cartridges the same month, paying 15 percent more per cartridge.

It was only a 132-mile trip to Tijuana, but for Pedro Guzman of Lancaster and his family, it seemed more like a journey to hell and back. Tony Castro in the Daily News.

A developmentally disabled U.S. citizen, Guzman was wrongly deported to Mexico by his own government three months ago. During his time there, the 29-year-old survived his ordeal by eating out of trash cans as he wandered more than 100 miles along the border, desperately searching for a way back to his family in the United States - only to be turned back by Border Patrol agents.

He was finally reunited with his family Tuesday, capping an emotionally exhausting journey that lawyers say raises serious questions about the behavior of federal immigration officials.

In a big win for Sunland-Tujunga activists, the City Council's planning committee ruled Tuesday that Home Depot should do a traffic and environmental study before opening its new store on Foothill Boulevard. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

The recommendation means the full City Council is more likely to side with residents and Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who have tried to block the big-box home improvement giant from converting a vacant Kmart into a Home Depot.

"This is exactly what we've been fighting for for the last three years," said Abby Diamond, with the Sunland-Tujunga Alliance and the No Home Depot campaign.

The state's decision to decertify Los Angeles County's election system could jeopardize the county's ability to provide tens of thousands of voters with early touch-screen voting in the upcoming presidential election, Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack said Tuesday. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

McCormack told the Board of Supervisors that Friday's decision by Secretary of State Debra Bowen requires all votes made on computer touch-screen systems to be hand-counted after the election to ensure accuracy.

Normally, only 1 percent of those votes are manually recounted.

City Controller Laura Chick is joining the presidential politics game, announcing Tuesday that she is backing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

With her endorsement, Chick is setting herself apart from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several City Council members who have come out for N.Y. Sen. Hillary Clinton as California voters prepare to go to the polls on Feb. 5 for the primary election.

In a release announcing the endorsement, Chick said she was backing Obama because of his "strong commitment to changing the way business is done in Washington (and) believes that Obama is the only candidate who can lead this country in a new direction.

“Barack Obama is the candidate who has the vision, intellect, experience and courage needed to lead our country. That is why I am enthusiastically endorsing Senator Obama for the Presidency,” Chick said. “He will fight to protect taxpayer dollars, open our government to greater scrutiny, and push for more transparency. No more politics as usual,” she added.

Obama said the Chick endorsement was important because of her being “committe to changing our politics and transforming our country,” Obama stated. “Never fearful to challenge the status quo, Controller Chick has taken the lead on increasing transparency and accountability, bringing fairness and opportunity to the residents of Los Angeles.”

The secretary of state's 11th-hour decision to clamp down on dozens of voting systems ignited protests Monday from around California, although Los Angeles County officials predicted that their system will be recertified in time for the presidential primary in February. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

Following a top-to-bottom review of most voting systems used in California, Debra Bowen announced just before midnight Friday that she'd decertified electronic systems in 39 counties out of concerns that they are vulnerable to hacking. She then recertified 38 of them, but with new security conditions attached.

Los Angeles County's system was the only one that was not recertified, because the vendor had not submitted materials to Bowen's office in time to be included in her review. Instead, she will begin studying that system now and potentially issue a recertification with new conditions sometime in the future.

The developer planning the 5,800-home Las Lomas mini-city in the Newhall Pass wants to pay the city of Los Angeles to focus city planners on the project and help speed up review. Kerry Cavanaugh and Judy O'Rourke in the Daily News.

It's not uncommon for developers of large projects to cover the cost of city staff time, which can add up to hundreds of hours.

But the proposed agreement between the Las Lomas Land Company and the city is unusual because the project has been stalled for several years amid political and environmental opposition.

The Huffington Post has begun a serious look at who Hollywood supports in the presidential election and is offering a direct link here to allow people to track who is giving how much to whom.

In a posting, it notes:

"Despite some high profile fundraisers for the big three Democratic candidates in recent months, many of Hollywood's biggest names and most political families have yet to give big in the presidential race.

The Sheen/Estevez clan, Martin, Charlie and Emilio, all turn up empty, ditto all four Baldwin brothers and the Gyllenhaals. Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson are also yet to commit."

Candidates for the 2008 presidential election are assembling formidable campaign operations in California, with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani wielding what many call the most aggressive in the state. Lisa Friedman in the Daily News.

While Californians' political donations - and the copious amounts of them - remain the chief draw for candidates, the state's early Feb. 5 primary has added a new clout.

"They're spending a lot more time in California than ever before," said Dan Schnur, a longtime California political observer and Republican media strategist.

Tipoffs: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hoping worst of controversy behind him, more City Hall lobbyists and other odds and ends.

The starlet, the cardinal, the baseball slugger and the mayor make an unlikely quartet, except possibly in a summer when scandals have rocked everything from entertainment and religion to sports and politics and produced a virtual morality play on a public stage. Tony Castro in the Daily News.

Lindsay Lohan's moment in the spotlight may have been the most poignant. On the night she was arrested for driving drunk and with a suspended license and carrying cocaine, the 21-year-old actress was quoted by companions in the SUV as boasting:

"I can't get in trouble. I'm a celebrity."

Shades of gray
America's headed down the tubes and Julianne Spillman believes she has found proof in the U.S. flag. Brent Hopkins in the Daily News.

The retired Glendale resident, who used to work on a Ford assembly line, now buzzes around on a scooter that proudly sports the Stars and Stripes on the front basket.

But it attracts notice from the wrong kind of people - moral reprobates.

"You know what happens to me? People steal my American flag," she growled. "This is the sixth flag I've had to buy. We've lost our way."

For the first time since admitting the affair that broke up his 20-year marriage, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Saturday publicly talked about asking for forgiveness, using a religious rally attended by 7,500 former gang members and ex-drug users on the south lawn of City Hall to express faith in a "loving, forgiving God." Tony Castro in the Daily News.

"Someone asked me yesterday, `How many times should a sinner ask for forgiveness?' and I said, `As many times as he has to! God is a forgiving God,"' Villaraigosa told thousands of the faithful of Victory Outreach International, a nondenominational church focusing on turning people's lives around.

Trying to put revelations of his affair with a Telemundo reporter behind him, Villaraigosa has previously said his personal life is a private matter and apologized for the harm he has caused his family.

An essential part of Los Angeles County's voting system was decertified by California's secretary of state late Friday, jeopardizing the ability of the nation's most vote-rich county to conduct a presidential primary in February. Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said a vendor for the county failed to provide information on time to her office as she was conducting a "top-to-bottom" review of voting systems in California.

The decertification starts the clock ticking for the county as Bowen said she will conduct her review now and could recertify the system with new conditions attached.

But Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack was outraged, questioning why Bowen would decertify a new system that had been reviewed and certified a year earlier by Bowen's predecessor, former Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

An effort by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to tightly control a press conference and put his affair with a Telemundo reporter behind him backfired Friday when a port police officer protecting the mayor shoved a Spanish-language reporter against a steel container. Rachel Uranga in the Daily News.

It was the first public appearance for the mayor since Telemundo announced late Thursday that it was suspending Mirthala Salinas for two months without pay for doing lead-ins to news stories about the mayor's breakup with his wife while Salinas was dating him.

Three of her superiors were also punished for allowing her to continue reporting on the mayor.

"I am not going to comment or speculate on the decision of Telemundo or their investigation," Villaraigosa told a crowd of more than a dozen reporters and news cameras at a press conference on port cleanup programs.

California's secretary of state on Friday placed rigorous security conditions on voting equipment used in dozens of counties and limited the use of two of the most widely used machines. Associated Press in the Daily News.

The most affected counties will have to scramble to find alternate equipment just six months before California holds its presidential primary.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen had set Friday as the deadline to tell counties whether their voting equipment would be decertified because of California's accelerated election schedule next year. She had to alert them six months before the Feb. 5 presidential primary and made her announcement just minutes before midnight.

How difficult is it find a Republoican in Los Angeles?

LA Observed notes that the Fox News Network has teamed up with the Los Angeles Republican Alliance to show their colors.

"LARA is authorized to compensate conservative audience members $15 for their participation in the taping of the Half Hour News Hour." the website said. The official announcement reads:

If you are a conservative and want to get paid for attending as many show as available you can RSVP here: xxx@xxxx.com. Just make sure the email has the words "LARA RSVP" and the date of the show you are interested in attending, in the subject line. Please provide your mailing address for your check and pay attention to the deadline.

The White House has bowed to congressional pressure and withdrawn the nomination of Richard Hoagland to be ambassador to Armenia.

New Jersey Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez had placed a hold on Hoagland’s nomination in January because the career diplomat refused to call the World War I-era massacre of Armenians in the former Ottoman Empire a genocide.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, a strong supporter of the Armenian community, on Friday praised the White House for withdrawing Hoagland’s nomination.

``During his confirmation hearings, Mr. Hoagland continued to deny that the massacre of a million and a half Armenians between 1915 and 1923 was genocide, thereby compounding the injury done to the Armenian people.’’

Hoagland’s predecessor, John Evans, referred to the killings as genocide in a speech at University of California, Berkeley and shortly thereafter was recalled from his post.

Three Los Angeles City Council members _ Wendy Greuel, Jan Perry and Jack Weiss _ came out Friday in support of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for president.

The three join with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in backing Clinton.

“I am honored to receive the endorsement of City Councilmembers Greuel, Perry and Weiss,” said Clinton. “As President, I will work closely with city leaders and ensure a strong partnership between the Federal and municipal governments for the betterment of our cities and residents.”

House Republicans are seething this morning over a contentious vote on illegal immigration.

The late-night motion on the 2008 agriculture spending bill would have sent the measure back to the committee level while also amending it to bar the use of federal funds to provide housing for illegal immigrants. The Republican motion had won, 215-213 when the gavel fell, but then shouting erupted as Democrats tried to change the vote.

On Friday House Republicans were still fuming and said the anger is about taxpayer dollars, not parliamentary procedure.

``There are people in this town that are willing to break the rules just so illegal aliens can get benefits,’’ San Diego Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray said at a press conference moments to go.

``There’s going to be hell to pay this summer over this issue,’’ he warned. ``This just goes to show why the American people don’t trust Washington to do the right thing on illegal immigration.’’

Democrats ultimately passed the bill by 237-18 on a vote boycotted by most Republicans, including Reps. Howard ``Buck’’ McKeon, D-Santa Clarita; David Dreier, R-Glendale; Jerry Lewis, R-San Bernardino; Gary Miller, R-Diamond Bar; and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, voted against the bill.

Gallegly this morning stood by his decision to cast a vote while the majority of his GOP colleagues walked off the House floor

"I came here to vote on issues and to legislate," he said. "I don’t walk away from votes."

The failure to get a $145 billion state budget approved now rests on the shoulders of 14 of the 15 Republicans in the state Senate who have refused to approve the spending plan sent on by the Assembly.
The San Francisco Chronicle provides a quick look at who the 14 are and what part of the state they represent.

Television newscaster Mirthala Salinas, who was having an affair with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa when she broadcast news of his separation from his wife, received a two-month suspension from the Telemundo network for violating the station's conflict-of-interest rules, the network said Thursday. Beth Barrett in the Daily News.

Salinas, 35, whose romantic relationship with the mayor was disclosed by the Daily News on July 3, was among four NBC-Telemundo (Channel 52) employees disciplined after a three-week investigation by Telemundo executives with involvement of its parent company NBC Universal.

The findings were broadcast on the network's national newscast Thursday night.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday said the state budget stalemate is delaying work on pressing policy issues such as health care reform but is at a loss about how to end it. Associated Press in the Daily News.

The state Senate failed a second time late Wednesday to pass the $145 billion spending plan approved last month by the Assembly, falling one vote short of the two-thirds majority required to pass it.

Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders say they are mystified about what it will take to persuade at least one more Republican to support it. Speaking on Thursday to reporters, the governor described a frustrating negotiation process in which Senate Republicans keep raising new issues, even after he has assured them their previous concerns will be addressed.

More than 1,600 California bridges and freeway overpasses are deteriorating and more than a dozen in Los Angeles County have been cited as needing high-priority repairs, according to a review of state and federal data. Harrison Sheppard and Lisa Friedman in the Daily News.

The heightened scrutiny of the Golden State's infrastructure comes a day after a Minnesota interstate bridge collapsed during evening rush hour, sending dozens of cars plummeting into the Mississippi River and killing at least four people.

After the deadly collapse, officials noted that the bridge had been cited by federal engineers in 2005 as "structurally deficient."

Avoiding a public hearing over four-year-old ethics violations, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office said today he will pay a $5,200 fine to settle 30 accounting errors and filing delinquencies from his 2003 campaign for City Council.

Villaraigosa could have faced up to $150,000 in penalties, but Ethics Commission staff recommended the smaller amount because he cooperated with the investigation and had no prior penalties at the time of the violations.

Plus, commission staff agreed to withdraw the most serious charge against Villaraigosa _ that he accepted $39,000 over the limit on contributions from corporations _ after he was able to show the donations were from individuals, not corporations.

“At the end of the day, we were able to prevail on a number of allegations in the original complaint, and basically what remains now are administrative errors that the mayor has taken responsibility for,” said Stephen Kaufman, who is Villaraigosa's attorney.

Termed out of his office last year, Former Assemblyman Paul Koretz announced Thursday he plans to run for the Los Angeles City Council in the seat to be vacated by Councilman Jack Weiss.

Koretz, a former councilman in West Hollywood, said he now lives in the Beverly-Fairfax area and has long wanted to run for the Los Angeles City Council in the area.

“When I was 19, I thought about running for the City Council in the fifth district, but I ran for the school board instead,” said Koretz, who was termed out of his Assembly seat last year.

Former City Controller Rick Tuttle also has said he is interested in running for the seat.
Weiss has announced he plans to run for City Attorney in 2009.

Rep. Elton Gallegly is continuing his work fighting animal cruelty, introducing new legislation today banning dog fighting as well as any tools associated with it, while also allowing private citizens to sue anyone alleged to be in violation the law.

The bill comes on the heels of the Animal Prohibition Enforcement Act, another Gallegly bill that President Bush signed into law in May. That measure made it a felony to transport an animal across state lines for the purpose of fighting.

Under the new measure, dog fighters would face up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. Gallegly on Thursday said the bill aims at penalizing spectators as well as those involved in the fight trade, and removing economic incentives.

"Other crimes often go hand-in-hand with animal fighting, including illegal gambling and drug trafficking," Gallegly said. "In the last six months, virtually every reported arrest at an animal fight also led to additional arrests for at least one of these criminal activities."

A push by Rep. Howard Berman, D-Van Nuys to make sure that singers are paid royalties when their songs are played on the radio has spurred a new opposition group.

The organization, calling itself the Free Radio Alliance, so far consists of 30 members and opposes what it calls a ``performance tax’’ that would cost as much as $7 billion and likely kill small stations.

Under a 1909 law, broadcast radio is exempt from paying royalties to performers, though royalties are paid to composers. In 1995 Congress ruled that Internet, satellite and cable stations should compensate singers and now is looking to eliminate the radio exemption.

The performers may have star power on their side _ a recent hearing on the topic featured ``Send in the Clowns’’ singer Judy Collins and ``Soul Man’’ crooner Sam Moore, but the radio interests are backed by the powerful National Association of Broadcasters.

Stay tuned for a big fight…

After leaving the Mayor's Office to start his own firm and partner with two lobbyists in a public- affairs consulting venture, Marcus Allen is returning to the city to serve as Controller Laura Chick's special consultant. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

Chick has offered Allen a one-year contract for up to $85,000 to advise her on auditing plans and how to improve audits.

Allen was Chick's chief deputy before becoming Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's deputy mayor.

"Marcus Allen is one of the brightest and most experienced minds in Los Angeles city government," Chick said. "His work for the mayor (chief legislative analyst) and controller gives him a wealth of knowledge that will be put to good use not only for myself and city government as a whole, but also for the taxpayers of Los Angeles."

Some of the San Fernando Valley's top political leaders are demanding that the LAPD give a full accounting of officer deployment in the region as gang crime escalates and response times lag. Rachel Uranga in the Daily News.

Five of the six Los Angeles City Council members who represent the Valley are pushing the department to provide specific data on how many officers are patrolling the Valley daily, with some saying they are frustrated by the LAPD's "creative staffing methods."

They accuse the department of pulling patrol officers from the streets and placing them in special details or other parts of the city, putting Valley residents' safety at risk.

Medical marijuana clinics
Pitting itself against the U.S. government, the Los Angeles City Council approved plans Wednesday to limit new medical-marijuana dispensaries, regulate existing ones and urge a moratorium on recent clinic raids by federal agents.

Despite warnings that it is treading on legally treacherous ground, the council voted 10-2 to adopt the plan amid concerns that hundreds of illegal clinics have sprouted up since 1996, when California voters approved Proposition 215 allowing the use of medicinal marijuana. Daily News

Smoking in parks

Smokers, beware.

After prohibiting smoking near playgrounds, picnic areas, sports fields and beaches, the city of Los Angeles has banned puffing tobacco in the city's 390 parks. Kerry Cavanaugh and Sue Doyle in the Daily News.

In a unanimous vote Wednesday, the City Council approved a "curb-to-curb" ban on smoking in city-owned parks that slaps violators with fines up to $250.

Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcón sought $5million in foreclosure assistance Wednesday for residents in danger of losing their homes as the housing market continues to unwind. Gregory J.. Wilcox n the Daily News.

Alarcón's Emergency Foreclosure Assistance Program would be administered through the city's Housing Department, providing loans and grants to residents threatened with foreclosure. The loans would likely average from about $5,000 to $10,000.

President Bush is threatening to veto $25 million for the restoration of the Los Angeles River and millions of dollars for other water projects throughout the country.

The L.A. River revitalization project is part of a nearly $21 billion Water Resources Development Act that lawmakers hope will pass before lawmakers leave town for a month-long August recess. But the White House on Wednesday said the bill spends at least $5 billion too much.

``Indeed, it seems a $14 billion Senate bill went into conference with the House’s $15 billion bill and somehow a bill emerged costing approximately $20 billion,’’ Office of Management and Budget officials wrote in a letter to Congress.

``This is not how most Americans would expect their representatives in Washington to reach agreement, especially when it is their tax dollars that are being spent,’’ the White House wrote.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who has worked to shepherd the contentious legislation through Congress, noted that a water bill of this type has been stalled for seven years.

``If the president chooses to veto this bill, I expect we will override that veto in the Senate,’’ she said.

So, with the final figures showing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spent $3.5 million to elect three new members to create a new majority to the Board of Education _ a record amount for a mayor to elect a board over which he has no direct authority.
That works out to $46.50 a vote for the 76,258 ballots cast for the four spread over two elections. In the primary election, the mayor's choice, Yolanda Flores Aguilar, won handily to join School Board President Monica Garcia as supporters of the mayor's reform proposals.
It took the mayor two elections, the March primary and June runoff, to win the other two races by Deputy City Attorney Tamar Galatzan and retired educator Richard Vladovic.
United Teachers of Los Angeles spent about $2 million in their races and backed off on spending in the final days as polls showed Villaraigosa's candidates leading.

“Law and Order” star Fred Thompson might be the actor in the assembly of 2008 presidential hopefuls, but that doesn’t mean he’s got the support of Hollywood.

Far from it. An examination of the $3.4 million the Friends of Fred Thompson Committee raised on the former senator’s behalf shows a serious dearth of star power.

There was, of course, the donations from “Law and Order” creator Dick Wolf and his wife Naomi - $4,600 in all. Beyond that, Thompson’s entertainment industry takings appear to herald mainly from his home state of Tennessee.

The House is now on its way to toward passing a $50 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program after a day of GOP-led delaying tactics.

Southland Republicans voted unanimously in favor of two motions to adjourn, as well as for a motion `approving the journal' -- essentially, signing off on the previous' days record of events. By offering the motions in the first place, Republicans forced a roll call vote, which essentially ate up debate time.

The Bush administration has vowed to veto the children's health insurance bill. The White House and Republican officials say they want the program to continue but at more modest levels.

President Bush may look into the souls of world leaders, but California Sen. Barbara Boxer prefers reading body language. And when she watches Bush, Boxer told reporters this morning, she sees "hatred" and "disdain" toward the legislative branch.

Lambasting Bush for having issued "signing statements" on more than 750 new laws, declaring that he has the power to set aside provisions in them, Boxer said the president's contempt for Congress is reaching "a crush point."

"I just hope he gets over his hatred of this Congress, because it's seething through him. I've watched him. I know body language," Boxer said. "I've never seen such a disdain for Congress."

Facing a chamber packed with hundreds of opponents and supporters of a Home Depot planned for Sunland-Tujunga, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to reconsider the mammoth retailer's move to convert a vacant Kmart into its newest site in the Valley. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

Some 120 men and women wearing orange T-shirts that read "Thank you Home Depot" were bused to the meeting at Home Depot's expense. But they could not dissuade the council from giving this round in the long fight to opponents of the big-box retailer.

The victory now gives opponents a chance to convince the council that the Foothill Boulevard store should be blocked until the company completes a more extensive study on its potential impact on traffic and the environment.

The decision also was a win for Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who said she warned Home Depot officials three years ago that they should study and reduce the project's potential impact amid sharp community scrutiny.

Businesses in the eastern San Fernando Valley are eligible for thousands of dollars in tax credits as part of the Los Angeles Enterprise Zone, but fewer than 20 percent use them, according to the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. Julia M. Scott in the Daily News.

Few businesses know about the credits and the expanded eligibility. And if they do, many don't think they are qualified to use them.

So the alliance, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving the Valley's economy, asked two accountants to explain how businesses can reduce their tax bills by claiming the credits. Almost 40 business owners and employees gathered Tuesday at the Burbank Commerce Center to learn how the credits work.

Council members Wendy Greuel and Tony Cardenas, who represent parts of the enterprise zone, also attended.

Armando Jamjian, a partner at Rivera & Jamjian LLP in Pasadena, and his partner, Luis Rivera, detailed for which expenses businesses can and cannot claim credits.

"If you're a profitable business, it definitely makes sense to look into these credits," Jamjian said. If not, sit back and wait a few years until the red turns to black.

Seeking to exert control over flights at LAX, the City Council on Tuesday again delayed deciding whether to back United Airlines' efforts to begin nonstop service to Shanghai, China. Daily News.

"We all recognize the importance of this service, but we also want to send a message to United about concerns we have that they are paying workers a decent wage," Councilwoman Janice Hahn said.

"This is a multimillion-dollar project for United and we don't want to leave behind those workers who clean the airplanes and the terminals and live in Los Angeles.

"Let's not allow this to be a money-maker for the company and leave the workers behind."

United has been seeking the council's backing to persuade the U.S. Department of Transportation to approve the flight plan to Los Angeles International Airport.