Pressure grows on L.A. DWP to account for funding of two nonprofits

Los Angeles elected officials ramped up pressure Tuesday on the city-owned Department of Water and Power to account for more than $40 million in ratepayer money paid to two nonprofits created to improve relations between agency managers and the largest employees' union.

City Controller Ron Galperin offered new details on an audit he's launching, saying it will examine the nonprofits' travel expenditures, salaries and the "rather significant and un-detailed outlays" listed on the groups' federal tax forms.

And City Councilmen Felipe Fuentes and Mitch O'Farrell asked the DWP for an accounting of how the groups spend as much as $4 million in public money they receive each year, and a detailed explanation of what the two entities — the Joint Training Institute and the Joint Safety Institute — do.

Last week, The Times reported that the DWP claimed to have only scant information about how the money has been spent, and would offer no specific examples of what either organization has accomplished in more than a decade.

The broad purpose of the organizations, city records show, has been to "identify" safety and training as core values at the department, and to promote "communication, mutual trust and respect" between DWP managers and the union leaders, who jointly control the trusts' accounts.

The ordinances establishing the nonprofits in 2000 and 2002, after a grueling round of job cuts at the department, don't specify how the ratepayer money should be spent.

Officials at the groups, the DWP and the employees' union, Local 18 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, have repeatedly declined to be interviewed about the institutes' activities and spending.

The union's business manager, Brian D'Arcy, responded Tuesday in a letter to Fuentes, saying the organizations have helped address disparate and inefficient training and safety programs. The institutes have created and implemented a department-wide "safety information and action program" that trained 7,800 employees and a "field ergonomics initiative that has helped more than 3,500 journeymen and women learn to work both smart and safely," D'Arcy said.

He did not provide details of either program or say how much of the $41.1 million received by the institutes has been spent on them.

The union declined to provide any financial information for the two institutes in response to an Aug. 2 records request from The Times. The DWP provided limited records in response to the same request, showing that about $1 million a year has gone to salaries for a handful of administrators. More than $360,000 was spent on travel from July 2009 to June 2012, according to federal filings by the tax-exempt organizations.

"The mission statement [of the institutes] is really vague," Galperin said Tuesday. "It should be noted that there are programs internal to the DWP that are about safety and training. So the question is: What purpose do these organizations serve?"

In a 2012 filing with the federal government, the training institute listed $663,481 of spending as simply "other," Galperin noted.

Fuentes said he introduced the motion because he doesn't know enough about the groups to judge whether the money has been spent wisely. O'Farrell said, "We're just not going to accept shadowy nonprofits that are funded by taxpayer dollars, or ratepayer dollars, that no one understands. Those days are over."

For years, DWP managers and the city attorney's office have debated whether to make the institutes' meetings and records public. The city attorney's office, which represents the DWP, recently cited attorney-client privilege to block disclosure of memos written by city lawyers arguing that the nonprofits should be bound by open-government rules that apply to city agencies.

Mayor Eric Garcetti said via his spokesman, "I'm also calling on my new DWP commission to seek full disclosure of all spending by these two organizations and to explore all legal avenues to account for every ratepayer dollar spent."

jack.dolan@latimes.com

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

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L.A. students breach school iPads' security

It took exactly one week for nearly 300 students at Roosevelt High School to hack through security so they could surf the Web on their new school-issued iPads, raising new concerns about a plan to distribute the devices to all students in the district.

Similar problems emerged at two other high schools as well, although the hacking was not as widespread.

Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District have immediately halted home use of the Apple tablets until further notice.

The incident, which came to light Tuesday, prompted questions about overall preparations for the $1-billion tablet initiative.

The roll-out is scheduled to put an iPad in the hands of every student in the nation's second-largest school system within a year. Roosevelt was among the first to distribute them, starting a week ago.

Tablets were still being handed out Friday when administrators discovered the hacking already in progress, allowing students to reach such restricted sites as YouTube and Facebook, among others.

"Outside of the district's network ... a user is free to download content and applications and browse the Internet without restriction," two senior administrators said in a memo to the board of education and L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy. "As student safety is of paramount concern, breach of the … system must not occur."

Other schools reporting the problem were Westchester High and the Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences in Granada Hills.

Students began to tinker with the security lock on the tablets because "they took them home and they can't do anything with them," said Roosevelt senior Alfredo Garcia.

Roosevelt students matter-of-factly explained their ingenuity Tuesday outside school. The trick, they said, was to delete their personal profile information. With the profile deleted, a student was free to surf.

Soon they were sending tweets, socializing on Facebook and streaming music through Pandora, they said.

L.A. Unified School District Police Chief Steven Zipperman suggested, in a confidential memo to senior staff obtained by The Times, that the district might want to delay distribution of the devices.

"I'm guessing this is just a sample of what will likely occur on other campuses once this hits Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites explaining to our students how to breach or compromise the security of these devices," Zipperman wrote. "I want to prevent a 'runaway train' scenario when we may have the ability to put a hold on the roll-out."

By Tuesday afternoon, L.A. Unified officials were weighing potential solutions. One would limit the tablets, when taken home, to curricular materials from the Pearson corporation, which are already installed. All other applications and Internet access would be turned off, according to a district "action plan."

A second approach would be to buy and install a new security application.

Apple's just-released new operating system might help, but not the current iteration, according to the district. A fix from Apple is not likely to be available before late December.

The devices should work normally at school, although even that has been problematic. Teacher Robert Penuela said his use of the tablets has been limited because he can't get them to work for all students at once.

Roosevelt freshman Alan Munoz said that, so far, he was using his iPad only during free time.

The excitement of receiving the device quickly wore off for senior Kimberly Ramirez when she realized it was for schoolwork only.

"You can't do nothing with them," she said. "You just carry them around."

howard.blume@latimes.com

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129 are indicted in O.C. probe targeting Mexican Mafia

A violent prison gang ran drugs in Orange County's jails, ordered brutal beatings of inmates, collected tariffs from neighborhood gangs and issued so-called hard candy lists that marked disobedient members for death, according to indictments made public Tuesday

In what authorities described as a major blow to the Mexican Mafia, 129 people were indicted by federal and state authorities on racketeering and other charges related to a criminal enterprise that engaged in murder, extortion and drug-dealing.

The 21/2-year probe was dubbed Operation Smokin' Aces and was conducted by FBI agents, Santa Ana police officers, Orange County sheriff's detectives, and members of the Orange County district attorney's office and other agencies.

A raid early Tuesday resulted in 55 arrests. An additional 51 suspects were already in state or federal prison and 21 remain at large. One of those named in the federal indictment is dead and another was deported.

More than 60 weapons, 22 pounds of methamphetamine, 11/2 pounds of heroin and three pounds of cocaine were seized during the course of the investigation. Two of the weapons have been linked to slayings in Santa Ana, investigators said.

"Federal and local law enforcement here in Orange County joined forces to surgically target the leaders and operatives of the Mexican Mafia and sever their influence over street gangs responsible for far too much menace and mayhem in our neighborhoods," said Andre Birotte Jr., U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

The indictment describes violent gangsters operating on the streets and in the jail in the heart of Orange County.

The operation, the indictment says, was carried out by a crew of ranking gang members with names such as "Lil Bogart," "Creeper," "Big Shotgun" and "Bugsy."

A district attorney investigation said the beatings administered to gang inmates resulted in bruises and head injuries so severe that in one case, 20 staples were required to close the wound. The indictment details more than a dozen jail beatings in 2011 and 2012.

In one case, a 39-year-old woman who was deemed to be an enemy was killed in a Tijuana hotel room where she was lured under the pretense of discussing gang business, authorities said. Her body was later burned and dumped in a remote area of Mexico, where it was discovered days later, authorities said.

One of those named in the federal indictment was a 28-year-old Santa Ana woman who was found shot to death under a Newport Bay bridge on Labor Day. Nancy Hammour had supplied about 13 grams of methamphetamine to a confidential informant and ordered drugs from another defendant, the indictment says.

Authorities said agents intercepted dozens of conversations about gang activity, the arrival of heroin shipments in greeting cards and "green light" communications that ordered beatings of inmates whose gangs had failed to pay "rent."

Smokin' Aces is the latest law enforcement operation targeting the Mexican Mafia in Orange County and its affiliated gangs, particularly in Santa Ana.

In 2011, Operation Black Flag resulted in charges against 99 suspected gang members from Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties. So far two-thirds of those have been convicted in state and federal court, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office.

Peter "Sana" Ojeda, who is accused of ordering killings on behalf of the Mexican Mafia from federal prison, was among those charged in 2011, Mrozek said. The trial of Ojeda, believed to be a member of the gang since the 1960s, is set for March 2014.

The reputed Mexican Mafia godfather of Orange County is credited with extending the gang's influential reach from prisons to the streets, according to a 2005 Times story. Although not charged in the latest indictment, Ojeda's name comes up repeatedly in it in connection with defendants being ordered to carry out assaults and strong-arm gang members to pay "taxes."

The indictments are crucial, said Richard Valdemar, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's investigator who was on the first task force that targeted the Mexican Mafia.

"But it's like the Italian Mafia," Valdemar said. "We hurt them, but they don't stop functioning."

adolfo.flores@latimes.com

Times staff writers Robert Lopez and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

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Brown gets an extra month to relieve prison crowding

BAKERSFIELD — Federal judges Tuesday gave Gov. Jerry Brown an extra month to meet their order to relieve prison crowding, directing his administration to negotiate with inmates' lawyers in the meantime for long-term solutions to the problem.

Saying confidential talks between the state and the inmates' representatives must begin immediately, the judges pushed their Dec. 31 deadline to Jan. 27 and ordered the two sides to report back to them by Oct. 21.

Their directive says the discussions should focus on "how this Court can ensure a durable solution to the prison crowding problem."

The governor had asked for a three-year delay of a three-judge panel's edict that about 9,600 prisoners be removed from California's lockups. In return, he promised to relocate about 2,500 prisoners quickly and to fund rehabilitation programs intended to ultimately lower the number of repeat offenders going to prison.

Without a postponement, Brown said, he would instead expand relocation of inmates to private prisons in other states, a costly prospect opposed by advocates for prisoners and their families.

In Tuesday's order, the judges told the state to halt negotiations for out-of-state prison beds.

Brown's office had no comment Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the state corrections department said the agency was reviewing the order.

Don Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office, which represents inmates in class-action lawsuits over California prison conditions, said he did not believe the one-month delay would make a significant difference after years of fighting between the state and the courts over whether the prisons are too crowded.

But "we're always willing to try and negotiate an agreement that will benefit the state and the prisoners," he said.

The ACLU, which had pressed Brown to consider options beyond private prison beds, hailed the judges' order. Kim Horiuchi, ACLU's Northern California director of criminal justice policy, said she was "hopeful" that the state would negotiate in good faith.

Brown recently signed legislation allocating $315 million to pay for a combination of private prison beds and mental health treatment and other rehabilitation programs. Last week, he used the legislation as a basis for his petition that the judges postpone the population limits.

The judges' Tuesday order specifies a list of other options that Brown and inmates' lawyers must consider in their talks, including some the governor has opposed, such as parole of elderly or medically frail inmates.

The order also directs the two sides to discuss the early release of other low-risk prisoners and "any other means, including relocation within the state," that have been offered as solutions to the crowding problem.

"We're hopeful the state will be receptive to those options," Specter said.

The jurists also want the confidential discussions to include state policies governing the incarceration of juvenile offenders now eligible for special parole consideration under a bill recently signed by Brown. And they suggest that the state address how courts are handling a backlog of 2,000 prisoners waiting for resentencing hearings under California's eased three-strikes law.

The judges also offer the governor an enticement to consider prison management alternatives, saying, "The parties may also discuss any necessary or desirable" further extension of the deadline.

Meanwhile, Brown's lawyers filed a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, continuing to press for the high court to overturn the jurists' insistence that inmates be removed from the state's prisons. Brown has long vowed to pursue his appeal to its end.

In their brief, the lawyers contend that the three judges are overstepping federal laws intended to balance judicial oversight with a state's authority to run its prisons as it sees fit.

Horiuchi expressed dismay that state officials were continuing with their appeal.

"We're hopeful they'll reconsider such a dogged position," she said.

In May, the judges rejected Brown's claim that prison conditions were so improved that population caps were no longer needed.

On Tuesday, state corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said the jurists had made that decision "without ever examining the tremendous improvements to the prison healthcare system."

Since then, experts hired by the courts have recently submitted reports citing inadequate medical and mental healthcare in several state prisons. On Tuesday, the court's monitor of prison mental healthcare submitted a report citing chronic staffing shortages and delayed psychiatric care at a Salinas Valley prison.

He requested that the state be ordered to hire more psychiatrists, increase therapy and move mentally ill prisoners into vacant beds in the Salinas Valley psychiatric ward.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Family reunited after child welfare system odyssey

The college application essay was the tipoff. It was beautifully written but painfully rendered; a high school student's story of her family's tumble from middle-class stability into homelessness and addiction.

It helped Danielle Stone earn a spot at UCLA. But it also drew her family into a yearlong odyssey through Los Angeles County's child welfare system.

A teacher who read the essay notified social workers. They visited the family in the San Pedro motel they moved into after a string of evictions.

"They felt like there might be emotional abuse," recalled Danielle's mother, Lisa Stone. "When they visited, everything was OK."

For the next six months, things were mostly OK. Then in the summer of 2012, social workers monitoring the family walked in on an ugly argument between mother and daughter. About a month later, they picked up Danielle's little brother from school and announced that he wouldn't be living with their parents anymore.

"They did an on-the-spot drug test, and we failed," said Lisa's husband, Archie Stone.

The couple began using drugs when they lost their home in the recession. Then Archie's paychecks from his longshoreman's job were garnished and they couldn't even afford an apartment.

"Coming from a million-dollar house to being homeless .... it was a nightmare," Lisa said. "Drugs were a way to not think about it."

They didn't realize how much they were hurting their children with their mood swings and neglect.

"The day social workers walked up the door with our daughter and son and said he was going to foster care, that was the worst day of our lives," she said.

::

If that was the worst day of their lives, last Friday was probably one of the best.

That afternoon they were among a half-dozen reunited families released from supervision by the Department of Children and Family Services.

To get their children back, Lisa and Archie had completed drug treatment programs, taken parenting classes, attended weekly therapy sessions and compiled a year's worth of clean drug tests.

"If you'd asked me at the time it happened whether we needed all of that, I'd be in total disagreement," Archie said. "But did it work out the way it should? It probably did.

"Our life has gotten a lot better. We're a lot closer than during our days of addiction. That part has really been good."

For years family reunification has been a goal of the child welfare system — and a target for critics when children suffer because parents don't make good.

But the horror stories don't tell the whole tale. So many children are taken from struggling parents with fixable problems that it makes sense to try to repair families rather than strand children in foster care.

"This is the best thing we do," said Judge Michael Nash, who presided over Friday's reunification hearings. "When we can put a family back together and get the government out of their lives, it's a victory for everybody involved."

Last year, 6,000 children were returned to their families in a county that has more than 17,000 children in foster care.

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San Diego GOP power brokers plot comeback after Filner debacle

SAN DIEGO — Republican Party leaders and their allies in the business community did not like it when a Democrat was elected mayor last November.

Still shaken by the chaotic nine months of Bob Filner's tenure, including his feud with the tourism industry and his orders to halt several construction projects, Republicans are determined to see the mayor's office returned to GOP hands.

So on Aug. 31, the day after Filner's resignation became effective, an invitation-only meeting was held in the La Jolla home of Tom Sudberry, a prominent developer and Republican contributor.

Depending on who is commenting, the meeting was either an attempt by civic-spirited citizens to return stability to a shaken and demoralized city government or a throwback to the days when a small group of kingmakers could decide San Diego's future.

In any case, it was politics, San Diego style.

The meeting's goal was to find a candidate that the Republican Party and various business groups could rally behind. In the 2012 mayoral primary, when three prominent Republicans were on the ballot, the moderate and conservative vote was split.

The fight left the party splintered for the runoff, helping Filner become San Diego's first Democratic mayor in two decades.

From the three dozen people at the August meeting came an informal consensus that the best candidate was Councilman Kevin Faulconer, 46. Ex-Councilman Carl DeMaio, 39, a loser to Filner in 2012, should stick with a race for Congress, the thinking went, and Supervisor Ron Roberts, 71, should run for reelection.

A pollster reminded attendees that for all its reputation as a bastion of Republicanism, San Diego has become a Democratic city with 40% of voters registered as Democrats, compared with 27% as independents and 26% as Republicans. Democrats hold five of nine seats on the City Council.

With his more agreeable personality and reputation as a moderate, Faulconer was seen by many at the meeting as standing a better chance of attracting centrists than DeMaio, known as brash and uncompromising on issues such as pension reform and outsourcing of city jobs.

DeMaio was clearly eager to make a second try for mayor. Just days earlier he had unveiled what he called a blueprint for restoring ethical behavior to City Hall in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations that swept Filner from office.

DeMaio had his vocal loyalists, most notably Douglas Manchester, 71, hotel developer and owner of the U-T San Diego newspaper who likes to be called Papa Doug. San Diego has not had a decent mayor in 15 years, Manchester loudly told the group.

Manchester's comment did not sit well with Jerry Sanders, who was mayor from 2006 to 2012 and is now chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce. Sanders, 63, had backed Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis over DeMaio in 2012 and was among those who considered Faulconer the party's best choice now.

Sanders, a former police chief known for a low-key, courteous manner, looked Manchester in the eye and used an obscenity to describe the newspaper owner's comment, according to people in attendance and an account on the Voice of San Diego website.

Manchester and Sanders have had their differences: Sanders opposed Proposition 8, the anti-gay-marriage initiative, while Manchester supported and financed the measure. Manchester wants a football stadium built near the waterfront, whereas Sanders prefers an expansion plan for the waterfront convention center. Manchester wanted the city to bid for a Republican national convention, Sanders was not interested.

When Manchester did not immediately back down, Sanders explained that he had spent seven years as mayor cleaning up what he described — again deploying an obscenity — as a "mess" caused when other Republican mayors had let the city's pension deficit spiral.

After the heated exchange, Manchester apologized. DeMaio left the meeting without indicating whether he would run for mayor or stick with a bid for Congress in the 52nd District in hopes of ousting one-term Democrat Scott Peters.

Two days after the meeting, Manchester's newspaper ran an editorial urging DeMaio not to join the mayor's race. The reasoning tracked closely with what was said at the La Jolla meeting.

When DeMaio announced that he would stay in the race for Congress, an editorial praised his "statesmanship" and loyalty to his city and political party.

Manchester is traveling in Europe, according to an aide, and unavailable for comment. Sanders declined to comment.

Faulconer is the only big-name Republican in the Nov. 19 race against three well-known Democrats — former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, Councilman David Alvarez and former City Atty. Michael Aguirre — as well as a lineup of little-known hopefuls. If no candidate gets more than 50%, a runoff will be held between the two top vote-getters.

Carl Luna, political science professor at San Diego Mesa College, said those at the gathering are probably right, "their best hope in winning back the mayor's office lay in circling the wagons around" Faulconer rather than making a second attempt with the more divisive DeMaio. But nudging DeMaio out "was definitely hard-ball real politik."

But Tony Krvaric, chairman of the county Republican Party, who attended the meeting, called it a case of trying to find a candidate to keep San Diego fiscally sound and repair the damage done by Filner.

Krvaric also notes the possible larger significance of the mayor's race in California's second-largest city, given that Republicans hold none of California's statewide offices.

"With a Republican mayor, San Diego could be the only bright spot in the state, the only place with a different, taxpayer-friendly, pro-business management style," he said.

Not surprisingly, the Manchester-Sanders dust-up has been much discussed in media and political circles.

Political consultant John Dadian said that the spat "shows there's not a complete monolith in the old-boys network."

tony.perry@latimes.com

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Lawyers in Michael Jackson wrongful-death suit can't mask animosity

Brian Panish was indignant as the two men argued in the judge's chambers.

"Judge," the Michael Jackson family attorney snapped, "if I want to give him the finger, I know how to give him the finger."

"And you did it quite well twice," replied Marvin Putnam, an attorney for entertainment giant AEG.

Panish denied doing any such thing but added, "If he wants me to give him the finger, I'm happy to do that."

The trial over whether a division of one of America's most powerful entertainment conglomerates is liable in the death of a legendary pop star has been filled with testimony about Jackson's drug use, his physical and mental deterioration and his growing fears as a comeback tour approached.

But the other drama may well be the bruising war of words between the two lead attorneys, one an Ivy League product who worked in France and the other a Fresno State grad who attended school on a football scholarship.

The two lawyers have snipped, argued, shouted, rolled their eyes, bumped shoulders in the courtroom doorway and once got into such a combative argument in the hallway that the court clerk stepped into the corridor to tell them to cool it; an order they promptly ignored.

For more than four months, the lawyers have taken daily shots at each other as jurors and spectators looked on, often in amusement, a sideshow that can be as riveting as some of the testimony.

The day after the argument in the corridor, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos called the two attorneys into her chambers again and told them they would be sanctioned if their behavior didn't improve. Putnam called Panish "despicable" and refused to shake his hand. "Where I'm from," he said, "handshakes mean something."

With closing arguments in the long-running trial expected to start Tuesday, jurors and court spectators will get a final glimpse of two attorneys who seem to share little except an open disdain for each other.

"I can't think of a case where there's been so much animosity," said Panish, a veteran of more than 100 trials. "When I say good morning to them, they don't even say good morning back."

The stakes in the wrongful-death case are high, with one witness calculating that the pop star could have earned as much as $1.5 billion had he lived. But neither attorney, nor their law firms, is a foreigner when it comes to staggering sums of money.

AEG Live is represented by O'Melveny & Myers, a 128-year-old firm with 800 attorneys in 16 offices worldwide and a client list that includes Time Warner, Citigroup and Lockheed Martin. Its lawyers have served as U.S. secretary of State, secretary of Transportation and White House counsel.

The Jackson legal team is led by Panish, Shea and Boyle, which has one office and 15 lawyers. The firm has won 20 jury verdicts of $10 million or more, and its $4.9-billion judgment against General Motors, which a judge cut to $1.2 billion, was the largest personal injury verdict ever. The firm has done well enough to have an ownership interest in two airplanes.

Both Panish and Putnam are listed in the top 100 lawyers in California by the Daily Journal, but almost everything about their firms is different, from the attorneys they hire to their clients. Even the way they dress is different.

The O'Melveny & Myers attorneys look as though they were issued uniforms in colors ranging from black to dark gray. Jessica Stebbins Bina has worn black pantsuits every day of the nearly five months of trial. Contrast that with Deborah Chang, of the Jackson team, who has questioned witnesses while wearing a lime green coat, dangling earrings and high heels.

The O'Melveny team, nearly all Ivy Leaguers, is led by Putnam, a trim, balding man who grew up in Maine, attended Phillips Exeter and Harvard before earning his law degree at Georgetown. His wife, another Harvard grad, is executive director of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute and was president of production for Miramax Films.

Panish, the son of a lawyer, is heavyset with a full head of graying black hair. He attended Catholic schools, went to Fresno State on a football scholarship and received his law degree from Southwestern Law School.

Panish was recommended to the Jackson family by Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., who defended the pop star when he was tried on child molestation charges in 2005. "I told the family Brian Panish was the best plaintiff's civil trial lawyer in L.A. and that no one else comes close," Mesereau said.

Even the way the firms are paid underscores their differences.

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Brown OKs bill allowing minors to delete embarrassing Web posts

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown approved a new law Monday giving young people the ability to remove embarrassing information they post on Internet social networking sites.

California is now the first state in the nation to require websites such as Facebook to give minors a way to take down photos and other posts from their sites, according to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that promotes children's privacy in digital media and tracks federal and state legislation on the issue.

The group supported the measure, which also bans website operators from marketing certain goods, such as guns, bullets and dietary products, to Internet users younger than 18.

Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said his measure offered "a groundbreaking protection for our kids who often act impetuously with postings of ill-advised pictures or messages before they think through the consequences."

Minors, he said, "deserve the right to remove this material that could haunt them for years to come."

The bill also prohibits firms from targeting minors with Web advertisements for harmful products that are illegal for them to use, such as alcohol, tobacco and guns.

The measure was opposed by the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that promotes Internet freedom and accessibility.

Emma Llanso, policy counsel for the group, said the bill, SB 568, was "motivated by the best of intentions" but could cause confusion among website operators.

"If the sites are unclear whether they are covered under the scope of the bill, the response could be to bar minors from the sites entirely," Llanso said.

Technological advances are behind another proposal the governor signed Monday. That legislation outlaws the use of ticket-buying software, or "bots," that can purchase hundreds of the best seats to concerts and sporting events seconds after they go on sale online.

Assemblyman Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) said he introduced the bill because the bots give scalpers an unfair advantage in buying up tickets, which they can resell at a steep profit.

The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, makes it a misdemeanor to use software to circumvent the security of ticket-selling websites to conduct mass purchases. Penalties are up to six months in jail and special civil fines of up to $2,500.

Supporters of the bill, AB 329, include Ticketmaster, which said in a statement: "This is an important step in combating nefarious scalping practices."

Brown also signed a measure Monday requiring California drivers to provide 3 feet of space between their vehicle and bicyclists they pass on the roads — or to slow to a safe speed as they go by. The bill does not specify what speed that is.

The bill represents a partial victory for bicyclists who have lobbied for years for stricter safety measures in response to a large number of accidents involving cars and bicycles.

Brown vetoed a bill last year that also would have directed motorists to cross the double yellow line into opposing traffic lanes if safe to do so and necessary to provide a 3-foot buffer for cyclists.

The provision on crossing into other lanes was removed from this year's bill, AB 1371, by Steven Bradford (D-Gardena).

Violation of the new law, when it takes effect next September, will be an infraction punishable by a base fine of $35. But court fees will make the penalty higher. Drivers who violate the new law and collide with a bicyclist causing injury face a fine of $220.

melanie.mason@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Four new legless lizard species discovered in California

Scientists have discovered four new species of legless lizards in California, including one species that lives beneath the sand dunes near Los Angeles International Airport.

But before we go on, let's get one thing straight: Yes, a snake is a legless lizard, but not all legless lizards are snakes.

Throughout the history of lizard evolution, several lizard lineages have lost their legs, James Parham of Cal State Fullerton said. Snakes are the best-known and most diverse of these lineages, but more than 200 other types of limbless lizards exist throughout the world.

In California, five legless lizard species have been identified, all of them part of a group called Anniella. Four of these legless lizards are new to science and were recently described in Breviora, a publication of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

And how do they differ from snakes?

"Anniella can blink at you, but snakes can't because they don't have eyelids," said Parham, one of the authors of the paper.

They also don't shed their skin in one piece like snakes do, and they move differently.

"Snakes can coil up a lot more, and they are more slithery," Parham said. "Anniella tend to be more rigid."

Anniella are pretty small animals, about as thick as a pencil and rarely more than 8 inches long. They spend their lives wiggling beneath loose, sandy soil, snacking on bugs and larvae.

They don't move fast or far, and the researchers say they may spend their whole lives in an area about the size of your dining room table.

Aside from that, scientists still don't know much about them.

"They are one of the most poorly studied reptiles in California," Parham said. "Because they live under the sand, you can't see what they are doing, and you can't even do a mark-and-recapture because you can't reliably capture these things."

Parham and his coauthor, Theodore Papenfuss, a herpetologist with the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, have been scouring the state for legless lizards for 15 years. When they began their research, only one type of legless lizard was known to live in California.

One of the four newly identified species of Anniella, the Southern California legless lizard, was found under some dead leaves in dunes at the west end of LAX.

The Bakersfield legless lizard was found in three vacant lots in that city's downtown.

The southern Sierra legless lizard was spotted in three dry canyons on the edge of the Mojave Desert, and the Temblor legless lizard was found in the oil fields around Taft, a city on the southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley.

To find these lizards, the scientists scattered 2,000 pieces of cardboard and plywood throughout the state to create moist, cool areas, which appeal to the lizards. Then they returned months later to see if any of the lizards had shown up.

Parham says he and Papenfuss still have 1,000 boards around the state that they plan to check come spring, when the legless lizards are most likely to surface. And who knows — they may uncover even more species.

"This is very much an evolving study," he said.

deborah.netburn@latimes.com

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Napolitano choice fuels criticism over UC system's selection process

The high-profile and surprising choice of former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to head the UC system has fueled criticism over the secret selection process, echoing debates around the country about how higher-education leaders are chosen.

Supporters of a more open method say that better decisions are made when three or four finalists for a university presidency or chancellorship are formally identified to the public. At that point, faculty and students could have a chance to meet them before a final selection.

Some public universities in other states are required to do just that, but the UC and Cal State systems usually do not name more than one finalist and do not divulge the closed-door discussions that led to the nomination. Additionally, the final votes by the UC regents and Cal State trustees provide little information about the searches.

Though widely praised, the selection of Napolitano in July also came as a shock to many outside a relatively small circle of UC regents and other officials.

Some activists at California's public campuses and elsewhere hope to change California's higher-education hiring procedures.

"We want to see a transparent UC, where the people who are paid out of student tuition money are accountable," said Caroline McKusick, a leader of UAW 2865, which represents teaching assistants and other student employees in UC.

McKusick said that complaints about how Napolitano's federal agency handled deportations of immigrants who crossed the border illegally should have been publicly aired before she was named as the sole nominee.

However, UC regents, Cal State trustees and some experts in academic hiring insist that the best candidates — and certainly someone like Napolitano, who had a sensitive job — would be scared away if the searches are fully transparent. They say that state laws and university rules allow closed-door discussions of such hirings with good reason. And they insist that search committees include student, alumni and faculty representatives for a wide range of views.

Sherry Lansing, the UC regent who headed the search committee that nominated Napolitano, declined to discuss specifics about the hiring discussions, citing a pledge of confidentiality. But speaking in general, Lansing said that confidentiality in UC executive searches is "the only way that you can have the broadest pool" of talented candidates.

Napolitano, who is scheduled to start the UC job on Sept. 30, has not responded to requests for interviews.

Some states such as Wisconsin and Hawaii have routinely issued the names of several finalists for top jobs at public universities and invited them to campus forums before one is selected. Florida has gone further in revealing the identities of larger groups of nominees early on.

But legislation to restrict such information was recently adopted in several states, and there is a long history of court challenges from media organizations seeking access to meetings and information. Louisiana State University officials, for example, are appealing a court decision that slapped them with heavy fines for not publicly disclosing their final candidates before they chose new president F. King Alexander, who previously had been head of Cal State Long Beach.

"It's a big debate in my world," said James Ferrare, a senior vice president of the Assn. of Governing Boards, which represents college trustees and regents. He also is an executive at AGB Search, an executive search firm that specializes in higher education. Ferrare said public openness is more important than the potential loss of candidates fearing disclosure.

"Transparency is a much bigger word in higher education than it was in the past," said Ferrare, who has co-written a guidebook on college presidential searches. "I think students, faculty and staff are eager to be a more active participants and be more vocal about that."

Public forums can benefit the finalist candidates as well as the students and faculty, said Craig Smith, a professor of communication studies at Cal State Long Beach. He and other faculty members are pushing for a more open search for Alexander's replacement than the Cal State system conducted recently at other campuses.

"Serious candidates should be exposed to the campus. I think the give and take is important since they get a sense of the people and issues they may face," said Smith, who is director of the campus Center for First Amendment Studies.

Before a policy change in 2011, Cal State traditionally disclosed the names of three or so finalists for campus presidencies and held public visits, according to spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp. But after seeing good candidates drop out early, Cal State decided to leave disclosure to the discretion of the system chancellor and the trustee who heads the search.

None of the six searches since then, including recent ones at Cal State Los Angeles and Fresno, revealed finalists' names, Uhlenkamp said.

"We are choosing from a bigger pool to give us the best possible candidate," he said. No decision has been made on how to handle the Long Beach situation, he added.

That new policy was criticized in a Fresno Bee editorial in May that said a more open process breeds more committed candidates: "It weeds out the tire-kickers and job-seekers simply looking for a bigger paycheck or a change of scenery."

Similarly, after Napolitano's selection, UCLA's Daily Bruin student newspaper called on UC regents to explain "how they picked an individual with no experience in California politics and no familiarity with its public universities."

The differences among states is personified in Kim Wilcox, who was hired last month as UC Riverside chancellor in a process that did not reveal competitors. Over the last two years, he had been publicly identified as a finalist, and later lost bids, to head public universities in Wisconsin, Wyoming and Hawaii. Wilcox declined to comment.

Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, said her experience as a university executive in North Carolina, Arizona and in Cal State convinced her that confidentiality attracts the best leaders.

She said she has "a deep and abiding commitment to the 1st Amendment," but open searches have "a chilling effect" and often lead to the hiring of less experienced candidates than a more confidential process. Napolitano probably would not have come to UC if she had been publicly identified as one of several candidates, Broad said: "Look at the job she was in. What if the nation was in some kind of Homeland Security crisis?"

Such controversies probably will increase in the next few years as more top university executives in the baby boom generation retire, said Michael McLendon, a professor of higher-education policy and leadership at Southern Methodist University.

With more states pushing for confidentiality and other constituencies advocating for information, McLendon said, "the question will be where do we draw the line to balance those interests."

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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