Relatives of Seal Beach shooting victims want trial to start soon

Family members of those killed in the Seal Beach salon shooting two years ago urged a judge Friday to end their "agony" by ordering the accused killer to stand trial this fall.

"This needs to move on and we need to be allowed to heal," said Paul Wilson, whose wife, Christy, was among the eight people slain.

But the judge, though expressing sympathy to family members gathered in the Orange County courtroom, said the case was too complex to be rushed and delayed a trial until at least next year.

The trial for Scott Dekraai, who has been in custody since the shooting, had been scheduled to start in November.

Police say Dekraai was seeking revenge on his ex-wife, Michelle Fournier, when he walked into Salon Meritage and opened fire on Oct. 12, 2011. The couple had been involved in a custody dispute, and Fournier was an employee at the salon. Prosecutors have charged Dekraai with eight counts of special circumstances murder and one count of attempted murder.

They are seeking the death penalty.

Dekraai's lawyer, Scott Sanders, told Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals the defense team needed more time to prepare because of the complexities involved in trying a death penalty case. Sanders warned that rushing to trial could lead to the verdict being overturned.

"If we go to trial in November, this case will be back here in 20 years," he said.

Goethals allowed the victims to address the court under provisions in the California Victims' Bill of Rights, also known as Marsy's Law, which was approved by voters in 2008.

Several family members lined up to speak before Goethals issued his decision.

Dekraai, who appeared in handcuffs and a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, turned his chair to face the speakers. But a bailiff returned the chair to its original position so that Dekraai faced the judge.

During the nearly two years since the shooting, dozens of family members have been present for court hearings in the run-up to the trial. They wear blue wristbands and ribbons and T-shirts that read: "Support in Love Seal Beach."

On Friday, they spoke of the pain of sitting in court near the man accused of killing their loved ones and of the responsibility they feel to continue being there.

"The agony you are putting us through with delay after delay after delay, you don't understand," Bill Webb told the judge. Webb's daughter Laura Elody was killed in the shooting.

"Our lives are forever changed, and every time we come here we sit 5 feet away, 15 feet away, from a monster," said Bethany Webb, Elody's sister.

Fournier's daughter, Chelsea Huff, also addressed the court, saying the defense would continue to delay.

"They're always going to say they're not ready," she said. "They're always going to say they need more time."

Goethals expressed sympathy for the families but said his responsibility was to balance the rights of both sides. He agreed with the defense that rushing could ultimately result in a second trial.

"We will continue to move forward as steadfastly as we can," he said.

Goethals set a trial date for March 24, 2014. The defense could ask for another delay before that date.

Dekraai spoke once, when the judge asked if he understood the decision.

"I understand and agree, sir," he said.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

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Bob Filner's chaotic tenure as mayor comes to quiet end in San Diego

SAN DIEGO — After nine months of chaotic governance, and six weeks of headline-grabbing accusations of sexual harassment, the tenure of Bob Filner as mayor came to a quiet end at 5 p.m. Friday when his forced resignation became effective.

At 5:01, City Council President Todd Gloria, a fellow Democrat, became acting mayor until Filner's successor is chosen in a special election.

Filner, 70, who became mayor amid bold promises of a "progressive agenda" that included better neighborhood services and a greater voice for lower-income residents, was nowhere to be seen on his last day as mayor.

His picture and nameplate were taken down without fanfare by midday. His chief of staff left by a back entrance to avoid reporters.

In what may be Filner's last act as mayor, he authorized a stop-work order Thursday to block expansion of a Jack in the Box restaurant in North Park, a project opposed by neighbors. As his first official act as acting mayor, Gloria overturned Filner's order.

Even though he is no longer mayor, Filner still faces legal issues.

The state attorney general and San Diego County Sheriff's Department are conducting a criminal investigation into Filner's conduct toward women, with charges of assault possible. The Sheriff's Department has a hotline to field accusations against Filner.

The City Council is also set to investigate Filner's use of a city credit card, as well as a trip to Paris in which two San Diego police officers went as a security detail.

Gloria will spend his first weekend as acting mayor in what could be called true San Diego style: attending the U.S. Sand Sculpting Challenge on the Broadway Pier, attending a Padres game during which labor unions will be honored, and then touring beach areas with the lifeguard chief.

Gloria, 35, a history and political science graduate of the University of San Diego, is a former member of the San Diego Housing Commission and former chairman of the San Diego LGBT Community Center.

In the deal for Filner's resignation, the City Council agreed a week ago to pay for his defense against a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Irene McCormack Jackson, Filner's former director of communications and one of a succession of women who have accused the mayor of misconduct.

Under the deal, the city will also pay Filner's share of any compensatory damages assessed by a court or in a settlement.

Gloria and other council members were in a mood to be low-key Friday in their comments about Filner's departure, but Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred was not. At a morning news conference, she said she has three resignation "gifts" for Filner.

The first gift, she said, is a wallet-size laminated card providing the legal definition of sexual harassment. Filner should consult the card whenever he approaches a woman, Allred said.

The second gift is a mirror, so Filner can look at the person most responsible for his disgraceful exit as mayor of San Diego.

And the third, Allred said, is a card with the salutation, "I look forward to seeing you soon in deposition."

The lawsuit Allred filed on behalf of Jackson is still under mediation, she said.

Jackson was the first of 19 women to go public with allegations of sexual harassment against Filner.

With Filner gone, Jackson will resume her job as director of communications for the acting mayor. And with the mayor's job now officially vacant, Sept. 6 is the first day for candidates to register with the city clerk.

If no candidate receives 50% in the Nov. 19 election, a runoff between the two top vote-getters will be held, probably in January.

Former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, who served with the Marines in Iraq, has already declared his candidacy. He placed third in last year's mayoral primary.

While in the Assembly, Fletcher was a Republican. He re-registered as an independent while running for mayor. Now he's a Democrat. He was endorsed Thursday by the Municipal Employees Assn. and the city firefighters union.

Council President Gloria and Councilman Kevin Faulconer, a Republican, are both considering running. San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts, a Republican, and former Assemblywoman Lori Saldana, a Democrat, are also possible candidates.

Former Councilman Carl DeMaio, who lost to Filner in November's runoff, will announce Tuesday whether he will put aside plans to run for Congress and instead run for mayor. DeMaio is a Republican and a leader in the pension reform movement.

On Thursday, DeMaio proposed an ethics reform package, including a change in the City Charter to make it easier to recall a mayor.

"Whether it is a wildfire or a wild man [Filner]," he told KUSI-TV on Friday, "you have to be part of the solution to a crisis."

tony.perry@latimes.com

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Prisons' solitary confinement policies to be subject of hearings

SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers frustrated by a state prison hunger strike that has lasted for seven weeks said they would take on the debate over solitary confinement.

"The impasse needs to be broken," Senate Public Safety Chairwoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) said Friday as she and her Assembly counterpart Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) announced that they would hold hearings this fall on conditions in California's highest-security prisons.

Hancock said she seeks legislation addressing overcrowding in California's prisons and a lack of rehabilitation programs, in addition to policies on the use of solitary confinement.

Advocates for inmates said the call for hearings is a "positive step," but they seek more.

"I'd like to see these strong statements turned into action," such as changes in prison policy, said Isaac Ontiveros, spokesman for the advocacy group Critical Resistance.

Corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said officials welcomed the hearings to show "all of the substantive reforms that have taken place."

The hunger strike began July 8, when more than 30,000 prisoners refused meals in a demand that California end its use of indefinite solitary confinement, among other policies.

The number of strikers fell to a low of 79 last week, but by Friday, the count had rebounded to 123. Forty-one have refused meals for 54 consecutive days, with few reported medical problems beyond dehydration.

Most of the strikers are receiving up to 625 calories a day from Gatorade, about a fourth of what federal health guidelines say is required for an adult male.

Staff from the court-appointed agency that runs prison medical services met this week with hunger strikers at a prison outside Sacramento.

"They complained of dizziness and were pale and thin but still engaging and coherent," said Liz Gransee, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Court filings show that the state houses nearly 4,000 prisoners in long-term isolation cells, including more than 400 held in solitary for more than a decade at Pelican Bay State Prison, near the Oregon border. They have sued the state, saying lengthy isolation is tantamount to torture.

The state contends it needs such isolated conditions to control members of violent prison gangs.

Gov. Jerry Brown has made no public comment on the protest, and his administration repeatedly has said it would not negotiate on the strikers' demands.

But prison officials and state lawyers have met several times in the last two months with protest leaders and their advocates.

A conference call between the two sides is set for next week, said a member of the prisoners' mediation team, Laura Magnani of the American Friends Service Committee.

Representatives of the state "are not 'negotiating,' they are 'communicating,'" said Magnani, "so that's what we seek to do — communicate."

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Bill to allow abortion by non-physicians goes to Jerry Brown

SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers on Friday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a proposal that would allow nurse practitioners and some other non-physicians to perform first-trimester abortions.

The measure was one of dozens to receive final legislative approval. Among them was a bill to require Facebook, Tumblr and other social networking sites to abide by new rules intended to protect minors who use the Internet.

The abortion bill, by Assemblywoman Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), is aimed at expanding access to abortion in rural areas where a shortage of doctors makes it difficult to find someone to perform the procedure.

The bill "reaffirms California's status as a leader in the access for safe and comprehensive reproductive healthcare for all women, regardless of where they reside," Atkins told her Assembly colleagues Friday.

Republicans opposed the bill. Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen (R-Modesto) said that allowing nurse practitioners, physicians' assistants and nurse midwives to perform abortions would "lower the standard of care for women."

"Regardless of where you stand in the abortion debate, all of us should be concerned about the practical effects of allowing non-doctors to perform the procedure," Olsen said.

The California Medical Assn., which typically opposes efforts to allow non-doctors to conduct medical procedures, supported the measure. The group said in a statement this week that its concerns about patient safety had been addressed.

The bill would require those performing abortions to be in contact with doctors who can supervise them, although the physicians would not have to be present for the procedure.

If Brown signs the bill, AB 154, California will join four other states with similar laws — Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon and Vermont.

The Internet privacy bill would prohibit websites directed at children from marketing certain products, including guns, bullets, dietary supplements and alcohol, to minors.

It also would bar the compiling of personal information provided by underage Internet users for marketing by third parties of products not allowed for sale to minors.

Additionally, the proposal, by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), would require all social networking sites to immediately remove pictures and comments posted by minors who ask that they be taken down.

"Too often, a teenager will post an inappropriate picture or statement that in the moment seems frivolous or fun but that they later regret," Steinberg said in a statement. "While some social media sites already provide an 'eraser button,' this bill ensures that minors can remove this content on any site before it's sent out by a third party."

The measure was opposed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group advocating for an open Internet. The group feared the bill would "have the unintended consequence of reducing minors' access to information and platforms for expression online," said Emma J. Llansó, policy counsel for the center.

Other bills approved by the Legislature on Friday would:

•Change drug sentencing laws in an effort to limit jail time for those charged with possession. The bill would redefine the legal meaning of "transporting" drugs to mean transportation for sale. AB 721 is by Assemblyman Steven Bradford, a Democrat from Gardena.

Establish a "three feet of safety" passing zone for cars trying to go around cyclists. Brown has twice vetoed similar measures. AB 1371 is also by Bradford.

Allow school districts to include instruction in violence awareness and prevention. The bill was introduced after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut last year. SB 552 is by Sen. Ronald S. Calderon, a Democrat from Montebello.

Lawmakers shelved 90 bills Friday because of their cost.

One would have allowed families on welfare to receive additional aid if they have more children. Existing law prohibits an increase in such aid based on the arrival of a new child if the family has received assistance for at least 10 months before the birth.

"My heart sank," said Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), who introduced the legislation. "We have to invest in young children to improve their outcome."

Mitchell noted that her bill was shelved a day after an Assembly panel voted to allocate $315 million more for prisons.

Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the panel that stopped the welfare bill, AB 271, said he supported it on merit. But it would have added $220 million in annual costs to a state budget that was balanced with some difficulty.

An Assembly committee blocked two firearms bills.

One by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) eventually would have required that all guns be "smart guns" — high-tech weapons that would recognize their owner and fire only if that owner was holding them. A legislative analysis of SB 293 said testing the new technology could create new costs for the state.

The other measure, by De Leon, would have created a 30-day amnesty period during which people who owned guns illegally could surrender them to local law enforcement without facing prosecution. Lawmakers declined to explain their decision on the bill, SB 38.

melanie.mason@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Times staff writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

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Rim fire makes a sleepy Sierra city a boomtown

TUOLUMNE CITY, Calif. — Life is slow and uneventful in Tuolumne, an old mining and logging town of 1,800 residents in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It's not on the road to any tourist destinations, storefronts have sat empty for years and usually the only traffic is to the casino or the grocery store on the edge of town.

"People ride their horses to the bar, that's the type of town this is," said Tree Neal, who owns a tattoo parlor. "If you sneeze, three people call up and say, 'Bless you.'"

But sleepy Tuolumne became a boomtown this week as the Rim fire came within a few miles, sending a plume of smoke into the sky and triggering school closures and voluntary evacuations. So many firefighters streamed in that they soon outnumbered residents.

The unincorporated community became the site of one of two main incident command posts for one of the largest blazes in California history, a staging area for more than 2,000 firefighters who filled the town park with tents and cots and its streets with fire engines.

Though some residents fled as the smoke settled in and the sky glowed orange, many stayed to serve the encampment, offering free haircuts, massages and barbecued meals. A conflagration that has dampened tourism leading up to Labor Day weekend in some communities near Yosemite National Park did just the opposite in Tuolumne. What could have been bad news brought new life to the struggling town.

Firefighting operations had Revive Cafe, one of the few restaurants in town, operating extended hours, serving house-roasted coffee and chorizo burritos to tired, radio-toting firefighters on break from 12- or 24-hour shifts.

"The whole town gathered to serve the gift of hospitality," said cafe owner Mary Delgado. The blaze, she said, inspired a new menu item, the Rim fire smoothie, made with blueberries and spinach to replenish weary firefighters craving nutrients.

"These guys come in exhausted, with smoke all over their faces," said Delgado, who opened the cafe in a long-vacant storefront last year to bring a sorely needed gathering place to the town. "To me it was a joy just to offer them a hot plate of food and a good cup of coffee."

As she manned the cafe, Delgado worried about her home in the nearby town of Twain Harte, but as with many locals here, she was reassured it would be protected by the small village of firefighters that sprang up down the street. And she couldn't be happier with the boost in business they were bringing.

The town's park, with an inviting lawn and a gazebo, became like a living room for emergency responders. Firefighters between shifts set up tents, exercised, kicked off their boots and rolled out sleeping bags and cots for some midday shut-eye.

The town's tattoo parlor, next to the Logger bar, got in the spirit of hospitality, too. Tree Neal and Lisa Southern, the couple who own West Side Ink, renamed it the Rim Fire Lounge and re-purposed it as a refuge for firefighters.

"Otherwise we'd be sitting at home watching the mountain burn," Southern said. "We tried to make it a home away from home."

Its roomy interior of couches and pool tables became an air-conditioned escape for emergency responders to decompress, charge their cellphones, serve themselves from a table full of fresh fruit and snacks and be treated to massages. Hairstylists stood by offering free haircuts. Some firefighters wanted commemorative Rim fire tattoos, Neal said, but they told them to come back after the blaze was out.

Many in the old mining town west of Yosemite, which dates to the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th century, said it needed a boost.

Its streets are lined with stately old churches, brightly painted frontier-style houses with picket fences and hedges, and rows of leafy trees with their trunks painted white. But longtime residents say that since logging operations declined decades ago, the town has struggled to keep a handful of businesses afloat and retain jobs and residents.

So when the firefighters came to town, they got a reception like nowhere else.

"It was a ghost town, but it felt like a real town again," said Christina Day, a cosmetology student who was born and raised in Tuolumne and spent the week giving fire personnel military-style buzz cuts.

By the end of the week it was hard to walk more than a few steps down the street without coming across a handwritten thank-you sign. "You kick ash," one read.

But as containment of the 330-square-mile Rim fire inched upward to 35%, evacuation advisories were lifted and firefighting operations in the area appeared to wane, some in Tuolumne said they were sad to see the burst of visitors go.

"It brought us to life," said Rose Rhodes, a 55-year-old special education teaching assistant. When she was a teenager, she and her parents moved from Modesto to Tuolumne for the slower pace of life. This week, she said, "all you could hear were the firetrucks, helicopters and planes. To have all these outsiders here pulled us all together."

At Revive Cafe, Delgado placed a guest book next to the cash register and tip jar. "This is the beginning of a new era," reads the inscription. Before long, the leather-bound volume filled up with praise from firefighters visiting from hundreds of miles away.

"Despite being completely overrun by firetrucks, the patience and heart of this town has been humbling," wrote one firefighter from Ventura County. "We really are just guys doing our jobs … Just blessed to do it in Tuolumne."

tony.barboza@latimes.com

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L.A. council OKs Garcetti's nominees for Police Commission

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday signed off on Mayor Eric Garcetti's nominees to the Board of Police Commissioners, including one who questioned the fairness of a gang injunction proposed for neighborhoods northwest of downtown.

Council members heaped praise on Garcetti's four appointees during back-to-back hearings, first in the Public Safety Committee and then during the council's regular meeting. But they also engaged in an unscheduled discussion of gang injunctions with commission appointee Sandra Figueroa-Villa, who runs the family-services nonprofit group El Centro del Pueblo in Echo Park.

The city's lawyers filed an injunction in June that seeks to prohibit members of six street gangs in the neighborhoods of Echo Park, Elysian Valley, Historic Filipinotown and Angelino Heights from engaging in such activities as associating in public, harassing members of the community and drinking in public.

Figueroa-Villa, whose organization provides gang-prevention services to the city, said it is "easy to get on" a list of gang members that is kept by the LAPD and later used to file injunctions. Many people on that list have gone on to get jobs and raise families, she said.

"There's a lot of opposition, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of concern" about the Echo Park injunction, Figueroa-Villa told the council's Public Safety Committee. "I know many kids that are on that list. I also know there's many kids that should not be on that list today."

Despite those statements, Figueroa-Villa told The Times she and her organization have no formal position on the Echo Park injunction.

City Atty. Mike Feuer said through a spokesman that 19 adult gang members have been formally notified of the proposed Echo Park injunction, which would cover 3.8 square miles if approved. Councilman Mitch O'Farrell, whose district stretches from Echo Park to Hollywood, said he favors the injunction but also wants a process for removing those who can demonstrate that they have severed their gang affiliation and are "ready for a fresh start."

"I would disagree with you that it's easy to get on the list, though," O'Farrell told Figueroa-Villa, before voting to put her on the commission. "To get on the list to be served an injunction actually takes work and some criminal activity."

Garcetti spokesman Yusef Robb said he doesn't know if the mayor supports the Echo Park injunction.

The five-member Police Commission sets the LAPD's policies, approves its $1-billion annual budget and oversees its operations. One of its most important tasks is determining whether officer-involved shootings and other serious uses of force were appropriate.

In addition to Figueroa-Villa, the council confirmed Steve Soboroff, a former chairman of Playa Capital, the master developer of Playa Vista on the Westside; Loyola Law School professor Kathleen Kim, who specializes in human trafficking and immigrants rights; and Paula Madison, chief executive of the Los Angeles Sparks, a women's basketball team.

Garcetti kept one of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's police commissioners: USC associate dean Robert Saltzman, who joined the five-member panel in 2007.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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Supreme Court is urged to reject Michigan affirmative action ban

WASHINGTON — California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris urged the Supreme Court on Friday to strike down a Michigan voter initiative that bans "preferential treatment" based on race in its state colleges and universities, a ruling that would likely invalidate a similar ban approved by California's voters in 1996.

These bans on affirmative action "violate the Equal Protection Clause" of the Constitution, Harris said, by "erecting barriers to the adoption of race-conscious admissions policies."

For a second term in a row, the high court is set to consider a major test of affirmative action in state universities. In June, the court revived a white student's challenge to a race-based admissions policy at the University of Texas. In October, the court will consider a constitutional challenge that comes from the opposite direction. Lawyers representing black and other minority students are contesting Michigan's ban on affirmative action.

Separately, the University of California's president and 10 chancellors filed their own brief Friday highlighting the ban on affirmative action. "More than 15 years after Proposition 209 barred consideration of race in admissions decisions … the University of California still struggles to enroll a student body that encompasses the broad racial diversity of the state," they said.

In 2006, Michigan's voters approved Proposition 2, 58% to 42%. Using the words of the California measure, the ban said Michigan's public universities "shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, college, ethnicity or national origin."

Lawyers challenging the measure say that because it became part of the state constitution, they were deprived of the equal chance to lobby for affirmative-action policies in the state Legislature or before university officials. They say they want a Supreme Court ruling that would also wipe out the nearly identical voter-approved bans in California, Arizona, Washington, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

In November, they won an 8-7 ruling by the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared unconstitutional Michigan's Proposition 2. It "undermines the Equal Protection Clause's guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change," said Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. His opinion spoke for all eight Democratic appointees to the appeals court, while the seven Republican appointees dissented.

Michigan Atty. Gen. Bill Schuette appealed, and the court will hear arguments in the case of Schuette vs. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action on Oct. 15.

Harris' brief for California was also signed by Lisa Madigan of Illinois and four other attorneys general, though none have similar voter measures that turn on the outcome. Usually, a state's top attorneys intervene in pending Supreme Court cases to defend their state's laws. In this instance, however, the California attorney general is asking the justices to hand down a ruling that would void a provision in California's Constitution.

Last year, Harris also refused to defend California's Proposition 8 and its prohibition on same-sex marriage after it had been struck down by a judge in San Francisco. The Supreme Court in June, citing the state's refusal, said the private sponsors of the ballot measure did not have legal standing to defend it in court.

Harris took office as attorney general in January 2011. Her website describes her as "the first woman, the first African American and the first South Asian to hold the office in the history of California."

Her friend-of-the-court brief read: "California has a particular interest in the outcome of this case because, as in Michigan, its voters amended its Constitution to add language virtually identical to the constitutional provision at issue in this case.... It is particularly important for states with large nonwhite populations to ensure that students of all races have meaningful access to their public colleges and universities."

She lauded the "well-reasoned decision" of the 6th Circuit and said the students and citizens should be free to press for "race-conscious admissions policies."

Harris' brief for California was also signed by the top attorneys from five other states and the District of Columbia: Madigan of Illinois, David Louie of Hawaii, Thomas Miller of Iowa, Gary King of New Mexico, Ellen Rosenbaum of Oregon and Irvin Nathan from Washington, D.C.

david.savage@latimes.com

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The 'repugnant, vile truth' about sex trafficking in L.A. County

The track, as Jessica Midkiff calls it, was Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, where she trolled for johns and turned every cent of her earnings over to the pimp who owned her.

If you tried to skim a dollar here or there, Midkiff said, or if you got arrested and ratted out your pimp, you or someone in your family was likely to be beaten or tortured.

"When a pimp says he's going to torture you, what I've seen is girls in dog cages, girls being waterboarded, stripped down naked and put in the rain and cold outside and having to stand there all night, and if you move, you'll get beaten. I've seen girls get hit by cars and stunned with stun guns … I've seen girls burned and strangled."

Midkiff lived this life for far too long but managed to make a break at 21. Today, at 28, she's working to help steer other girls out of the trade.

Sex trafficking is big business in Los Angeles County, and underage girls by the hundreds are lured or forced into service. Between 2010 and 2012, according to the county Probation Department, 555 juveniles were arrested for prostitution-related offenses. Authorities believe far, far more are never caught.

In an effort to protect underage girls, county Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Don Knabe will introduce a motion calling for a crackdown on johns, making solicitation of a minor a felony rather than a misdemeanor, raising the fine from $1,000 to $10,000, seizing property if necessary to pay the fine, and making the names of the johns public.

"This is simply intolerable, and we need to stop calling these girls prostitutes and call it what it is: statutory rape," Ridley-Thomas told me Friday. The average age of juveniles entering "this horrible life" is 12, he said.

"That's the repugnant, vile truth," the supervisor wrote in a prepared statement, adding that "children are being forced to have sex with 10 or 12 men a day, every day of the week. Girls are being beaten, drugged, starved and even branded … while all too often the child predators walk away scot-free."

Michelle Guymon, who runs a sex trafficking unit for the Probation Department, told me she underwent a dramatic change in perspective on the girls caught up in this life after getting to know them.

"I always made a judgment about them; I thought it was their choice," she said. "I didn't realize the exploitation and coercion involved."

It was easier to view the 17- and 18-year-old girls as responsible for their own actions, she said. But she discovered they had been involved in the trade for years, having started as runaways from abuse, broken families and foster homes.

"When I came across my first 10- and 11-year-olds, I thought, 'There's no way this was a choice.' You don't wake up one day and say this is what you want to do with your life."

Catherine Pratt, a commissioner in Compton Juvenile Court, said the vast majority of girls who come into her courtroom on prostitution-related offenses are African American and from the county's poorest communities. She started a program two years ago to direct girls into housing and provide counseling and mentoring in hopes of helping them break free of the business. Pratt has seen some successes, but the challenge is great.

"I would say the majority of the girls are with pimps, and those pimps are affiliated with gangs," said Pratt, who said it's her understanding that the gangs make as much money from selling young girls as they do from selling drugs.

Many of the girls believe that giving police any information about their pimps could get them killed, said Pratt, and that has "a chilling effect" on their willingness to cooperate. Pratt recalled a case last year in which a girl was badly injured, perhaps for talking.

"She was run over, she thinks by her pimp, and had her whole leg shattered," said Pratt. "She has rods in her leg and is still healing, and many of her teeth were knocked out. No one was prosecuted for it."

Jessica Midkiff is now in college while working as a consultant for county probation, where she shares her story with girls who live in the hell she once lived in. When she'd finally had enough, after more than a dozen arrests for prostitution-related offenses, she got help from the Mary Magdalene Project, a Van Nuys nonprofit that helps exploited women start new lives.

There was a lot for Midkiff to work through, and some of the work remains. She said she was abandoned by her father, then abused by her stepfather and by neighborhood men in South Los Angeles before walking the streets at 14.

"The culture is, 'You don't tell,'" she said. "What happens in this house stays in this house or you might get killed."

She had a break with her mother, hung out with "the wrong crowd," then fell in with a string of pimps who either showered her with compliments, paralyzed her with fear — or both. Each one "branded" her, she said, showing me the tattoos on her neck and arm.

"It's modern-day slavery is all it is," she said. "If you want to use the restroom, you have to ask. If you want to eat, you ask, and if you don't get permission, you just don't do it. It's more than physical domination. It's emotional and mental, and that's the domination that tends to linger."

steve.lopez@latimes.com

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State Senate Democrats propose alternative to Brown's prison plan

SACRAMENTO — Democratic leaders of the state Senate on Wednesday proposed an extra $200 million annually for rehabilitation, drug and mental health treatment as an alternative to Gov. Jerry Brown's plan for reducing prison crowding.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said Wednesday that his Senate Democratic Caucus wants the spending in exchange for a three-year extension of federal judges' Dec. 31 deadline for removing more than 9,600 inmates from state prisons.

Steinberg said the Senate proposal was preferable to Brown's plan to spend $315 million this year and $415 million in each of the following two years on alternate housing for inmates.

"Temporarily expanding California's prison capacity is neither sustainable nor fiscally responsible," Steinberg wrote to Brown and inmates' attorneys Wednesday. Inmate lawsuits led to the judges' ruling that state prisons are unconstitutionally crowded.

Any extension would have to be approved by the judges, who have castigated Brown for stalling on obeying their order to shed more prisoners.

Steinberg, flanked by 16 Democratic senators in a Capitol hallway, said the Senate plan is modeled on a 2009 state program that reduced new prison admissions by nearly 9,600.

The plan won a quick endorsement from the prisoners' attorneys.

"Sen. Steinberg's substantive proposals are acceptable to us and we are open to an extension" if all parties can agree on an approach "that will resolve the chronic overcrowding problem in the state's prisons," the attorneys said in a statement.

The lawyers said they were willing to meet with the governor and discuss ways to end federal court oversight of prison medical care, imposed because the judges said overcrowding led to inadequate healthcare and needless inmate deaths.

The judges are unlikely to extend their Dec. 31 deadline without evidence that the proposal would result in meaningful policy changes, said legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Irvine.

"I think the court wants to be sure this is not another delay," Chemerinsky said.

Steinberg's plan drew sharp criticism from Gov. Brown and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles).

"It would not be responsible to turn over California's criminal justice policy to inmate lawyers who are not accountable to the people," Brown said in a statement.

"My plan avoids early releases of thousands of prisoners and lays the foundation for longer-term changes, and that's why local officials and law enforcement support it," he said.

Pérez said in a separate statement that he was "deeply skeptical about Senator Steinberg's approach." It would give more power to "prisoner plaintiffs who favor mass release of prisoners," Pérez said.

Steinberg countered that his plan would also avoid early releases. But there may be no more money available for rehabilitation if the state spends more than $1 billion on incarceration over the next three years, the senator said.

Steinberg suggested that a middle ground might be found. "Does this lead to conversation that leads to a solution and compromise? I hope," Steinberg said. "You know me. It's not my way or the highway. We are putting down a settlement proposal here."

But time is short. Steinberg called for an agreement by Sept. 13, the Legislature's last meeting day this year. The settlement would provide for a panel of experts to set a new prison population cap.

In addition, an advisory panel would be formed to restructure sentencing laws so fewer offenders would be sent to prison in the long run.

The state "cannot assume that the plaintiffs and their lawyers, and the federal court, will agree to a three-year extension," said Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber).

On the other hand, nobody wants to be responsible for releasing thousands of inmates early because of a stalemate, said Raphael J. Sonenshein, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

"You'd have to think they are going to find some accommodation," Sonenshein said.

Meanwhile, Steinberg canceled a Senate confirmation hearing for two corrections department directors appointed by the governor.

"We have additional questions about the administration's ongoing corrections policy," said Steinberg spokesman Mark Hedlund. "It makes sense to wait before we consider those two appointments."

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Times staff writers Anthony York and Paige St. John contributed to this report.

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Rizzo loses bid for change of venue in Bell corruption trial

Weeks before his trial, Robert Rizzo was handed a setback Wednesday when a judge rejected his request to move the corruption case out of Los Angeles County and joked that the once highly paid municipal official should thank disgraced San Diego Mayor Bob Filner for "kind of taking the edge" off him.

Rizzo's attorney had asked that the case, filed after The Times exposed the high salaries and questionable financial dealings in Bell, be moved out of the newspaper's circulation area, suggesting Santa Clara County.

But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy rejected the request, although she said she would reconsider a motion for a change of venue if the court has trouble finding unbiased jurors.

Neither the judge nor the attorneys could recall a criminal case being moved out of the county since 1991, when the Rodney G. King beating trial was sent to Ventura County.

Rizzo, who became the face of the salary scandal in the tiny southeast Los Angeles County city he once ran, is accused of looting the town's treasury by paying extraordinary salaries, lending city money and padding his own paycheck and retirement fund.

He is accused on 69 counts of falsifying public records, perjury, conspiracy, misappropriating public funds and conflict of interest and faces the prospect of a lengthy prison term.

When he left his job under fire, he was set to receive $1.5 million in total compensation for running one of the county's poorest cities.

James Spertus, Rizzo's attorney, told the court Wednesday that it would be unfair to hold the trial in Los Angeles because the public perception was that Rizzo is "a scoundrel and should spend rest of life in jail."

Spertus said more than 400 articles have mentioned Rizzo and that artists had placed unflattering posters of his client around Los Angeles. He said more articles have been written about Rizzo than about the ongoing Michael Jackson wrongful death lawsuit, taking place several blocks away.

"I'm not so sure about that," Kennedy said.

Rizzo did not appear in court because "his knee exploded and he had emergency surgery," his attorney said.

The hearing also provided some details as to how Rizzo is paying — or not paying — for his defense.

The judge told Spertus that he would have had a stronger case for a change of venue if he had conducted a poll that showed how biased people were against his client. Spertus told the judge it would have cost $50,000.

"We don't have the money.... This entire defense is being financed, unfortunately, by me," he said.

At one time, Rizzo owned a $1-million home in Huntington Beach, a 10-acre ranch in Washington and a stable of racehorses.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Oct. 7. Plans have been made to pass out questionnaires to 350 potential jurors.

Kennedy also turned down a motion to hold a separate trial for Angela Spaccia, the former assistant city manager who is accused on 13 counts of corruption.

Her attorney, Harland Braun, said Spaccia's defense would blame Rizzo for the wrongdoing in Bell.

"It's going to be a bloodbath," he said.

Braun said he supported the change of venue but didn't join the motion because it would be a financial burden for Spaccia if the trial was moved.

At one point during Wednesday's hearing, as Braun argued that Spaccia's credit card receipts showed she was in Southern California and not at Rizzo's horse ranch as prosecutors had once claimed, the judge quickly weighed in.

"She had a lot of money to spend," Kennedy said, a reference to the $376,000 annual salary she was receiving in Bell.

Rizzo's trial follows the prosecution of six former Bell council members who were charged with being paid for sitting on city boards that seldom — if ever — met, pushing their annual salaries to as high as $100,000. Five were convicted on some charges and acquitted on others. One former council member, a pastor, was acquitted on all charges.

The jury also failed to reach a verdict on some charges and the council members will be retried on those counts next year.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

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Gov. Brown signs bills to increase state accountability, transparency

By Melanie Mason

August 28, 2013, 8:26 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — Improved government accountability and transparency were the focus of several bills that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Wednesday.

One directs the Department of Finance to guide monitors of state agencies to ensure they are independent and objective in scrutinizing agency operations. State agencies have been required to have independent monitors keeping an eye on accounting and administrative practices since 2011.

Assembly member Ken Cooley (D-Rancho Cordova) said his bill, AB 117, would help flesh out the role such monitors play.

"If you've got a thousand agencies and a thousand individuals sitting in the bowels of these agencies and they have no training, and no clear explanation of who they report to, that's worthless," Cooley said.

He said the need for strong monitors was underscored by the recent accounting scandal at the California parks department, in which officials concealed nearly $54 million in surplus funds.

Brown signed another Cooley bill Wednesday, AB 1248, requiring the state controller to work with local and state agencies to develop a set of auditing "best practices" to clamp down on accounting errors and fraud.

The governor also approved AB 1365, by Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), intended to improve the public's access to government reports by requiring state and local agencies to file them electronically rather than on paper.

The state's Office of Legislative Counsel, which keeps a list of all available reports, will be required to provide website links for the online reports.

And Brown signed AB 1218, by Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced), which authorizes the state auditor to conduct follow-ups related to an audit's initial findings and recommendations.

melanie.mason@latimes.com

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Two more UC campuses exonerated of fostering anti-Semitic climates

The U.S. Department of Education has exonerated two more UC campuses — Irvine and Santa Cruz — of allegations that they fostered anti-Semitic climates by allowing protests against Israeli policies and other incidents that Jewish students contended amounted to illegal harassment.

UC Berkeley announced Tuesday similar findings that ended an investigation by the department's Office for Civil Rights into complaints by Jewish students. Related probes at UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz also finished with findings that the schools were not at fault, officials said Wednesday.

The investigations, while looking at incidents between 2007 and 2012, generally dealt with the contentions that campus protests against Israel's treatment of Palestinians stepped over the line into such strong anti-Semitism that some Jewish students felt fearful. The federal reports found that the protests and other confrontations may have been offensive but were permissible as free speech or were not harsh enough to threaten Jewish students' educations and safety.

For example, at an anti-Israel protest at UC Irvine in 2007, Jewish students said they heard a demonstrator curse a rabbi and make an anti-Semitic remark to him. "Although offensive, this statement is not sufficiently serious as to deny or limit students' ability to participate in or benefit from the University's program," investigators wrote in a letter to the university.

UC Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, among those whose complaints triggered the investigations, said that the three rulings did not take the issues seriously enough and that she planned to appeal the Santa Cruz one.

The three decisions, she said, are "extraordinarily disturbing news that sends a horrible message to Jewish students that their concerns and fears are not going to be addressed."

However, UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal, in a statement, said: "This campus values the free and open expression of ideas, and we diligently safeguard our students' civil rights. We are, therefore, pleased that these allegations have been thoroughly investigated and dismissed."

A previous federal probe of alleged anti-Semitism at UC Irvine led to a similar exoneration in 2007. Three years later, Muslim students interrupted a campus speech by Israel's ambassador to the U.S., triggering a controversy that led to 10 of them being convicted of misdemeanor criminal charges; they are appealing.

UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake said in a statement that "UC Irvine's Jewish student community is vibrant, growing, and actively engaged in a wide variety of activities on our diverse campus. We are pleased that these allegations have been dismissed and believe very strongly in our carefully and actively nurtured culture of inclusion."

Supporters of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators were pleased by the decisions, saying they were an affirmation of free speech rights. But they also said the investigations created a chilling effect, discouraging students from joining political activities.

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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Porn coalition lifts industry-wide moratorium on filming

An adult-film trade group has lifted an industry-wide production moratorium that was prompted by an actress' positive HIV test.

Free Speech Coalition, a Canoga Park-based association for the industry, said Wednesday that all on-screen partners of the affected actress, who uses the screen name Cameron Bay, had been tested and cleared and that a panel of three doctors concluded that it was safe to resume filming.

The coalition called the moratorium last Wednesday after the actress received a preliminary positive test result, later confirmed by follow-up testing. Bay publicly identified herself and said she was cooperating with medical personnel to help notify her partners.

The industry is considering increasing the frequency of required HIV testing for performers from once every 28 days to once every 14 days. A medical advisory panel will consider the measure later this week.

Any performer who has tested clean since Aug. 19 — about three weeks after Bay last worked on camera — is "safe and available to work," the trade group said in a statement.

It was unclear how widely studios adhered to the weeklong moratorium or how much revenue they lost. Free Speech Coalition Chief Executive Diane Duke said many companies had canceled shoots — in one case after paying $900 to fly a performer out to film.

The coalition maintained that there was no evidence Bay had contracted the virus on set, but others said the case shows the need for condoms to be mandated in adult films.

Assemblyman Isadore Hall (D-Compton), who introduced legislation that would require condoms in adult films shot anywhere in California, issued a statement calling the industry's lifting of the moratorium "dangerous and irresponsible."

"The fact is, it can take up to three months for a person with HIV to test positive," he said. Duke said the three-month window was for older testing technology, and the Aptima HIV test now used detects HIV in seven to 10 days.

Los Angeles County voters last year passed a measure requiring adult film actors to wear condoms on set.

The county's public health department has launched an investigation into the circumstances of the recent HIV infection. Cal/OSHA, the state agency overseeing workplace safety, is weighing whether to begin an investigation as well.

Adult film producers Vivid Entertainment and Califa Productions, together with performers Kayden Kross and Logan Pierce, sued the county in January to prevent implementation of the condom requirement.

Earlier this month, a U.S. District judge found that the condom mandate did not violate the 1st Amendment right to free speech, but imposed restrictions on how the rule can be enforced. Among other things, his ruling barred inspections of adult-film sets without a search warrant.

Vivid appealed the ruling on the 1st Amendment issue. A county Department of Public Health spokesman said the agency is evaluating how to enforce the regulation in light of the ruling.

The most recent porn-industry moratorium related to a sexually transmitted disease was implemented in August 2012 as a result of a syphilis outbreak.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

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Pass rates up for online classes at San Jose State

Students who took online classes in a summer program at San Jose State University performed better than those who took the same online classes in the spring, a result that is likely to provide a boost to a highly touted but problem-plagued collaboration between the campus and an online provider.

In new results released Wednesday, 83% of summer students in elementary statistics earned a C or better compared with 50.5% of those in the spring; and 72.6% of summer college algebra students made the grade compared with 25.4% of those in the spring.

The pass rates for remedial math improved somewhat, reaching nearly 30% for summer students compared with 24% for those in the spring.

Students in two new summer classes also fared well, with 67% earning a C or better in general psychology and 70% achieving that level in computer programming.

Officials said they were encouraged by the developments, especially after the disappointing spring results raised a host of critical questions about the highly watched project with Udacity, a Mountain View-based online course provider. Each of the for-credit classes cost $150 with no state or federal support.

For right or wrong, online education is seen by many as a money-saver that will allow greater access to California's public colleges and universities.

Many observers of the San Jose effort suggested that pressure from such supporters as Gov. Jerry Brown resulted in a hastily assembled project and unprepared students. In addition, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose foundation is helping to fund the project, was intent on including math classes.

Udacity and the San Jose campus announced jointly in July that they were pulling the classes for the fall to fine-tune many aspects of the project.

Critics were ready to declare the online experiment a failure too early and did not understand how innovation works, said Udacity co-founder and Chief Executive Sebastian Thrun.

"The way these new ideas work is that it takes multiple iterations before you get there," Thrun said in an interview. "It's not perfect and we have a lot to learn, but I'm happy about it."

A major factor in the differing results was the makeup of the students themselves, Thrun said. Less than half of the spring group was enrolled in San Jose State; many taking the classes were local high school students from low-income areas. Of the 2,091 students who enrolled in summer classes, 71% were from other states or foreign countries and about 11% were enrolled in one of Cal State's 23 campuses.

More students dropped out of the summer classes than the spring after officials relaxed the rules for withdrawing. The overall retention rate dropped to about 60% for the summer classes compared with 83% for the spring.

San Jose State instructors also retooled their approach for summer students, being more upfront about expectations and doing more to engage students, said Provost Ellen Junn.

Cay Horstmann, a computer science professor who designed the introduction to programming course, said the online format was a good fit for the class, which is always in demand and must turn away students.

However, he said, about 15,000 other students who didn't pay or receive credit participated on the Udacity platform, which clogged up the discussion board for the enrolled students.

Further, he said that he and his colleagues sometimes had to resist attempts by Udacity to overly simplify course material and hand out answers so that students wouldn't get frustrated.

The final grades mirrored those of students on campus, he said.

"It was a great experience and I would hope it would continue," said Horstmann.

carla.rivera@latimes.com

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Rim fire containment expected by Sept. 10

GROVELAND, Calif. — The Rim fire should be fully contained by Sept. 10, a fire official said Wednesday, as lower temperatures, higher humidity and lighter winds allow crews to make headway against the sprawling blaze that has swept into Yosemite National Park.

"That's given us a greater opportunity to get in there and strengthen our containment lines," said Daniel Berlant, spokesman of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Officials have said they expect it to burn until snow begins to fall.

Firefighters have battled the stubborn blaze for nearly two weeks and have it 30% contained. The effort has cost at least $39.2 million and required some 4,500 firefighters. More than 192,500 acres — about 301 square miles — have burned, causing three injuries and destroying 111 structures, including 11 homes.

But the rate the fire is spreading has slowed in the last two days. Last week, the fire burned 50,000 acres in one 24-hour span and 30,000 acres in another, Berlant said. But in the last two days, the rate of spread has slowed to 10,000 acres one day and 5,000 on another.

On Wednesday morning, officials employed an unmanned drone aircraft for the first time against the Rim fire.

A remotely piloted MQ-1 plane belonging to the California Air National Guard began flying a 20-hour mission Wednesday morning, alerting crews to a spot fire and providing a more comprehensive fire map.

The drone, about the size of a small Cessna, takes off from the Victorville airport and is operated from March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, said Lt. Col. Tom Keegan of the National Guard.

Unmanned aircraft have been used sparingly on fires but are gaining favor as a cheaper, more efficient tool for fire bosses to better understand where fires are going and how they are behaving.

They are especially prized for the ability to beam real-time pictures directly to commanders, who can make tactical adjustments more quickly. The aircraft are equipped with infrared heat sensors and a swiveling camera operated by a remote pilot.

Unlike piloted aircraft deployed against fires, drones can fly at night and in high winds and smoke. They fly at about 18,000 feet and cost about $800 an hour to operate, Keegan said.

Gov. Jerry Brown passed along a request for the drone from incident commander Mike Wilkins to the secretary of Defense. The Federal Aviation Administration must also approve use of the MQ-1, which is escorted to the fire by a lead plane.

According to Kelly Huston, the deputy director of the governor's Office of Emergency Services, drones were used experimentally on fires in 2003 and in more extensively in 2007.

"The incident commander wanted better data and better mapping of this fire," Huston said.

Huston said the governor was monitoring the escalating costs associated with the fire, including the damage to infrastructure and utilities, and will consider whether to request a national emergency declaration from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

On the ground, firefighters reached a river on the fire's northwest edge above the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and set up a launching point to extinguish advancing flames. Crews south of the fire launched a controlled burn to keep it from advancing up California 120, said Dick Fleishman of the U.S. Forest Service.

"I think we've got a really good anchor on this thing," Fleishman said. "The plan of attack is to just keep going on the containment lines and march on the northwest side and keep flanking on the bottom side and get around it."

With the winds pushing from the southwest, the blaze has followed the Stanislaus National Forest ridgelines deeper into dense, bone-dry brush and trees. Eventually that path will lead to a granite face and stop the fire in its path, officials said.

A plan to launch a controlled burn south of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir was scrapped because conditions weren't right, Fleishman said.

"Any time you add fire to fire, you have got to be really careful," he said. "The advantage is we're fighting fire under our terms instead of it pushing and us chasing it all the time."

Cart reported from Groveland, Lopez and Serna from Los Angeles.

julie.cart@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

joseph.serna@latimes.com

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Tracing the historic margins of Los Angeles

A tour bus pulled up outside of a sun-baked strip mall in Monterey Park and 30 sightseers stepped out.

They had come to behold Wing Hop Fung, a sprawling tea and herb emporium that moved here several years ago from Chinatown to serve the growing population of Chinese immigrants living in the San Gabriel Valley. With its barrels of dried ginseng and jasmine tea tastings, the store exemplifies the area's "complete transformation" from a one-time white suburb, tour guide Richard Schave explained.

It was the last stop on Schave's bus tour of immigration patterns in Monterey Park and neighboring Boyle Heights. Except for the air conditioned coach, it had little in common with more typical tours of celebrity homes and Hollywood landmarks, promising instead to explore "the hidden histories of L.A.'s melting pot."

Last weekend's expedition included visits to the Breed Street Shul, a Byzantine Revival synagogue built in the 1920s to serve the area's then-blooming Jewish community, and Roosevelt High School, where 40 years later young Chicano activists staged walkouts to protest what they viewed as substandard education for Latinos.

Schave, who wore a fedora hat and carried a gold pocket watch, calls himself a "street historian." Much of the information he shares on his tour is gleaned from interviews with people who live in the neighborhoods.

He delights in telling little known histories, like that of the Molokans, a Christian sect of Russian immigrants that settled in Boyle Heights at the turn of the 20th century, and in highlighting incongruities. A few blocks after pointing out the Boyle Heights apartment where the infamous gangster Mickey Cohen once lived, Schave nodded at a colorful stretch of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue now settled with Latino-owned businesses.

"You can get trans-fat free masa on this block!" he said.

Schave was raised on the Westside but has always preferred the diverse neighborhoods on the city's eastern edge. He fell for Boyle Heights at age 15, when he and some teenage friends were served beers at a Mexican restaurant here.

He gives this tour twice a year with input from his wife, fellow historian Kim Cooper.

Their company, Esotouric Bus Adventures, offers other obscure tours, including one that visits the landmarks of L.A. author Charles Bukowski's life and fiction, and another that traces the final days of Elizabeth Short, the victim in the unsolved 1947 Black Dahlia murder.

The recent Eastside outing started in the downtown arts district, then crossed the Olympic Boulevard bridge, where a group called Mothers of East L.A. held protests in the 1980s to fight a proposal to build a prison in Boyle Heights, Schave explained. He highlights similar histories of activism in the Chinese immigrant communities.

Schave, a committed preservationist, peppered his monologues with insults of local politicians he thinks aren't doing enough to protect the architecture and history of the neighborhoods. As the bus traveled through the Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, a leafy residential community where some residents are fighting a plan to replace it with a dense housing development, Schave raised a fist in the air and shouted: "We are Wyvernwood!"

His audience didn't seem to mind. Tour-goers included out-of-town visitors and locals who said they were drawn by curiosity about the neighborhoods.

Kenneth Cassell, who lives in Michigan but has a vacation home in Long Beach, said he wanted to know more about some of Los Angeles' oldest neighborhoods. "Everything is so modern in L.A.," he said. "You start to go east and the history starts to get really historic."

Others had personal connections.

At Evergreen Memorial Park and Crematory in Boyle Heights (which Cooper nicknamed "nevergreen" because it looks like the lawn is rarely watered), teacher Carey Winograd wandered around with a camera.

"I remember passing here and getting very scared," he said.

Winograd used to drive by the cemetery as a kid in the 1960s on his way to services with his family at the Breed Street Shul. The temple, now boarded up and fortified with razor wire, is one of the only reminders of the Jewish community, which packed up and headed west in the decades after World War II. The neighborhood is now 94% Latino, according to an L.A. Times analysis of census data.

Schave described a similar transformation in Monterey Park, where he gave a tour of El Encanto, a Spanish Colonial villa built in the 1920s that was supposed to be the focal point for a planned community that would rival Beverly Hills. According to Schave, the developer included a racial covenant to keep non-whites out.

The building plan stalled during the Depression. Now, more than 80 years later, El Encanto is surrounded by blocks of businesses that advertise in Chinese.

But not everything has changed, like the Venice Room, a darkly lit lounge in Monterey Park that opened in the 1960s. When Schave and his tour trooped inside, a couple of patrons looked up, then went back to watching a game.

The back room, where patrons can cook their own steaks on an open grill, was decorated with elaborately framed pictures of the Venice canals. The owner is an immigrant from Italy.

"This place has been sealed in amber since 1968," Schave said.

After taking some questions, he told the group there was time for a quick round. Ten minutes, he cautioned, and then it was back on the bus. There was a tea ceremony at Wing Hop Fung waiting.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

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Rim fire spreads deeper into Yosemite

GROVELAND, Calif. — The Rim fire spread deeper into Yosemite National Park on Tuesday with flames racing unimpeded to the east even as firefighters shored up defenses for communities on the western edges of the blaze.

The fire was 20% contained by Tuesday evening, with almost all of the containment coming on the fire's southwest edge. On the east, the fire has a relatively flat, clear path farther into Yosemite and the 3,700 firefighters battling the blaze have fewer options to control it.

"They're in scouting mode," Dick Fleishman of the U.S. Forest Service said of fire crews. "There's not a lot of real good areas to get out in there and do a lot of work."

The blaze has destroyed 111 buildings, including 31 residences, and is now the seventh-largest fire in state history, having spread across 281 square miles.

"It's burning its way into the record books," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

On Tuesday, firefighters bolstered defensive perimeters to the south and west — using bulldozers to clear brush and vegetation from strips of land up to the Tuolumne River to protect homes near California 108, Berlant said.

"We've burned back down the mountain so that if the fire makes the river, jumps the river, that side of the hill is already burned," he said. "We're coming around the corner, catching the western portion of the fire and we'll continue to pinch it off as it goes up to the northern flank."

Officials consider about 4,500 homes north of the fire and two groves of giant sequoias and other historic landmarks still in danger.

The Stanislaus National Forest is taking the brunt of the blaze, with the Groveland Ranger District making up most of the southern flank. The region has been hit hard by fires in the past, the most significant in 1987, which claimed the life of a firefighter.

This week's fire has brought sorrow among the district's employees, who not only recall the past devastation but also begrudge the current damage. The fire burned though an area that had a pending $1-million timber sale, said Maggie Dowd, district ranger in the Groveland Ranger District.

"The economic impacts are real, but we haven't begun to estimate them yet," Dowd said Tuesday from her office in a building shrouded in smoke.

So far, the fire has destroyed two federal campgrounds that had been recently upgraded and a day-use area at Rainbow Pools, Dowd said. At least one historic structure — a cabin that had also been recently refurbished — was destroyed and Forest Service crews are still assessing damage to other structures.

Smoke from the fire is starting to drift into the park's northern areas, but it's unavoidable at the command post.

The blaze is a "campaign fire," crews say, meaning that everyone who joins in the effort knows they are going to be there for days, weeks or even months.

Firefighters who returned to camp to rest looked like raccoons, their faces striped with soot and ash. The command post is big enough to feed and house the thousands of firefighters who are working in shifts, with about half a dozen tractor trailers with showers standing by.

As the blaze stretched into its 11th day, officials received visual confirmation of ash on the surface of Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which supplies water to 2.6 million people in the Bay Area. But officials monitoring water quality have seen no change, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

Hetch Hetchy supplies are drawn from the reservoir at a depth of 260 feet, so there is little chance of contamination, Jue said. More problematic than ash on the surface of the water is the potential for runoff to enter the reservoir when rain comes later in the season, he said.

Gov. Jerry Brown issued a state of emergency for the city and county of San Francisco on Friday because of the threat to the reservoir.

Following standard procedure when the reservoir is threatened, additional water is being pumped to reservoirs in Alameda and San Mateo counties, which also supply Hetch Hetchy customers, Jue said. The amount of water being transferred has been increased from 275 million gallons a day to 302 million gallons as a precaution, the utility's commission said.

Crews have also repaired one of two hydroelectric power stations shut down by the fire, and they are in the process of assessing the damage to the second unit, Jue said.

Supplemental power has cost about $600,000 since the two power stations were taken offline Aug. 17, the day the Rim fire started.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

julie.cart@latimes.com

samantha.schaefer@latimes.com

Times staff writer Diana Marcum contributed to this report.

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Jerry Brown has plan to ease prison crowding without early releases

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown and top lawmakers pledged Tuesday to ease prison crowding without releasing inmates early, laying out a plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for alternate housing.

The proposal, which has divided Democratic leaders, would pay for enough beds in privately owned prisons and other facilities to shed more than 9,600 inmates from state lockups by the end of the year, as federal judges have ordered.

"This is the sensible, prudent way to proceed," Brown said at a Capitol news conference. "The plan is to find as many cells as needed."

Paying for the extra housing would drain $315 million from the state's $1.1-billion reserve over the next year. The price tag is expected to increase to $415 million for each of the following two years.

The proposal would avoid inmate releases while Brown continues fighting the order to reduce the population in state prisons, which the judges say are unconstitutionally crowded. Plans his administration previously considered could have forced the state to free about 1,000 inmates before their sentences were finished.

The governor is appealing the judges' order to the U.S. Supreme Court but in the meantime is taking steps to comply.

Brown faces an array of political challenges in pushing his plan through the Legislature, notably opposition from Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and Republican leaders in both houses flanked Brown for his announcement, but Steinberg was absent, saying later that he would issue his own prison plan Wednesday.

"The governor's proposal is a plan with no promise and no hope," Steinberg said in a statement. "As the population of California grows, it's only a short matter of time until new prison cells overflow."

The Senate leader has called for more spending on mental health and drug treatment programs that can reduce the number of ex-offenders who return to prison, helping to lower the inmate population in the long run.

Brown and Pérez said they also would consider more long-term solutions to prison crowding, such as changes in sentencing laws. Meanwhile, the funding for alternative cells is needed, they said.

"We are not going to release a single additional prisoner," Pérez said.

The proposal announced Tuesday would move thousands of offenders from state facilities to privately owned prisons in and outside of California and reopen city-owned detention facilities in Shafter and Taft, in the Central Valley. More inmates could be placed in county jails.

Law enforcement groups representing district attorneys, police chiefs, county sheriffs and others are backing the plan.

"The efforts by the governor will help protect our communities," said Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal.

More key support comes from the politically powerful prison guard union, which has strongly opposed outsourcing of inmate housing. But Brown's plan would use state guards in a privately owned prison in Kern County.

Brown's political risks extend into next year, when he may run for reelection and face off with critics of his prison policies. One possible challenger, Republican former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, is pushing a ballot measure to undo some of Brown's policies.

But on Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said the governor was taking the right steps.

"Our No. 1 responsibility is public safety," said Senate Republican leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar). "We can't allow dangerous inmates on our streets."

Lawmakers have less than three weeks to consider Brown's proposal before they adjourn. The Assembly budget committee is scheduled to convene Thursday to begin discussions.

Brown's effort to comply with the court order has short-circuited some of his previous plans to lower prison spending and end contracts to house inmates out of state. If the Legislature approves his proposal, prison spending will outpace state funding for higher education in the current fiscal year.

Don Specter, a lawyer for inmates who have sued the state over prison conditions, said leasing more prison space would be "an incredible waste of hundreds of millions of dollars for no benefit to public safety."

He said the state should consider some early releases, by expanding the credit prisoners can earn for good behavior or freeing inmates who are elderly and sick.

chris.megerian@latimes.com

anthony.york@latimes.com

Times staff writers Patrick McGreevy and Paige St. John contributed to this report.

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Gov. Jerry Brown signs nearly 30 bills into law

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown signed nearly 30 measures into law Tuesday, including one allowing noncitizens who are permanent legal residents to serve as poll workers in California elections.

The measure will provide more multilingual poll workers for a state where nearly 3 million people who are eligible to vote are not fluent in English, said its author, Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland).

Brown "clearly understands the challenges faced by the increasingly diverse voters in our state related to civic engagement and participation," Bonta said.

Republican lawmakers opposed the measure, AB 817, arguing that it could undermine the integrity of the election process. They also said there was no shortage of citizens to work the polls.

"The governor signed the bill to give counties the ability to help diverse communities participate in the civic process," said Jim Evans, a spokesman for Brown.

Bonta noted that poll inspectors, who supervise election activities and guarantee the integrity of the process, still have to be U.S. citizens.

The governor signed several bills relating to education, including one that will let aspiring teachers pursue an additional year of training.

Since 1970, the state has capped the length of graduate teaching programs at one year. But completing those programs in that time has become more difficult over the years, as trainees have been required to take on additional subjects such as student health and instruction for English-learners.

The measure, SB 5 by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), extends the maximum length of such programs to two years.

"I thank Gov. Brown for signing SB 5," Padilla said Tuesday. "He clearly recognizes that allowing more time for skill development will allow teachers to be better prepared when they enter the classroom."

A pair of bills the governor also signed are intended to increase access to digital textbooks and educational materials.

AB 133, by Assemblyman Curt Hagman (R-Chino Hills), requires all textbook publishers and manufacturers who sell print textbooks to California school districts to also provide those textbooks in digital format. SB 185, by Sen. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine), lets K-12 school districts negotiate the price of print and digital materials with publishers.

Brown vetoed a similar version of Walters' measure last year. It would have required digital textbooks and learning materials to be offered at the same cost as, or lower cost than, print materials.

Brown said that measure would have put unreasonable requirements on businesses and could have driven up costs. He also vetoed a companion measure by Hagman last year.

On Tuesday, Hagman thanked Brown for supporting his efforts the second time around.

"AB 133 will place California on the cutting edge of technology use in the classroom and enhance our children's educational experience by allowing them to utilize technology to which they are already accustomed," Hagman said.

melanie.mason@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Exide to begin testing for dangerous metals buildup in neighborhood

State officials have ordered a Vernon battery recycler to begin testing dust and soil in the neighborhood around its plant to determine whether dangerous metals have accumulated and are posing a health risk to the community.

In April, the state tried to close the Exide Technologies facility, after an analysis released by the South Coast Air Quality Management District showed that arsenic emissions from the plant were posing an increased cancer risk to as many as 110,000 people in Boyle Heights, Maywood, Huntington Park and other places. The state also contended that the plant was continuously leaking hazardous waste through a faulty pipeline.

But Exide appealed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, arguing that it had fixed much of its arsenic emission problem and that regulators were acting capriciously under public and political pressure. A judge sided with the company, saying it could resume operations pending a full hearing this fall on temporary closure.

Residents and elected leaders in the surrounding communities say they fear the operation is harming their health and that regulators have failed to protect them.

Now, state officials are seeking to determine whether arsenic, lead and other substances may have been released from the facility in the past and accumulated on properties around the plant.

"I think it's long overdue," said Msgr. John Moretta of Resurrection Catholic Church in Boyle Heights, where parishioners have been concerned about the health effects of the plant for years.

Rizgar Ghazi, who chief of permitting for the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control, said technicians will begin testing near the facility and move outward in concentric circles.

"My hunch is we will find lead right off site," he said. "At what concentrations, how far does it extend? We don't know that, I'll be honest."

If officials discover that the lead has accumulated some distance from the facility, he said, they are prepared to test at two nearby schools, San Antonio Elementary in Huntington Park and Salazar Park Head Start in East L.A.

Lead is a potent neurotoxin. Children are more vulnerable than adults and can suffer learning disabilities even with limited exposure. Arsenic, a carcinogen, can also cause nausea, decreased blood-cell production and abnormal heart rhythm.

If contamination is found, officials said, they will order Exide to clean it up immediately

Toxics department officials said dust sampling will begin Thursday, and soil sampling by Oct. 1. Findings are due by Nov. 15.

Exide officials could not be reached for comment.

Although plans remain in place for a fall hearing on temporary closure, Exide, one of the world's largest makers and recyclers of lead-acid batteries, has been cooperating with toxics department officials to bring its facility into compliance, and officials said they are hoping to work out a settlement.

Any agreement would have to be approved by a bankruptcy judge, because Exide filed for bankruptcy earlier this summer.

jessica.garrison@latimes.com

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Dissidents defeated in L.A.-based union local's election

Members of a large Los Angeles-based union local that has been torn by internal strife have reelected their leaders in a closely watched election that included accusations that the organization was beset by fraud, racketeering and intimidation tactics.

Challengers said they had hoped to strike a blow against national leaders of the International Union of Operating Engineers, who the dissidents alleged had nurtured a culture of corruption. The contest, which included two competing slates of dissidents, was widely followed in labor circles.

But results released Monday showed that the incumbents of IUOE Local 501, which represents 9,000 skilled maintenance workers in large buildings in the southern sections of California and Nevada, had prevailed. Reelected to the top leadership post was incumbent Business Manager Edward Curly, along with 16 others who were part of Curly's Pro Union slate.

In the bitter, months-long election campaign, an insurgent group calling itself The Resistance accused the union's leaders of defrauding members of millions of dollars and using mob-style threats of violence against opponents. Those allegations also were included in a lawsuit now pending in Los Angeles federal court.

Representatives of the union's Washington-based parent organization called the allegations a smear and a "fiction" promoted by members who wanted to seize control of the Los Angeles local following an election loss three years ago.

After allegations of irregularities in that campaign, the U.S. Department of Labor sued to force Local 501 to re-run the 2010 election. The case was settled late last year, with an agreement to repeat the election by this month.

When the tally of about 2,500 ballots was completed, Finn Pette, who challenged Curly for the position of business manager, lost by 132 votes. In other contests, the challengers also came close, but ultimately captured only two of the 19 Local 501 leadership positions.

Curly did not respond to requests for comment.

"It was a good day for the members of Local 501," said Jay Lederer, a spokesman for the international union. "They had their voices heard and hopefully this puts to rest some of the controversy and emotion and they can move forward in a positive manner."

The incumbent group appears to have benefited from the presence of two slates of challengers, whose combined vote exceeded that received by Curly's alliance. Supporters of the Resistance slate said they might dispute the election, in part because 300 union members allegedly did not receive ballots.

"It's a bit of a setback and we will step back and regroup," said Erik Smith, one of the defeated candidates. "But we are going to continue to work to fix the local."

james.rainey@latimes.com

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Garcetti's new immigrant affairs office to be headed by USC dean

By Kate Linthicum

August 27, 2013, 11:12 p.m.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has picked a USC dean to head his newly formed Office of Immigrant Affairs, which will help immigrants, including those here illegally, access city services.

Linda Lopez, an associate dean for diversity and strategic initiatives for the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at USC, will be in charge of forming and leading the agency. Beyond helping immigrants navigate city government, the agency will also analyze and help develop state and federal policies that affect immigrants.

Garcetti pledged to create the office during his campaign for mayor. In a statement Tuesday, he said the office would further "integrate immigrants into the social, political, cultural and economic fabric of the city of Los Angeles."

Lopez endorsed Garcetti in his race this year against former City Controller Wendy Greuel and donated $1,800 to his political campaign.

Lopez, whose work at USC has focused on developing programs for first-generation college students, said in a statement that she hopes to help "L.A. immigrants cut through red tape and make City Hall work for them."

"Supporting their participation in civic life will benefit everyone in our city," she said.

According to Garcetti, her office will also play a role in helping immigrants navigate the federal immigration process if Congress creates a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without permission.

The Senate has already passed such a bill. Republican leaders in the House have said they will not take up a bill with a pathway to citizenship, opting instead to consider a package of smaller immigration changes.

A spokeswoman for the mayor said she did not know what the new office's budget would be.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

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U.S. dismisses Jewish students' complaint against UC Berkeley

The U.S. Department of Education has dismissed Jewish students' contentions that anti-Israel protests at UC Berkeley created an illegally hostile and anti-Semitic atmosphere on that campus.

The department's civil rights office has determined that the campus protests last year against Israel's treatment of Palestinians, which reportedly included mock military checkpoints, may be upsetting to Jews but "do not constitute actionable harassment," according to a letter from the department released by the University of California on Tuesday.

The year-long investigation is now ending, the department said.

"In the university environment, exposure to such robust and discordant expressions, even when personally offensive and hurtful, is a circumstance that a reasonable student in higher education may experience," the department wrote.

The federal investigation also looked into other incidents, including the defacement of a sign of a Jewish student organization, and found there was not enough evidence to support claims that UC should have responded more forcefully.

The probe was in response to charges filed last year by two recent UC Berkeley graduates, who said that the protest and other events stoked anti-Semitism and that the school did nothing to deter it. The complaint went so far as to allege that campus atmosphere echoed that of Nazi-dominated Europe before and during the Holocaust.

A federal judge had dismissed similar allegations by the same students the year before and ruled that the anti-Israel protests constituted free speech.

San Francisco attorney Joel H. Siegal, who filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's civil rights office, said he was contemplating an appeal of the decision. He said that allowing anti-Israel protesters to wear Stars of David and to portray Jews in the protest as "blood thirsty barbarians" is as racist and offensive as the widely condemned caricatures of African Americans portrayed in invitations to a notorious off-campus party held by UC San Diego students in 2010.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said in a statement that he was pleased by the outcome of the investigation.

"The claim that there is a hostile environment for Jewish students at Berkeley is, on its face, entirely unfounded," Dirks said. "The campus takes great pride in its vibrant Jewish community and in the many academic and cultural opportunities available to members of that community and others interested in its history and culture. We will continue our ongoing efforts to protect free speech rights while promoting respectful dialogue and maintaining a campus environment that is safe for all our students."

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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On the first anniversary of dying, some thoughts on living

Exactly one year has passed since my unexpected death, and I've got to say, time really flies when you have a pulse.

I'm not one to waste a lot of time looking back. But when I'm out and about, throwing nets and fishing for column material, people often ask how I feel. When I tell them everything's OK, thank you very much, they seem a little skeptical. And sure, two knee replacements and one cardiac arrest in a single year is a lot to deal with.

It was late August when I briefly flat-lined after the first knee surgery. A nurse used chest compressions to bring me back from the dead, and I left the hospital a week later with a pacemaker that keeps an arrhythmia in check.

The whole thing took a little getting used to, and the anniversary, admittedly, produced some mixed feelings. One day I'm telling myself to eat raw carrots and walk to work so I can hang around longer. The next day I can't come up with one good reason not to grill a fat sausage and crack open another beer, knowing it could all be over in an instant.

Not that checking out early wouldn't have its advantages. No long, drawn-out suffering. No more impossible decisions about whether to bundle cable, Internet and phone services. And what would you be missing, really, if you belly-flopped into the big nap? A reunion tour by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass? Another chance to wait in line with 30 million other suckers for a new Apple device that's guaranteed to make all the others you bought obsolete?

But then I think about my life. I've got a terrific wife and three great kids, and we've added a dog named Dominic who takes me on long morning walks that are good for the heart in more ways than one. Plus, I couldn't dream up a better job, and I've got a new mayor to keep honest. I can't die now.

There were some days, early on, when I thought about — it's a trite term, but occasionally useful — my bucket list. I wanted to write another book or two, do a good deed or two, become fluent in Spanish, learn how to play the piano, live near the sea and enjoy food and wine grown in my own garden.

As of the deadline for this column, these goals remained largely unmet. But I did fix a broken patio umbrella last week, rebooted a new novel for the fourth time, and made a delicious salad Monday night with tomatoes from my garden.

I tossed that salad, by the way, after visiting a tarot card reader in search of a hint as to whether I'll go on breathing without incident this year. Why tarot? Well, I felt like I had to do something to mark my re-birthday, so I browsed the listings for psychics and called a Chinatown woman named Ann. When she didn't answer, I considered a Mid-City business called Moonridge Spirit, because how could I not? But a Yelp reviewer said of the psychic, "I felt like she was guessing a lot."

You think?

On my way home I stopped at the House of Intuition in Echo Park, an all-purpose healing center with foot soaks, vibrational sound therapy, crystals, scented candles and who knows, probably some toasted lentils.

I was taken into a small, dark meditation room before my transfer to another parlor, where the healer on duty was a tarot specialist named Sera, as in que sera, sera.

I told Sera about my having risen from the dead, and the tug of war between a greater appreciation of life and a wariness of the dark abyss. I confessed to being a bit of a skeptic about things paranormal, but told Sera that on the other hand, I did once meet with an animal communicator to see if she could talk to some raccoons and find out why they insisted on destroying my frontyard.

Sera shuffled and threw down the cards. A lightning strike on the Tower card had knocked off the crown of the man I thought I was, Sera observed.

"Which is essentially what happens," she said, "when you die for a moment."

Of course.

Something else in my life had changed, Sera went on, and I was unsettled about it. Sure, I said. The newspaper industry is not exactly thriving, and this is a business I love, so that tends to weigh on me.

Sera said that to have a long and happy life, I'd need to work on "getting more comfortable" in my "emotional realm," finding a healthier way to manage my anger and thinking of change as an opportunity for growth.

This cost $50.

But for no extra charge, Sera answered two more very big questions: Who might buy the L.A. Times, which could play a factor in my ability to manage my anger, and, will the Dodgers win the World Series?

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L.A. County foster care shortage reaches crisis level

Los Angeles County's shortage of foster care beds has reached a crisis point, with state officials threatening to impose fines because too many children are languishing in sometimes chaotic holding rooms during traumatic separations from their families.

Officials say the problem intensified in recent weeks after the widely publicized torture death of 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez, for which his mother and her boyfriend have been charged. The Palmdale boy's case triggered a jump in child abuse hotline calls and the number of children entering county protective care.

Between May 28 and July 5, nearly 600 children were diverted to holding rooms as social workers scrambled unsuccessfully to find them homes, according to data obtained under the California Public Records Act.

Stays exceeded a state-imposed 24-hour legal limit in 117 cases, and dozens of children spent multiple nights in the holding centers before being placed in foster homes. By comparison, last August only one child remained in a holding room longer than 24 hours, and overall about a third fewer children were diverted to the centers.

Typically, children who become stuck in the government-run way stations are the hardest to place: infants, largegroups of siblings, children returning from failed placements and the mentally ill or those afflicted with lice, ringworm, chickenpox, respiratory problems and other infectious diseases. Placing a child often requires more than 100 calls by social workers, records showed.

California regulators have given the county until Wednesday to fix the problem or face possible daily financial penalties.

And a prominent nonprofit law firm is warning it may bring legal action to force a resolution of the problems it says state and county officials have failed to address in the past.

The San Francisco-based Youth Law Center maintains that potential state penalties of $200 a day have been ineffective and don't apply to a serious shortcoming of the system: instances in which children have multiple holding room stays of less than 24 hours because they are shuffled between child welfare facilities.

"This crisis has been building for several years," said Maria Ramiu, a Youth Law Center lawyer. "The state just hasn't been able to fix the problem."

Children younger than 12 typically go to the Children's Welcome Center on the campus of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. A large open space with cribs for infants and cots for other children, it can have as many as 29 children sleeping over on some nights.

Officials acknowledged they don't always have enough personnel to promptly feed children or change diapers. The department recently issued an emergency plea for community volunteers to help in the holding rooms.

Older children who can't be quickly placed in foster homes typically are sent to a conference room in a high-rise building south of downtown Los Angeles, where they sleep on the floor or cots, according to social workers staffing the facility.

Employees have told The Times a volatile mix involving teenagers can land in the facility. At times, objects have been thrown and police have been called to restore order, said Lincoln Saul, a recently retired county social worker who worked at the center.

In addition to lingering in holding centers, hard-to-place children often endure a bureaucratic gantlet, records and interviews show. Each day, social workers take them to various regional offices across the county as the search for foster homes continues.

If nothing is found, they are driven back to the holding rooms in the evening. During the placement hunt, they are not enrolled in school, have no rooms of their own and have virtually no privacy.

"I wouldn't say this problem is under control, but we are making progress," said Philip Browning, director of the Department of Children and Family Services.

A number of factors has exacerbated the foster bed shortage. For one, the county lacks an accurate, real-time database of foster home vacancies. The system, updated just once a month, lists the licensed capacity of a home but not the number of beds a foster parent now is willing to fill.

Social workers are left largely to their own contacts, experience and word of mouth to find vacancies. Records show offices with more experienced workers, such as the West San Fernando Valley, rarely use holding rooms. Offices with some of the newest social workers — in Hawthorne, Compton, South Los Angeles and Palmdale — resort to holding rooms more frequently.

Efforts to improve tracking of vacancies are under way, Browning said. But he added that it would not compensate for the fundamental problem: too few foster homes.

Over the last decade, the number of foster parents has been declining faster than a reduction in children entering the foster system. In 2007, the county had 7,800 children in 6,380 foster family homes; there now are 6,300 children in 3,440 foster homes.

The bed shortage is especially acute for infants, partly because the gap between the cost of caring for the children and what the state pays families is the greatest. California's reimbursement rate for very young children would have to be increased 61% to match foster parents' costs, according to a recent study by Children's Rights, a national foster care advocacy group.

The rate for children younger than 4 was recently boosted to about $680 a month, which is still hundreds of dollars below the estimated costs for foster parents.

"We need more homes and we need to pay them more," Browning said. "But the rates are set by the state, not the county, and that constrains us." The department is exploring ways to ease the financial burden of young children, such as providing free child care, diapers and transportation.

Browning said the county is entering new contracts with private, nonprofit foster care agencies to accept children 24 hours a day. Officials also recently agreed to pay the county's probation department $400,000 to speed up criminal background checks on relatives who are willing to take children removed from homes.

Astrid Heger, a doctor who leads a medical assessment team for foster children in the County-USC Medical Center holding center, criticized the response to the crisis by state agencies that fund and regulate the system.

There is one advantage to children passing through holding rooms, she said. With her program on site, for example, the USC center provides a venue for formal medical and mental health assessments of young children, which help ensure placements are appropriate and reduce return visits, she said. But her team isn't always given the time to fully assess foster children, particularly in complex cases that require extra resources, she said.

"I'm completely fed up with success being ... we got the kid out of here within 24 hours," Heger said. "There is a lot more that needs our attention.

"How can you plan for these kids when you don't know what's really wrong with them?"

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

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