Zach Behrens

A Superior Court tentative ruling last week says that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power must pay back $30 million to customers after violating Prop 218, which says "the state Constitution bars municipal utilities from overcharging ratepayers for water and then using the surplus to pay for other city programs," according to the LA Times. The LADWP has been taking money and moving it to the city's general fund, which pays for...

13.2 million people are now unemployed after some 663,000 jobs were cut last month. That leaves the national unemployment levels at 8.5%, or at 15.6% if you included underemployment after 423,000 jobs were rolled back from full-time to part-time. In total, that's 9 million jobs that were cut back with employees who desire full-time work. And despite everyone's desire to live the 4-Hour Work Week Tim Ferriss style, the nation's average a 33.2 hours...

After two truck crashes in six months time, the most recent leaving two dead and 12 critically injured, Caltrans has put a 90-day ban for trucks traveling on the Angeles Crest Highway. Five-axle vehicles traveling will be restricted from traveling between Angeles Forest Highway and the Foothill (210) Freeway. On Wednesday evening around 5:50 p.m., a truck driven by 43-year-old Marcos Costa barreled through an intersection in La Canada Flintridge killing a father and...

Police this morning have announced that they have arrested a suspect in Sunday morning's hit and run that left one student dead and another injured. This comes one day after an anonymous donor added $100,000 to the award, already at $135,000. The accident happened early Sunday morning, as Adrianna Bachan, 19, and Marcus Garfinkle, 18, were walking across Jefferson at Hoover on their way home from a frat party and were struck by a...

After yesterdays deadly crash that left two dead and twelve injured, the LA Times finds that a girl scout made a powerpoint presentation (part 1, part 2) for the city of La Canada Flintridge and Caltrans prompted by a similar crash last September that destroyed seven cars and injured one. The city also had been pressing for changes after the incident, but they said Caltrans kept on delaying a study. The girl scout, Malia...

For the past few months, there's been a constant drone of Time Warner complaints that come our way. "Time-Warner has hit an all-time low. Despite the fact that both LAist and The Los Angeles Times has reported Bot attacks on the provider they absolutely refuse to 'fess-up' to the issue and credit me with a refund," a reader left in our anonymous tip box. Another tipster followed up with a complaint we experience daily...

"The more I think about the LADOT's new plan for the Olympic-West Pico-East project the more I think they may have gotten things backward," began Streetsblogger Damien Newton about the first public meeting for the project last night. "While the public is discussing what alternatives they would like to see studied, the LADOT is promoting a plan they've already written which would take away peak hour parking and re-time the traffic signals to increase...

Photo by Ryan Jesena/LAist On the heels of a state climate report that said California will have "less water and more frequent and intense wildfires, heat waves and bad-air days throughout this century," a congressional field hearing next week near Joshua Tree National Park will take on similar issues. "Of great concern to Joshua Tree National Park is the threat posed to its namesake species, the Joshua tree, by a warming climate," the meeting...

Julie Wolfson/LAist Highland and Melrose is becoming a small, but nice mecca for good spots to eat. With Susan Feniger's street food themed restaurant just opening up, you've got three solid places to eat. The other two include the Red Pearl Kitchen and Mozza, which brings us back to the above photo. It's a goat cheese, leeks, scallions and bacon pizza, to which LAist Lifestyle Editor Julie Wolfson says, "um...yum!" Submit your Eye Nosh...

The Coast Guard near Morro Bay | Photo by Mike Baird via Flickr Yesterday evening, the local United States Coast Guard Sector entered a new era of public information by launching a blog. This is "a revolution on how we deal with information management and the new social media, or some people call it, Web 2.0.," Admiral Thad W. Allen sternly said in a video. "We are not living in the same information environment...

It's a sad day for a great TV news station. Anchor Paul Moyer announced that he will be retiring. "I have given Los Angeles my loyalty and my professional best, and if I was able to illuminate a dark and dangerous corner with an investigation, or communicate a complex story in a meaningful way, I have been more than repaid for my devotion to this remarkable city,'' he wrote in a memo. Moyer began...

There have been a lot of deadly pedestrian deaths this past week making the news. USC, Fountain and La Brea, Highland Park, to name a few. Today, LAPD's Valley Traffic Division is out in force near California State University Northridge sending plain clothed cops into a marked crosswalk near Reseda and Deerborn and ticketing those who fail to yield. "Some of these motorists are not only failing to yield, they're slowing and then making a conscious decision to accelerate past the ped," exclaimed observer and activist Stephen Box on Twitter.