Photo of an arrest in Hollywood by paulvonspector via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Daily News caused quite a stir last week at city hall when they released a database containing every city employee's salary, save for sworn employees (ex. police, fire). You can browse by department or look up by name. Have a friend who works too hard? Now you know they need a raise. Deal with an irritable city employee over the......

In light of ongoing news about the city's budget crisis (a predicted $295 million dollar deficit), information about the number of people employed by the city who earn more than $100,000 is not sitting well with some. As reported in the Daily News, the newspaper conducted research and compiled a "review of salary data [that] shows more than 21,000 city workers take home $70,000 or more a year and more than 6,000 take home more......

Simon Pastucha is the kind of city government employee Los Angeles needs more of. Why? He walks the talk and the Daily News tagged along for a day of his car-free, public transportation life. The Pasadena resident is an urban designer and planner at the Urban Design Studio, a two-person office charged with making the city a more community oriented, walkable and people friendly one. With his salary, Pastucha used to lease a Mercedes......

Don't know what to get for the gun toting rifleman who has everything? In San Francisco, turning that rifle in to authorities will net you a cool $100 gift card. Eh, you say? OK, how about $200 for AK-47s? I wonder how that conversation might go at home: Honey, where is my gun? Oh, I turned it in sweety, for $100 worth of movie rentals. You did what? Guns don't kill people, gift cards......

Lakers 127, Nuggets 99 - Phil Jackson signed a $24 million contract extension for two years. Two hours later, his Lakers ripped apart the Nuggets. Good day. Heck, even Sasha Vujacic had 22 points -- 19 in the 4th quarter. Luke Walton had 14 points in just 27 minutes. Both were career highs. The Lakers are 9-6 and have recently had some pretty impressive performances. Ducks 4, Flames 1 - After getting yanked in Vancouver,......

The state says the Mayor should get an automatic $8,283 salary increase retroactive to July 1. The mayor says not so fast: “With the City of Los Angeles facing a tough budget year, I do not believe now is the time for me to accept an automatic and retroactive pay raise. Being Mayor of Los Angeles is reward enough, and I’m committed to working twenty-four-seven to protect essential services.” (via a press release) The......

On Tuesday it was announced that Dodger catcher Russell Martin is joining a fraternity of National League catchers that include Johnny Roseboro, Johnny Bench, Benito Santiago, Tony Pena and even Mike Lieberthal. Russell Martin is now a gold glove winner. Since 1957, Rawlings have been giving out the gold glove award for best fielding performance at each position. Martin is the first full year Dodger catcher since Johnny Roseboro in 1966 to win this......

Lakers 119, Jazz 109 - The Lakers may have won their second straight game against a division champ. Kobe may be playing team ball (and even blocked a dunk, for cryin' out loud). We're still not buying it ... Derek Fisher was 0-for-7 in the first half against his former team, but finished with 19 points ... The Lakers removed press row from courtside, adding 15 more seats which are going for $2,300 per game.......

Southern California is girding itself for high winds this weekend. Emergency vehicles, such as huge, water carrying planes and an abundance of fire trucks and crews from around the state and country are staying put, in case a fiery after shock occurs, KPCC reports. Be safe and lock up the 10-year-olds. I've been saying they're trouble for years. There's some sort of strike set to begin Monday. This is not your average work stoppage.......

Fire crews are optimistic, but not yet looking to declare victory over the multiple blazes that have burned over 500,000 acres and displaced millions. We agree, it's best to be sure before declaring victory too soon. One blaze that has partially kept officials from declaring an end to the madness, the Santiago fire in Orange County, is expected to be contained by Friday. But it could take years to rebuild charred neighborhoods. Seven people......

Just one week ago, the Kings were a miserable 1-5 and it looked as though desperate managerial measures would be coming down the pipes. After a 6-0 pounding the LA boys laid down on the Nashville Predators tonight, the Kings are a far more respectable 4-6. One storyline has changed, while another has stayed the same. What's different is that the Kings have exhibited stable defending and offensive production, enough to win three of......

Fire 1, Galaxy 0 - We happened to be at Chicago-area hotspot Krem last night and saw players from both teams drinking, but for different reasons. The Fire scored in extra time to clinch the final MLS playoff spot and send the Galaxy back to Los Angeles for the year. We think we ran into Chicago mega-star Cuauhtemoc Blanco in line for the bathroom, but it's a little fuzzy. We did see LA's Cobi Jones,......

The LA Department of Water and Power seem to think that LA will just sit back and let them raise rates, hide money, and allow themselves to get rich. In the last few weeks the public utility has been exposed for a few troubling trends and actions that we quietly await to see what Mayor Tony, and our other elected officials, will do about it. On Sunday the LA Daily News discovered that over......

What a waste of a quarter billion dollars. For the same amount that the Galaxy promised David Beckham to come to Los Angeles, they could have paid the salaries of all 26 New York Yankees in 2007 -- plus the Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. In the NFL, they could have covered an entire team operating at the salary cap for almost two and a half seasons. Granted, it's a five year......

I've had some frustrating jobs in the past--mostly in retail--but there is nothing quite like the pain and humiliation of stumping for a cause and a minimum wage paycheck. When I was a mere young'un, at 18, I spent six months working as a door-to-door canvasser for Greenpeace. Yes, I was one of those annoying neo-hippie crusader types (mind you, I bathed and shaved and did not spread any funk, unlike some of my......

Selected quotes from another Wilshire gridlocked story in the LA Times ("Signal fixes get the green light" by Ron Gong-Lin II):Last month, [Councilman Jack] Weiss asked the city Department of Transportation for its master plan and list of top needs, and found out there were none. "It's municipal malpractice," Weiss said. "We have a strategic plan for other important aspects for our city, but the one most vexing issue, traffic. . . there's no......

Photo of my little sister by my cousin Kevin for LAist, to represent the fact that I was treated like a five-year-old!!! (And also how I currently feel.) I would like to share a story with everyone about my morning. Last Friday, in my thrilling, endless job search, I stumbled upon a listing for a Marketing Director at a company that organizes conferences on subjects like digital media, the entertainment industry, etc. I would......

Between the competitive NL West, the blazin’ Brewers, and the surging Indians, there are more compelling stories out there than what A-Rod’s bitter wife wore to a game and what the Bronx Bums aren’t doing....

- Are you a racist? Are you sure? Take this quiz and find out - Harvard.edu - Two Chatsworth High baseball players drafted in the first round of the MLB draft - Daily News - Lede of the day: "Two false eyelashes. A maroon-colored toilet. Brandy snifters, burning candles, a Viagra three-pack and a box of Mylanta tablets. These formed part of the tableau de l’amour that cops and coroners found at Phil Spector’s......

Okay, listen up world: I’m moving to Hollywood. That’s right. I’m living the dream. I’m packing up my bags and my books and my pots and my pans, my clothes and my dishes and my ridiculous second-hand overstuffed lounge chairs, and I’m moving. Ten miles away. Somewhere different, somewhere special, somewhere - cheaper than Santa Monica. I mean, let’s face it: despite the rosy promise of rent control, the price of Santa Monica apartments......

"Do something and do it now. Personally for me, it’s beyond frustration — three years and still being at ground zero. This summer’s a big summer. We have to see what direction we want to take as an organization and make those steps and make them now." --Kobe Bryant Wednesday night Kobe Bryant is frustrated. He should be. When the Kobe/Shaq feud reached the point that one of them had to go three years ago......

Despite the Los Angeles Dodgers' 7-2 loss Wednesday night in Colorado, no team in Major League Baseball can boast more wins (10) than the Blue Crew heading into Thursday's action. Led by an airtight bullpen, the Dodger pitching staff (2nd best ERA in the National League) has driven much of the team's early season success. This, of course, is a horrible segue (in fact no segue at all) to the subject of Part 4......

Experience has taught us there is no such thing as a cheap weekend in Park City. But Laker forward Vladimir Radmanovic learned his weekend is going to cost and extra $500,000. You see, he had never been snowboarding before and thought it sounded like a fun way to spend All Star weekend with his friends. Several little problems crept up, however. First, Radmanovic had never snowboarded before and, as anyone who’s done it can tell......

- Among several persons being promoted, Chief Bratton will present a commander’s badge to Captain Sandy Jo MacArthur, who will become the first woman on LAPD to oversee all training functions in the police department as the commanding officer of Training Group. - 77 sworn officers, 25 civilian personnel, 18 helicopters, one airplane, over 18,000 hours of flight time a year and the largest rooftop heliport in the United States of America. Congrats to......

Last Night NBC premiered it's new Underwear-Pervert-based hour-long action-drama, Heroes and all we have to say is that we loved it. Heroes is actually our favorite scripted pilot we've seen so far this year, including much ballyhooed Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Trying not to give a play-by-play of the entire pilot, we will say it set up a few of the regulars in the cast, including our current favorite Hiro Nakamura. A......

With a base salary of over $150k a year, a car allowance of over $600 a month that will cover some pretty high-end leases, a chauffeur, and a staff of between 24-40 workers, the five LA County Board of Supervisors are living the high life on the taxpayers' dime, according to the LA Daily News. Among the nation's largest counties, only commissioners in Harris County, Texas (the Houston area), come close in annual pay......

"Furtado recently admitted the LP is mostly about sex." - Life Style Extra "In a widely publicized salary dispute, Sirico and Van Zandt, who play Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante, respectively, for months refused to budge from their $200,000 per-episode asking price." - Hollywood Reporter "Even the sight of a naked man cartwheeling across the Centre Court grass did not distract Maria Sharapova during her Wimbledon quarter-final yesterday, with the Russian teenager keeping her......

Nine years we've put up with Star Jones on "The View". Now that Elizabeth Hasselbeck has assumed the role of The Annoying One, Star and her fat salary are expendable. Barbara Walters tells everyone who will listen that ABC did not renew Jones-Reynolds' contract at the begining of this year. However, that contradicts what Walters said just two months ago: "Rosie will be there. And if Star wants to continue to be there, she......

Driving around the eastside we've noticed a bunch of guerilla advertising signs tucked into soft shoulders and median strips curbside: the first was SilverLakeSingles.com. We were vaguely curious, perhaps giving a moment or two of thought to why they hadn't done somethingmore hipster, like pasteups, then reconsidered in light of Sony's backlash. Then we let it go. Until we drove by AtwaterSingles.com. And EagleRockSingles.com, HighlandParkSingles.com, SouthPasadenaSingles.com — you get the idea. They are identical......

In the midst of labor negotiations, the National Captioning Institute fired its entire (unionized) Burbank staff. And the workers are pissed. What the company called its best offer included, according to union reps, wage freezes, tripling and quadrupling of production expectations and wage concessions amounting to 58% of salary. Yuck. Closed captioners are the people who translate what happens on the audio track of TV shows or DVDs into words, including sound effects like......