Checking out Broadway's old theaters of the superb

All that was missing Saturday were the searchlights as thousands filed through theater lobby doors to get a rare glimpse of the grand old movie palaces that line Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

"This is like discovering treasure in an old tomb," marveled Venice architect Peter Culley as he stepped from the opulent 2,000-seat Los Angeles Theatre, which opened in 1931. "This is the first time I've been here. We're really surprised because it doesn't give the impression of being this large from the street."

His wife, high school English teacher Lynn Culley, was amazed by the ornate decorative touches: the crystal chandeliers, the marble women's restrooms in the basement, the 60-foot-wide curtain with three-dimensional figures sewn on it to re-create a 1800s French scene.

"The fixtures are so detailed. I don't think people realize there are still places like this here," she said.

Six of the street's dozen movie theaters were open to the public Saturday, and representatives of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation were on hand to lead tours.

"It's a big surprise to a lot of people today to see these theaters are still here. A small number of people have known about these for decades," said Escott Norton, a downtown home designer who is the foundation's executive director.

Not on public view were the 1931 Roxie, which houses a clothing store, and the Arcade and the Cameo, which opened in 1910 and are taken up by a storage space and a jewelry store. Also missing were the 1921 State, now used as a church, the 1917 Rialto, now an Urban Outfitters store, and the 1927 United Artists Theatre at the new Ace Hotel.

The Ace Hotel's theater was being readied for a Sunday night Grammy party but will be open to visitors on Feb. 1, said Hillsman Wright, a co-founder of the 27-year-old foundation.

Wright termed the Roxie, Arcade and Cameo theaters "the orphans of the street." They sit in a row in the 500 block of Broadway and are ripe for development as entertainment venues, he said. "They could share the sidewalk and a joint lobby. These three have amazing potential, and their owner, Joseph Hellen, is open to finding someone to insure these theaters' long-term survival," he said.

Wright, a 62-year-old semi-retired special events consultant from Venice, characterized the conversion of the Rialto into a clothing store and the restoration of its bright neon marquee as "a win," explaining that it could easily be converted back into an entertainment venue if Urban Outfitters ever leaves. He said the clothing chain is keeping the theater's past alive by projecting videos on the back wall where the Rialto's screen once hung.

The Globe Theatre, which opened in 1913 as the Morosco Theatre, is already being turned into an entertainment center by Frenchman Erik Chol. Its sloping floor was leveled out in 1987 when the movie house closed and the space was used as a swap meet. Aldric Angelier, an associate of Chol, said corporate gatherings, fashion shows and rock music performances will be scheduled once construction ends later this year.

"Even though they filled in the orchestra pit, I'm thankful it's still around," said Kim Rawley, a college English teacher from Lancaster, after emerging from the Globe.

At the 1918 Million Dollar Theatre, El Segundo account manager Robyn Walsh stepped from the auditorium and pronounced it "absolutely gorgeous … it's a hidden treasure."

And Michael Hart, a magazine editor from Mount Washington, said he was making a mental note to return to the Million Dollar to experience a movie. The theater is used for occasional screenings.

Kevin Truong, an insurance contractor from Westminster, was surprised that downtown's stand-alone theaters have survived in the era of multiplexes.

But a friend, Brea medical biller Staci Louie, said Broadway is the perfect place for such spectacular venues.

"This whole street is filled with old buildings and great architecture," she said.

bob.pool@latimes.com

l@latimes.com">bob.pool@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Bernanke leaves legacy of stimulus and stagnation

WASHINGTON — As Ben S. Bernanke walks away from the Federal Reserve's marble headquarters on the Mall after presiding over his last policy meeting Wednesday, he will leave behind a bittersweet legacy.

On one hand, his unprecedented efforts to drive down interest rates and stimulate the economy are widely credited by his peers with saving the nation from a second Depression, strengthening the economic recovery and leaving the nation's financial condition poised to take off this year.

Yet those same policies have added momentum to one of the greatest surges in economic inequality in U.S. history, helping the wealthiest Americans add to their enormous riches while the incomes of almost everyone else stagnated.

By driving interest rates down to historic lows, the Fed chairman helped fuel a huge surge in the stock market, where the wealthiest 1% of Americans have been far better positioned to take advantage of gains than their less affluent fellow citizens.

To be sure, his policies have helped those with 401(k) and retirement plans tied to the stock market. Also, low interest rates have stimulated housing sales and permitted many homeowners to save money by lowering their mortgage costs through refinancing.

But unemployment remains high by historical standards, and the financial strength of many workers has deteriorated. Most economists see little chance of that picture changing radically anytime soon.

Fed policy "did a wonderful job of keeping the financial system from falling off the table," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer with BMO Private Bank in Chicago. "But as a side effect or consequence, it's driven a wedge between the haves and have-nots."

Bernanke, whose term expires Friday, has repeatedly rebuffed the notion that his policies have done little for the masses.

"It's simply not true," he said publicly in November before rattling off ways that the Fed's low-interest policies have benefited Main Street — cheaper car loans, recovering home values, stable consumer prices and more jobs.

Even so, from mid-2009, when the Great Recession ended, to 2011, the average net worth of the wealthiest 7% of households surged 28% to $3.2 million, according to Pew Research. For everybody else, such wealth — assets minus debts — fell 4% during that period to $133,817.

Since 2011, the disparity has grown. Stocks have jumped even higher in the last two years, according to data from Swiss financial services company Credit Suisse Group. And income statistics show a similar, though less dramatic, pattern.

Major corporations, meanwhile, have piled up millions of dollars in cash reserves.

The result is that inequality, which narrowed some during the recession as the stock market plummeted, has widened again and exacerbated a long-running problem that has surged to the forefront of public discourse for the rich and powerful gathered last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as well as for U.S. policymakers and ordinary Americans.

President Obama is expected to press the matter in his State of the Union address Tuesday.

For Bernanke, it's a subject that has evoked particular sensitivity as he has sought to dispel the public perception that the Fed was more interested in helping Wall Street than Main Street.

That image was etched on the minds of many people when the Fed engineered bailouts of such major financial firms as insurer American International Group Inc. and banking firm Citigroup Inc. along with General Motors Corp. and Chrysler during the 2007-09 recession.

In interviews with media, town-hall-style forums and visits to college campuses and even a military base, Bernanke has tried to explain to people why these controversial rescues and other funding programs were needed to revive credit markets and keep the economy from collapsing.

Bernanke's groundbreaking efforts to engage the public and open up the Fed to the outside may be one of his lasting achievements as chairman; Vice Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen is expected to continue promoting that increased transparency as his successor.

Still, the Fed's improved communications, effective with financial markets, have had limited success with ordinary folk.

One reason is the weak recovery, which has left many people disenchanted with politicians and policymakers in general.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Bernanke leaves legacy of stimulus and stagnation

WASHINGTON — As Ben S. Bernanke walks away from the Federal Reserve's marble headquarters on the Mall after presiding over his last policy meeting Wednesday, he will leave behind a bittersweet legacy.

On one hand, his unprecedented efforts to drive down interest rates and stimulate the economy are widely credited by his peers with saving the nation from a second Depression, strengthening the economic recovery and leaving the nation's financial condition poised to take off this year.

Yet those same policies have added momentum to one of the greatest surges in economic inequality in U.S. history, helping the wealthiest Americans add to their enormous riches while the incomes of almost everyone else stagnated.

By driving interest rates down to historic lows, the Fed chairman helped fuel a huge surge in the stock market, where the wealthiest 1% of Americans have been far better positioned to take advantage of gains than their less affluent fellow citizens.

To be sure, his policies have helped those with 401(k) and retirement plans tied to the stock market. Also, low interest rates have stimulated housing sales and permitted many homeowners to save money by lowering their mortgage costs through refinancing.

But unemployment remains high by historical standards, and the financial strength of many workers has deteriorated. Most economists see little chance of that picture changing radically anytime soon.

Fed policy "did a wonderful job of keeping the financial system from falling off the table," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer with BMO Private Bank in Chicago. "But as a side effect or consequence, it's driven a wedge between the haves and have-nots."

Bernanke, whose term expires Friday, has repeatedly rebuffed the notion that his policies have done little for the masses.

"It's simply not true," he said publicly in November before rattling off ways that the Fed's low-interest policies have benefited Main Street — cheaper car loans, recovering home values, stable consumer prices and more jobs.

Even so, from mid-2009, when the Great Recession ended, to 2011, the average net worth of the wealthiest 7% of households surged 28% to $3.2 million, according to Pew Research. For everybody else, such wealth — assets minus debts — fell 4% during that period to $133,817.

Since 2011, the disparity has grown. Stocks have jumped even higher in the last two years, according to data from Swiss financial services company Credit Suisse Group. And income statistics show a similar, though less dramatic, pattern.

Major corporations, meanwhile, have piled up millions of dollars in cash reserves.

The result is that inequality, which narrowed some during the recession as the stock market plummeted, has widened again and exacerbated a long-running problem that has surged to the forefront of public discourse for the rich and powerful gathered last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as well as for U.S. policymakers and ordinary Americans.

President Obama is expected to press the matter in his State of the Union address Tuesday.

For Bernanke, it's a subject that has evoked particular sensitivity as he has sought to dispel the public perception that the Fed was more interested in helping Wall Street than Main Street.

That image was etched on the minds of many people when the Fed engineered bailouts of such major financial firms as insurer American International Group Inc. and banking firm Citigroup Inc. along with General Motors Corp. and Chrysler during the 2007-09 recession.

In interviews with media, town-hall-style forums and visits to college campuses and even a military base, Bernanke has tried to explain to people why these controversial rescues and other funding programs were needed to revive credit markets and keep the economy from collapsing.

Bernanke's groundbreaking efforts to engage the public and open up the Fed to the outside may be one of his lasting achievements as chairman; Vice Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen is expected to continue promoting that increased transparency as his successor.

Still, the Fed's improved communications, effective with financial markets, have had limited success with ordinary folk.

One reason is the weak recovery, which has left many people disenchanted with politicians and policymakers in general.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Jockeying for memorabilia at Hollywood Park

If you have memories of a place that stretch over a lifetime — from when you were a kid there to when you brought your kids and then their kids — it's hard to go back and see it empty and unloved, the flowers unwatered and dead, dust coating the floors and the benches.

It all happened so quickly at Hollywood Park, where thoroughbreds last thundered down the track just a month ago. Now, with that day's racing slips still scattered about the stands, everything that can be removed is being sold off: the ticket booths, the Jumbotron, the jockeys' impossibly small, narrow bunk beds.

The 75-year-old Inglewood property was open Wednesday and Thursday to anyone wanting to preview the items in the two-day auction, which ends Saturday.

Special events planners and owners of racetracks and restaurants carried around clipboards to make notes on the big stuff: the floodlights, the tractors, the walk-in coolers, the cement mixer, the hot-walking machines used to cool down the horses.

Fans and former employees were drawn to potentially affordable memorabilia: stacks of brightly colored saddle cloths, lawn jockeys from the winner's circle, bobbleheads of trainer Bob Baffert, framed photos of Seabiscuit, Citation and Bill Shoemaker on Swaps, DVDs by the boxful of Zenyatta and Lava Man.

They could touch the Toledo scale on which winning jockeys were weighed out. They also got one last chance to stand in the stands, stare at the track, maybe replaying a race.

Bright pink auction tags were everywhere, from ground level to the rooftop boxes, and the public was free to wander as never before — into the jockeys' locker rooms and sauna, the members-only Turf Club, the paddocks.

They could ride in a pink-tagged white van serving as a shuttle bus to the infield — and there find a last remaining pink flamingo and a pink-tagged swan boat in which the Goose Girls of yesteryear used to wave at the crowds from the infield lakes.

Sure, many people prefer the more vintage look of Santa Anita and Del Mar. But this spot south of L.A., especially dear to fans living nearby, was swanky in its day.

It was founded with the help of Hollywood moguls and stars. In the early years, you might go there and glimpse Claudette Colbert or Joan Crawford or Fred Astaire, who owned racehorses.

It was a place people used to dress up to visit, to eat steak at the Turf Club.

"It's heartbreaking. This was Zenyatta's home. This was the home of the champions. I never missed a Zenyatta race. I come here every Thanksgiving," said Sharon Liveten, 55, as she stood in the memorabilia room. "There are people who came here who wouldn't go to Santa Anita. They were locals. It was a neat kind of crowd."

The plans for the 238-acre site's future as Hollywood Park Tomorrow — a mixed-use development with homes, shops, movie theaters and a big hotel — don't sit well with Liveten and others who treasure the Hollywood Park of yesterday.

"It should have been a historical monument," said Charles Francis, 64, a retired tile-setter who first visited the track as a child and as a teenager worked as a groom and hot walker for trainer Charles Whittingham.

In the late 1970s, Francis' wife, Darlana, was out of work when she came to Hollywood Park with a friend, who fronted her the money to bet. She won $680.

"It meant a hell of a lot," she said Thursday as she walked past rows of empty betting windows.

Their friend Earl Warren Sr. said he liked to pop in and out some days when he was still working as a painter. "I would come here and bet, eat my chicken wings," he said. "I had a ball here, mm-hmmm. Yeah, I had a real nice time here."

Good memories are powerful. Nostalgia files away facts that don't fit.

Even though average attendance had fallen off a cliff in recent decades — dropping to below 4,000 last summer — and simulcasts and off-track betting kept many fans from making the trip, only a few of those who came this week to look and remember owned up to visiting less.

One who did was Stan Thornton, 62, of Inglewood, as he stepped into the winner's circle.

"I didn't come here on a regular basis … and I live literally straight across from here," he said, pointing out past the infield. "Sign of the times, you know. One goes and one comes."

Then he went, in search of the jockeys' rec room.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat @latimescitybeaton Twitter and at Los Angeles Times City Beaton Facebook.

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Pasta to please the pickiest palates

In Italy, it's so critical that the pasta be cooked right that I've seen a whole dinner party standing around the pot at the crucial moment to ensure the spaghetti wouldn't be overcooked. Some people prefer freshly made pasta, the more eggs the better. Others swear by dried pasta and insist on certain brands from Gragnano outside Naples. I say there's room for both.

The Factory Kitchen

Longtime Valentino chef Angelo Auriana is back in town as chef/partner in the Factory Kitchen downtown. At this casual Italian restaurant, head straight to the pasta section of the menu for his silky mandilli di seta (handkerchief pasta) tossed in a fragrant almond-basil pesto from Liguria embellished with Sardinian sheep's milk cheese. Wide ribbon noodles are speckled with olives and sauced in a rich duck ragú. To try too, his paccheri (large dried pasta tubes) in a spicy tomato sauce enriched with pork sausage. His ricotta gnocchi? Ethereally light, the best in town.

1300 Factory Place, Los Angeles, (213) 996-6000, http://www.thefactorykitchen.com. Pasta dishes, $18 to $22.

Bucato

At his new Culver City restaurant, Evan Funke takes a purist's stand, making pasta with only flour and eggs and rolling it out with a long wooden rolling pin as they do in Emilia-Romagna. That means even his cacio e pepe is made with fresh, square-cut spaghetti alla chitarra, upsetting those who insist it should be made only with dried pasta. Taken on its own terms, though, it's delicious. Go for his pappardelle with a gentle lamb ragú. And who could resist the delicate ravioli with peas, pancetta, brown butter and Parmigiano Reggiano?

3280 Helms Ave., Culver City, (310) 876-0286, http://www.bucato.la.com. Pasta dishes, $15 to $17.

Angelini Osteria

Pasta e fagioli can be made with either fresh or dried pasta. I've always loved the version of the bean soup Gino Angelini makes at Angelini Osteria. He uses maltagliati ("badly cut" fresh pasta scraps) — not a lot of them, but enough to give the velvety beans a lift. Add a swirl of olive oil and some black pepper and it's pure comfort, Italian style. But then I so love his bombolotti all' Amatriciana, fat ridged-tube pasta in a sauce made with his house-cured guanciale, San Marzano tomatoes and dried hot peppers too.

7313 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 297-0070, http://www.angeliniosteria.com. Pasta, $9 to $22.

irene.virbila@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

C'mon, give dried fruit a chance

I knew dried fruit had an image problem, but I had no idea how bad it had gotten.

Sure, I can kind of understand how prunes, er, "dried plums," might have an issue — let's face it, any time your marketing solution involves changing your product's name entirely, well, things are tough.

But the other day, I was talking to Cooks County's Roxana Jullapat, and she told me that in her restaurant, merely putting the word "raisin" on the menu was enough to kill sales for a dish completely. Interestingly, actually adding the raisins had no effect whatsoever. People seem to like them, just so long as they're added on the down-low.

Truly, dried fruit has become the ingredient that dare not speak its name.

What's weirdest about that is all the really good cooks I know love dried fruit. On Facebook recently, cookbook author Maria Speck (her "Ancient Grains" is terrific) polled colleagues about which dried fruits they had in their pantries. I was feeling pretty proud: dark and golden raisins, currants, apricots, cranberries, sour cherries, figs and prunes (yes, I call them prunes, and proudly!).

But when other cooks chimed in, there were so many others mentioned that I felt like a piker. How could I have overlooked apples, mangoes, bananas, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, barberries … ? The list goes on and on.

So why do others hate them?

It wasn't so very long ago that even raisins were regarded as exotic ingredients, reserved for special occasions only. Until the 1870s, almost all raisins had to be imported from Europe. It wasn't until the birth of the gigantic vineyards of the Central Valley (located smack in the middle of one of the finest natural dehydrators known to man) that they began to become commonplace.

The Santa Clara Valley south of San Francisco proved to be just as hospitable for prunes. In the 1850s, a visitor brought over cuttings of the famed Agen prune trees from southwestern France; 50 years later there were more than 90,000 acres, almost all of them of that variety.

Indeed, before the Napa Valley became vinified, it was far better known for its prune orchards, and that's much more recent history. In 1960, Napa's prunes were more valuable than Napa's grapes.

Do we take raisins, prunes and their like for granted today because they've become so familiar?

I certainly don't. Dried fruit tastes too good to ignore just because of some silly fashion. Particularly at this time of year when there's not a lot of sweetness to be had (produce-wise), dried fruit can come to the rescue in both savory dishes and desserts.

Think like a Sicilian and combine raisins with salty or pungent flavors. I made a pasta the other day with broccoli, salted anchovies, raisins and pine nuts. Or toss a handful of raisins into a kale and wild rice salad to offset the dark greens' slight bitterness. (Steep them in warm water or brandy to soften a little before cooking.) Raisins or prunes are great with braised meats; just add them close to the end so they soften but don't fall apart.

Sweets? Besides the obvious — scattering raisins in just about anything possible: cookies, cakes, puddings and even pie fillings — I always have a jar of prune compote in the refrigerator during the winter. Make a strong brew by cooking black tea in a simple syrup with spices and orange zest, and poach the prunes just long enough to soften them slightly. The slight bitterness of the tea and the perfume of orange balances the sweetness and warm spice.

Serve the prunes and their syrup with a spoonful of yogurt and you've got a terrific dessert that's always on hand.

And if you love dried fruit as much as I do, you might even have them for breakfast.

russ.parsons@latimes.com

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Kobe Bryant appreciates All-Star votes but has no desire to play

MIAMI — Thanks for the All-Star votes, Kobe Bryant wanted his fans to know, but, uh, don't expect him to play in the game.

When Bryant was announced Thursday as a starter in the Feb. 16 game, he said it was "always a tremendous honor" but had no desire to play in New Orleans that weekend.

"No, I don't think so," he said flatly.

How come?

"With all due respect to the fans who voted me in, and I certainly appreciate that ... but you've got to do the right thing as well. My feeling is you've got to reward these young guys for the work that they've been putting in," Bryant said.

Cognizant he played only six games this season because of injuries, Bryant lobbied twice this month for younger Western Conference guards to get the starting nod, specifically Portland's Damian Lillard.

Houston's James Harden also was not voted into the game, but Golden State's Stephen Curry, a young guard, will start alongside Bryant.

Lillard and Harden are expected to be added to the West squad next week as reserves chosen by the 15 West coaches.

The NBA almost surely would battle Bryant if he tried to skip the game, which would mark his 16th All-Star appearance.

He is supposed to return from a fractured knee in early February, perhaps playing half a dozen games before All-Star weekend. Bryant said he expected a two-game suspension from the NBA if he skipped it so he might suit up, reluctantly.

"It just means somebody will have to lose a spot, unfortunately," he said. "Our backups will be playing a lot if I go in there and do my two minutes and sit down."

Bryant will lose leverage if he returns soon from his knee injury and plays for the Lakers, which is expected. The NBA does not have an "official rule" for All-Star participation, but it frowns upon healthy players skipping the event.

There was a compromise in 2008, when Bryant played in Lakers games despite a torn ligament in his pinkie. The team heavily lobbied the NBA to keep him out of the All-Star game, but Bryant took part in it. He played only 2 minutes 52 seconds in the game, also in New Orleans.

Bryant, 35, has missed most of this season because of a torn Achilles' tendon and his knee injury. He is averaging 13.8 points, 6.3 assists and 5.7 turnovers a game.

Lillard, 23, is averaging 21.2 points and 5.8 assists. Harden, 24, is averaging 24.3 points and 5.4 assists.

"I mean, they've been playing all season," Bryant said. "I see no reason why they shouldn't be out there doing their thing."

If Bryant doesn't play in the game, he might not be able to say goodbye to NBA Commissioner David Stern, who is retiring after that weekend.

"I've said goodbye to him plenty," Bryant said wryly. "He's a phone call away."

Bryant missed the Lakers' first 19 games while recovering from a torn Achilles' tendon, returned for barely a week and was hurt again.

He said he wouldn't see a doctor again this month, making Feb. 4 against Minnesota the earliest he would return. He revealed one positive bit of health news Thursday.

"I don't even worry about my Achilles'," he said. "It's not even something that's on the radar anymore."

Nash back soon?

Lakers Coach Mike D'Antoni was hopeful Steve Nash would return next Tuesday against Indiana after sitting out since Nov. 10 because of nerve damage in his back.

"That's what they keep saying. We'll see him and he's going to try it," D'Antoni said. "If it works out, great. If not, we'll reevaluate him."

Nash, who turns 40 on Feb. 7, is averaging 6.7 points and 4.8 assists in six games.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

Twitter: @Mike_Bresnahan

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Metrolink to replace contractor to avoid train control project delays

Southern California's Metrolink commuter rail agency plans to replace a key subcontractor Friday in an attempt to keep on schedule a $211-million, state-of-the-art collision avoidance system.

The passenger railroad's board of directors is expected to approve a $6.8-million contract to Wabtec Corp. for an important component of the "Positive Train Control" system that will help dispatchers keep track of trains on Metrolink's 500-mile network. Officials said the current subcontractor, ARINC, failed to meet deadlines and agreed to the change.

Wabtec has more experience delivering computer-assisted dispatch systems, according to Metrolink officials. Among other things, the company will be required to install a computer server that supports the PTC system.

The six-county commuter rail service, which averages more than 40,000 riders a day, is trying to become the first passenger carrier in the nation to install the high-tech safety technology on its entire system. Positive train control combines computers, digital radio systems and global positioning devices to track trains and take control of them if necessary to prevent collisions, derailments and other accidents.

Metrolink's project was launched in the aftermath of the 2008 Chatsworth crash that killed 25 people and injured 135. Federal investigators said the technology could have prevented the head-on collision of a Metrolink train with a Union Pacific freight train.

The accident prompted Congress to require U.S. freight and passenger railroads to install positive train control by December 2015. Metrolink officials plan to have their system operational by next January.

The proposed contractor change, if approved, will allow Metrolink to "move forward in an expeditious manner while keeping the overall schedule for positive train control on track to be completed well before the federal deadline," said Jeff Lustgarten, a spokesman for the commuter line.

A demonstration project for Metrolink's PTC system is scheduled to begin Feb. 18 on a line that runs to San Bernardino through Los Angeles County, north Orange County and Riverside County.

But before the demonstration project can begin, Metrolink needs to complete 10 consecutive days of successful testing and receive approval from the Federal Railroad Administration.

dan.weikel@latimes.com

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Up next for the Lakers: Friday at Orlando

Miami's Chris Anderson and Pau Gasol fight for a rebound during the Lakers' loss Thursday to the Heat, 109-102, at American Airlines Arena. (Rhona Wise / EPA / January 23, 2014)

January 23, 2014, 9:03 p.m.

Lakers tonight

AT ORLANDO

When: 4 PST.

Where: Amway Center.

On the air: TV: TWC SportsNet, TWC Deportes; Radio: 710, 1330.

Records: Lakers 16-27, Magic 11-32.

Record vs. Magic (2012-13): 1-1.

Update: Orlando has lost 12 of its last 13 games overall and owns the NBA's second-worst home record (8-14). It's hard to find any bright spots on the Magic, but former UCLA standout Arron Afflalo is having a solid season (20.2 points a game) and shooting guard Victor Oladipo is in the mix to be NBA rookie of the year (13.7 points, 3.9 assists a game).

— Mike Bresnahan

Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.

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Two men charged with funneling illegal campaign funds

SAN DIEGO — Just as this city is recovering from the scandal that drove Bob Filner from the mayor's office, along comes another political firestorm. But instead of sexual harassment, it involves allegations of illegal contributions flowing into mayoral campaigns.

A retired San Diego police officer and the owner of a Washington, D.C.-based election services business have been charged with conspiring to funnel more than $500,000 in illegal contributions from an unidentified Mexican businessman into recent political campaigns.

Ravneet Singh, 41, owner of ElectionMall Inc., and retired police detective Ernesto Encinas, 57, conspired to steer the money into independent committees supporting candidates in the mayoral elections of 2012 and 2013, among other elections, according to a federal complaint unsealed Tuesday.

Under U.S. law, foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to any American political campaign.

The complaint does not identify the candidates, but appears to refer to Filner and Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis, among others. Dumanis was defeated in the 2012 mayoral primary; Filner was elected in the runoff that fall.

The complaint contains no assertion that the candidates knew of the contributions to the independent committees or that any candidate met with Encinas, who allegedly acted as the go-between for the businessman and the committees. The businessman has been locked in high-stakes litigation for several years with San Diego-based Sempra Energy.

On Wednesday, four local politicians returned contributions from Encinas: Acting Mayor Todd Gloria returned $500, congressional candidate Carl DeMaio returned $500, and Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) returned $3,500. Dumanis, who is seeking a fourth term as district attorney, returned $1,400 received from Encinas and his wife.

The charges come as City Council members David Alvarez, a Democrat, and Kevin Faulconer, a Republican, square off in a Feb. 11 mayoral runoff. The charges do not mention Alvarez or Faulconer or any committees supporting their candidacies.

Filner, who resigned Aug. 30, is serving a 90-day sentence of home confinement after pleading guilty to three counts of mistreating women.

The case filed this week has raised questions for Dumanis.

"As D.A., [Dumanis] is in a 'Caesar's wife' situation where any hint of undue influence weighs heavier," said Carl Luna, political science professor at San Diego Mesa College.

A campaign consultant for Dumanis issued a statement late Tuesday saying that the case "appears to be related to contributions to an independent expenditure committee and not our campaign. Our campaign followed the law and did not coordinate with this independent committee."

The complaint says that during the 2012 mayoral primary, "a local news source published an article noting the Foreign National's large expenditures and implicitly questioning whether he was eligible to donate. The article noted that the Foreign National was a Mexican citizen."

In May 2012, just before the mayoral primary election, the weekly San Diego City Beat reported that a political action committee, San Diegans for Bonnie Dumanis for Mayor 2012, had received at least $100,000 from an aviation firm controlled by Susumo Azano, described as a Mexican national living in Coronado.

Azano has "bankrolled lawsuits in a land dispute against Sempra Energy in Mexico," the newspaper reported.

According to court documents, Azano is involved with legal disputes with Sempra in U.S. federal court, Mexican federal court, Mexican state court and Mexican agrarian reform court. At issue is 250 acres that Sempra owns next to its liquid-natural gas terminal near Ensenada but that Azano asserts he should own under Mexican law concerning squatters' rights.

Efforts to reach Azano were unsuccessful.

In the complaint, one of the illegal contributions from the defendants was $100,000 for social media services. Another contribution of $100,000 was made by the same Foreign National to the same committee, the complaint alleges.

Republican political strategist Kevin Spillane, who headed fundraising for the independent committee backing Dumanis, is quoted in the City Beat story as saying that the contributions were legal because Azano has a green card. The federal complaint says the Foreign National does not have a green card.

District attorney candidate Robert Brewer, a former Los Angeles prosecutor who has been in private practice in San Diego for more than 20 years, said Dumanis "owes the public a full accounting of all of her connections to the defendants."

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2 Southern Californians expected to get top Legislature posts

SACRAMENTO — Two Southern Californians are poised to lead the state Legislature for the first time in four decades, after lawmakers put aside the geographic rivalries that typically cleave the powerful posts between north and south.

San Diego Democrat Toni Atkins was selected as the next speaker of the Assembly by unanimous vote in her caucus Wednesday, about a week after state Sen. Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles was anointed heir to the top Senate job.

Both are expected to take over after formal floor votes in their respective houses.

Traditionally, each house has been led by a lawmaker from a different region. The current Assembly speaker, John A. Pérez, is from Los Angeles; his counterpart in the Senate, Darrell Steinberg, hails from Sacramento. Both are Democrats.

The last time one end of the state produced leaders at the helms of both houses was 1995, when Democrat Bill Lockyer of San Leandro was Senate President Pro Tem and Willie Brown of San Francisco was Assembly speaker, according to Greg Schmidt, secretary of the Senate.

It has been even longer since two Southern Californians were in charge: In 1974, Democrat James R. Mills of Coronado led the Senate and Democrat Robert Moretti of Los Angeles presided over the Assembly, Schmidt said.

In their pursuit of the top posts, both Atkins and De Leon assured their colleagues that they would be sensitive to the distinct regional needs of the state.

Atkins said Wednesday that she and her fellow legislators "are Californians first."

"There are urban-rural issues, there are coastal-inland, north-south. As a caucus, we work on all of those issues together," Atkins said.

California's longstanding north-south rivalry bubbled to the surface as the choices for the leadership jobs were becoming clear. A Bay Area business group warned that it was not in the state's interest for one region to have too much sway. Later, a Los Angeles group countered that Southern California has most of the state's population.

In the end, though, lawmakers said they were able to put aside their geographic ties. The contests were decided by "who could get the votes," said Assemblyman Steven Bradford (D-Gardena).

Atkins, 51, the daughter of a Virginia coal miner and a seamstress, was first elected to the Legislature in 2010 and has been majority leader in the Assembly since 2012.

She has offered legislation on low-income housing and been a vocal supporter of abortion rights. Last year, the governor signed her bill allowing non-physicians such as nurse-practitioners to perform abortions.

Before arriving in Sacramento, she had been a member of San Diego's City Council for eight years. She wrote the city's "living wage" ordinance, which raised the wages of workers on city contracts, and she advocated for construction of low-income housing.

Atkins worked in community health clinics in the city after moving there at age 23 to be near a sister in the Navy. She had graduated from Emory and Henry College in Emory, Va., with a degree in political science.

Married to real estate and economic development consultant Jennifer LeSar, Atkins will be the first lesbian to serve as speaker, although not the Assembly's first openly gay leader. Pérez took that distinction when he became speaker in 2010.

A floor vote by the full Assembly to officially designate Atkins as speaker is slated for early spring.

De Leon, an eight-year veteran of the Legislature, was originally from San Diego. There, his mother, who at one time was in the country illegally, worked as a housekeeper, traveling daily from their home in the poor Logan Heights neighborhood to clean houses in La Jolla and other wealthy enclaves.

As a lawmaker, he has pursued legislation to help immigrants. He was instrumental in pushing through a bill last year providing wide access to driver's licenses for those in the country illegally.

He made national headlines in 2012 with a bill that will set up a state-managed retirement account for low- and moderate-income workers who don't have pensions.

De Leon, 47, attended UC Santa Barbara, but he left after spending too much time on academic probation and finished his bachelor's degree in political studies at Pitzer College. He worked for the California Teachers Assn. before winning election to the Assembly in 2006.

He moved to the Senate in 2010. A single father of a 19-year-old daughter, De Leon chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The Senate is expected to vote formally on the leadership post in the summer, after the next budget is approved.

"I am humbled by the support of my colleagues from all over California and I intend to focus on their interests and concerns," De Leon said in a statement Wednesday. "I'm confident and look forward to continue California's leadership in solving our most vexing problems."

melanie.mason@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Times staff writer Tony Perry in San Diego contributed to this report.

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Officer in abuse case says he has never used a baton

Two Los Angeles police officers who are being sued on allegations of using excessive force took the witness stand Wednesday and denied that they beat a former banking executive during an arrest that left the man with a broken shoulder blade and multiple nose fractures.

LAPD Officer James Nichols told jurors hearing a federal civil rights lawsuit that he never struck onetime Deutsche Bank Vice Chairman Brian Mulligan, a former co-chair of Universal Pictures, with a baton and wasn't even carrying one during the May 2012 confrontation in Highland Park, as Mulligan has alleged.

"I have never once used my baton in my 13 years of being a police officer," Nichols said. He said he left the baton in his police cruiser after jumping out to pursue a screaming and delusional Mulligan on foot.

Mulligan testified this week that Nichols broke his nose in 15 places with a baton strike, and that the officers broke his shoulder blade during a beating at Avenue 54 and Meridian Avenue.

Answering questions from Mulligan's attorney, Louis "Skip" Miller, Nichols and his partner, Officer John Miller, testified that they don't know exactly how Mulligan suffered his injuries.

The officers told jurors that they detained Mulligan about 10:40 p.m. May 15 after reports of a man trying to get into cars near Occidental College. They determined that Mulligan was not under the influence of illegal narcotics, but testified that he told them he had consumed a legal drug known as bath salts — a synthetic stimulant designed to be like cocaine or methamphetamine — four days before and had not slept since. Mulligan, however, testified that he had not used bath salts for two weeks before the incident.

With their supervisor's approval, the officers left Mulligan at a Highland Park motel to sleep it off, they said. But within hours, they testified, Mulligan was tossing a metal trash can into the street, and the officers again responded to the scene.

Nichols said that as he ran after Mulligan, the 54-year-old executive turned to face him, curling his fingers like claws, gnashing his teeth and growling. Then, Nichols testified, Mulligan got into a tackle stance and charged him.

Nichols said he used Mulligan's own momentum to shove him to the ground by the curb. He said that as he and his partner tried to pin and handcuff Mulligan, he tried to bite them and buck them off.

"He was ramming his face into the street," Nichols, a 13-year veteran of the LAPD, told jurors, adding that Mulligan "hit his face hard."

John Miller, a six-year veteran of the LAPD, testified that neither he nor his partner struck Mulligan in the head with a baton; he testified that he delivered only two baton blows to Mulligan's torso. He told jurors that striking someone in the head with a baton would be considered a potential use of deadly force, and he would have reported his partner had that occurred.

"I like my house. I like my dogs. I don't think I'd do well in prison," the officer said. Asked to explain what caused Mulligan's injuries, Miller replied, "I wouldn't know if I did it, my partner did it or the ground did it."

But an expert witness, Dr. Harry Lincoln Smith, testifying on Mulligan's behalf, said that after examining the man's injuries, he concluded that the nose fractures were the results of baton strikes. He said a mark on Mulligan's shoulder blade was a "pretty good match" for the tip of a baton.

Mulligan and the officers agree on hardly anything about that night except that they first met at an entrance of Occidental College.

Mulligan testified that after being detained and the officers had determined that he committed no crime, he asked them to call a cab or his wife in La Cañada Flintridge. Instead, he said, they took him to Highland Park Motel and put him in a room with no phone. He said Miller told him he would be killed if he left before morning — something Miller disputes — and so he ran, fearing for his life. That was what he was doing, he said, when the officers caught up with him again.

richard.winton@latimes.com

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Mark Ridley-Thomas acknowledges home improvements by county workers

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas acknowledged Tuesday that a taxpayer-funded project to install a security system in a converted garage at his home involved improvements "over and above" that job, but said he reimbursed the county for the upgrades.

The Times had disclosed that county-paid crews worked at the supervisor's Leimert Park home for a week and replaced the garage's interior walls, installed electrical wiring and equipment, and put in appliances, including a wall-mounted air conditioner and heater and a television.

Ridley-Thomas has declined repeated requests from The Times to comment on the project, and the county has not released any documentation of reimbursements.

In an interview on radio station KCRW-FM (89.9), Ridley-Thomas said he repaid the county nearly $4,000 for the cost of the appliances and extra labor. He did not offer a breakdown of the reimbursements or say when he made them.

The county has provided to The Times heavily redacted records that list the cost of the security work at $10,038. It was unclear whether that amount accounted for any reimbursements.

In the segment on KCRW's "Which Way L.A.," Ridley-Thomas said the garage had been converted before he bought the home more than 20 years ago. A check of city databases turned up no permits for the conversion or for the more recent work by the county.

Ridley-Thomas did not address why the county project was done without permits. Last week, after a Times report on the garage work, the Los Angeles Building and Safety Department opened an investigation into the conversion.

Department spokesman Luke Zamperini said Tuesday that the inquiry was ongoing. He said current owners of a home must obtain permits for a garage conversion even if the work was done before they bought the house.

Zamperini also said the work performed in September by the county on Ridley-Thomas' garage required permits. The manager of the project had told The Times he believed the county crews needed no permits because they are authorized to inspect their own work.

Ridley-Thomas criticized The Times for publishing stories on the security project "half cocked," saying the county had told the newspaper it was still gathering documents in response to a request under the state's Public Records Act.

"Rather than waiting for the facts to reveal themselves, the Times reporters have chosen to engage in what is reducible to innuendo, to smear and is short on fact," he said during the radio interview. "They chose to start writing before they had the facts and they've gotten a number of facts wrong, straight-out wrong."

When asked by program host Warren Olney to identify errors in the reporting, Ridley-Thomas said: "They keep making a point of what was supposedly done over and above that which is defined as security. Everything that was done over and above that was paid for. It's documented."

The Times submitted its records request a month ago asking for documents showing work done at the homes of all five county supervisors during the last five years. The county said it was continuing to search for records.

The Times has reported that the project manager, John Thompson, who works for the county Internal Services Department, said Ridley-Thomas paid for the air-and-heat unit and a refrigerator the crews installed. Another person familiar with the work, who asked not to be named, said he was told Ridley-Thomas paid for the television as well.

The county crews, which included contract workers, tore out wood paneling in the garage and replaced it with drywall, Thompson said. They dug a 60-foot-long, 30-inch-deep trench across Ridley-Thomas' property to run electrical conduit from the main house to the garage, Thompson said, and installed an electrical subpanel in the garage to make more power available to the structure.

Thompson said he suggested replacing the paneling because that would make it easier to run wiring behind the walls for the security alarms. In addition, he said the result would be more pleasing to the eye.

He said he recommended installing the air conditioner because the garage was hot.

Alarm experts said in interviews that the security system probably could have been put in without removing walls or adding an electrical subpanel.

Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who studies governmental ethics, said it was troubling that an elected official would use government workers to perform work on a private residence, even if the official reimbursed taxpayers.

"The question becomes, 'What else would the workers be doing at that time?'" Levinson said. "Does reimbursement make the taxpayer whole? Is fair-market value paid?

"Our public officials should not appear to be using their position for their own benefit. These accusations are dispiriting to people who don't have access to county workers to improve their residences."

paul.pringle@latimes.com

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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Super Bowl roles have been cast for the good guys and the bad guys

One team celebrated its Super Bowl invitation by angrily stomping across a rain-splattered patch of downtown pavement. The other team tearfully skipped around a bright mountain meadow.

One team's fans celebrated their Super Bowl invitation when a few fools threw popcorn on an injured opponent as he was being carted to the locker room. The other team's fans waved bright orange pompoms.

One team's nickname is associated with a glaring, swooping raptor. The other team's mascot rides in on a white horse.

The upcoming Super Bowl is a classic football matchup, and not only because it will be played in Tony Soprano's backyard amid potentially bitter cold and falling snow.

This year's game is about more than just the Denver Broncos versus the Seattle Seahawks.

This game is, in many public perceptions, about good versus evil.

The Broncos are seen as the lovable franchise that resounds with football history. The Seahawks are viewed as a reckless franchise that talks trash. The Broncos are known for enduring four Super Bowl losses by an average of 28 points before finally winning two titles. The Seahawks' only Super Bowl appearance was a loss filled with whining about the officiating.

Many of these comparisons are, of course, unfair. The Broncos and Seahawks are both long-suffering teams filled with mostly good guys and surrounded by powerful fan bases. In some ways, these former AFC West rivals from the NFL's remotest outposts are mirror images of each other.

But by the end of Sunday night's conference championship games, for the sake of a juicy two-week narrative, that mirror was cracked, differences were brushed off, identities were cast, and a powerful storyline appeared.

It now seems as if America will be cheering for the Broncos, if only because they are not the Seahawks.

It's about John Elway versus Paul Allen.

Elway is the rugged, tousle-haired face of Broncos, a beloved Hall of Fame quarterback who now acts as their vice president and ambassador. He won one of his two Super Bowl championships by spinning through the air like a stocky helicopter.

Paul Allen is that enigmatic billionaire dude who owns the Seahawks, Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Sounders. He has never won a championship with any of them. He also never has done a helicopter move, although he does build spaceships.

It's about John Fox versus Pete Carroll.

Fox is the ruddy-faced guy with bushy gray hair and gravelly voice who is coaching the Broncos despite missing a month this season after undergoing heart surgery.

Carroll is the Seahawks coach who left USC just before the Trojans were placed on NCAA probation and has since presided over a team that leads the NFL with five drug suspensions in the last three years.

It's about Peyton Manning versus Richard Sherman.

Manning is the likable Bronco quarterback known for his pizza commercials, his "Saturday Night Live" appearances, his close family ties and his Southern brand of humble sportsmanship.

Sherman is the feared Seahawks cornerback who ended Sunday's game by being assessed a penalty for flashing the choke sign to the beaten San Francisco 49ers. He then stunned the public with a nationally televised taunting rant for which he has since apologized.

It's about Knowshon Moreno versus Marshawn Lynch.

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BART officer killed by partner in apparent accidental shooting

SAN FRANCISCO — A Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer was shot and killed by a partner Tuesday in an apparent accident while conducting a probation search at a Dublin apartment complex, authorities said.

In a brief statement, a somber BART police chief said the officer was the first to die on duty in the department's history. Taking no questions, Chief Kenton Rainey said he was confirming the "tragic loss" with "a heavy heart."

"Our condolences go out to the immediate family and friends and the extended BART family," Rainey said. "We ask that everyone please give us a chance to catch our breath [and] grieve."

The members of BART's detective unit were conducting a probation search at a sprawling apartment complex in the eastern Alameda County bedroom community. Alameda County Sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson, whose department is investigating the incident, said the suspect, who was already in custody, was wanted in connection with "some crimes that had occurred on a train."

"During that search, it appears one officer accidentally fired his weapon, which struck the other officer and ultimately it was a fatal shot," said Nelson, the Sheriff's Department spokesman.

While BART officials have not identified the officer, a website dedicated to fallen officers has identified him as Tom Smith.

The incident occurred shortly before 2 p.m. at the sprawling Park Sierra Apartments.

The slain officer had been on the BART force for more than 20 years, Nelson said. The officer who fired his gun had been on the force for a decade.

Both were wearing bulletproof vests.

The wounded man was taken to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, where he died. Media photos showed a flag-draped casket being taken away from the hospital by the coroner's bureau.

Nelson said it was unclear whether the weapon fired accidentally or the shooting was due to a "misidentified target."

"BART has been informed that one of our officers has died from wounds sustained during a shooting earlier today," Rainey and General Manager Grace Crunican said in a joint statement earlier in the evening. "The entire BART organization is deeply saddened by this tragic event," they said, "and we ask the public to keep the officer's family in its thoughts and prayers."

BART's police department came under heavy scrutiny after unarmed passenger Oscar Grant III was fatally shot by an officer at the Fruitvale station in Oakland in 2009. However, a report issued last month by an independent expert found that BART police had made significant progress in enacting reforms.

The expert, Patrick Oliver, noted improvements in the use of force, officer training, community engagement and organizational statements.

lee.romney@latimes.com

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Supreme Court to hear 1st Amendment challenge to labor unions

The Supreme Court will hear a 1st Amendment case this week involving Chicago-area in-home care providers that could end up dealing a major blow to public-sector labor unions.

Illinois, California, Maryland, Connecticut and other states have long used Medicaid funds to pay salaries for in-home care workers to assist disabled adults who otherwise might have to be put in state institutions. The jobs were poorly paid and turnover was high.

Over the last decade, more than 20,000 of these workers in Illinois voted to organize and won wage increases by joining the Service Employees International Union.

But the National Right to Work Foundation, an anti-union advocacy group, sued Gov. Pat Quinn and the SEIU, accusing the state and union of conspiring to relabel private care providers as state employees so they could collect more union fees.

"This scheme is nothing more than pure political payback," said Patrick Semmens, a director of the group, complaining that unions have helped fund Quinn's campaign.

They are also challenging whether workers who don't want to participate in the union should be forced to pay dues, a longtime union practice known as "fair share" fees. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of several mothers who take care of their disabled adult children at home and resent the idea of paying about $50 a month in union dues.

A federal judge in Chicago and the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the suit, citing Supreme Court precedents dating to 1977 that allow unions representing teachers and other public employees to collect fees from all workers, including those who object to the union.

But the Supreme Court may be ready to reconsider those precedents, and some predict that justices will use the Chicago case to do so.

Two years ago, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote an opinion that rebuked the SEIU in a California case and said the union had wrongly collected special dues from all employees to pay for political ads. The SEIU said it intended to give refunds later to nonmembers of the union.

But Alito's opinion went beyond the dispute over political funds and cast doubt on whether unions should continue to be able to force public employees to pay union fees even if they don't want to. The 1st Amendment generally protects Americans from being forced by the government to join groups or pay for causes they oppose, he said.

"Compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a significant impingement on 1st Amendment rights," he wrote, joined by four fellow conservatives. "Our cases have tolerated" these forced fees for public employees in the past, and "we do not revisit [them] today."

Conservative advocates saw Alito's opinion as an invitation to mount a broader challenge to public-sector unions on 1st Amendment grounds. In California, Washington attorney Michael Carvin, who led the lawsuit against President Obama's healthcare plan, filed a suit in Orange County against the California Teachers Assn.

He sued on behalf of 10 teachers who objected to paying $350 to $400 a year in fees to support the union. A federal judge rejected the claim in December, but the challengers plan to appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court.

The Illinois case also grew in importance following Alito's opinion. At first, the right-to-work lawyers had argued that Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and his successor Quinn were wrong when they treated the in-home care workers as state employees. While they are paid through state funds, they are hired by private citizens and work in private homes, the challengers said.

Once the case of Harris vs. Quinn reached the Supreme Court, the anti-union attorneys raised the stakes and urged the justices to overturn their 1977 ruling in Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education, which upheld forced fees for all public employees who are represented by a union.

Lawyers said about a dozen states had authorized in-home care providers to join unions and bargain as state employees. They include California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington. Republicans governors in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin repealed those orders, they said.

Susie Watts, a Chicago-area mother who cares for a disabled 27-year-old daughter at home, is glad to have the support but sees no need for a union.

"Nothing could be more meaningful for me than caring for her at home," she said. "But I didn't have any choice about this union. I don't need it, and there is no opting out."

However, Keith Kelleher, president of the SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, said the union had helped improve the lives of employees as well as those who are cared for at home. "This saves the government billions of dollars over institutions," he said. "We don't want to go back to the old days."

The union contract with the state raised wages for in-home care providers from $7 an hour to $11.65 an hour this year. They also won benefits, including health insurance.

Disability rights advocates hailed the change. "We needed a stable workforce, with good wages and benefits," said Amber Smock, director of advocacy for Access Living in Chicago. "And we did it with the SEIU."

Harvard University law professor Benjamin Sachs, a labor law expert, said it would be "pretty radical" for the high court to strike down "fair share" fees that public-sector unions have come to rely upon.

"With all due respect, this is a public decision," he said. "You can agree or disagree, but the decision to have collective bargaining was made by the majority."

Just as lawyers are required to pay state bar fees, it is reasonable, he said, for employees who benefit from collective bargaining to pay a fee.

david.savage@latimes.com

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Terrorism threat at the Olympics: A sad but unalterable fact of life

Little did the Greeks know what they were getting us into back in 1896. And how could they?

Certainly, their vision of the Olympics probably went no further than to celebrate which of them ran the best marathon in a loincloth.

Now, we are three weeks from the start of the Sochi (Russia) Winter Olympics, and the anticipation of sport is, once again, being overshadowed by the concern for safety. There are headlines about athletes, but bigger ones about their well-being.

Once again, security is trumping sport.

These Olympics are meant to be for skating and skiing and curling, not bombing and maiming.

Yet here we are, once again, mixing our expectation of achievement and celebration with fear of the unimaginable. Without trying to sound too much like the Rodney King lament, can't we ever just play our games in peace and quiet?

Sometimes, these pre-Olympic security scares feel contrived, more like a warning to the bad guys and a justification for spending many millions of dollars to beef up the policing.

This time, not so much.

At least 34 people died last month in two bombings in a city 400 miles away. Now comes news of threatening videos and the reported arrival in Sochi of a female suicide bomber.

One security expert who reports for CNN, Frances Fragos Townsend, said recently, "This is the most dangerous threatened environment we have seen for the Olympics."

Accompanying all this are reports that the United States will have two warships nearby, as well as several C-17 transport planes at the ready for evacuating U.S. citizens. That alone would appear to make it tougher to focus on your triple toe loop, or, if you are a fan, on which event to attend.

The best shield is a dismissal of reality, as former figure skating star Tara Lipinski did when she said recently, "There are so many threats at the Olympics, the athletes are used to that."

One theory says that all the publicity the scarers get from doing the scaring is enough for them. Here's hoping.

Reality says that 40,000 Russian security personnel, the announced number, are not on hand merely to march in parades.

We make no recommendation here as to how to solve this. We have no magic, just a sadness that it has come to this, that something as healing as international sports competition has to share the wonders of its athleticism and joy of its celebrations with the fear of evil.

Sadly, there is a track record that shows that none of this should be taken as just bad guys crying wolf.

In Munich in 1972, 11 Israelis died and we found out when ABC's Jim McKay, stricken with the burden of having to be the bearer of horrible news, looked into the camera and said, "They're all gone."

We experienced it firsthand in Atlanta in 1996. When you walk into a crowd of departing people, minutes after a noise that can only be identified as a bomb, and see ashen faces and blood on arms and cheeks, you know sport has been violated.

Those Games went on, but mattered less.

The Munich murderers, the Palestinian group Black September, were terrorists. So was the Atlanta murderer, Eric Rudolph, whose bomb that night in Olympic Centennial Park killed Alice Hawthorne and injured 111.

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2 killed and 10 injured in accident at Omaha feed plant

A fire and structural collapse at an animal feed processing plant killed two people and injured 10 others, four critically, Omaha authorities said Monday.

Officials had said the fire at the International Nutrition plant could have been precipitated by an explosion. But later, in a televised news conference, Omaha Interim Fire Chief Bernie Kanger said it was unclear whether there had been a blast.

"We are classifying this as an industrial accident that led to a structural fire," he said. The incident was reported about 10 a.m.

Omaha police said two workers had been killed and the death toll was not likely to rise. All of the other workers had been accounted for, Lt. Darci Tierney said.

Thirty-eight employees were believed to have been inside the building at the time, Kanger said. He said the building was severely damaged and considered dangerous.

"We haven't cleared the building yet because of the significant risk to our people," he said.

The cause of the accident was unclear, but Kanger said no hazardous chemicals were kept at the plant. International Nutrition makes products that are added to livestock and poultry feed to make them more nutritious.

The building sits in an industrial area visible from Interstate 80, which bisects Nebraska's largest city. There are no residences nearby and no other buildings were evacuated.

At least 10 employees were injured and four were listed in critical condition, Kanger said. Six had injuries that were not considered life-threatening, he said. Seven workers refused treatment.

The explosion knocked out the building's lights and sent workers scrambling for safety.

Nate Lewis said he felt fortunate to have escaped. Lewis, 21, told reporters that he was on the first floor when he heard a blast. The building went dark, so he used light from his cellphone to make his way across the production floor to safety outside.

"I was a production line worker, although I don't know if I want to be that anymore," Lewis said.

The cause of the accident will be investigated by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Kanger said.

michael.muskal@latimes.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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New Mexico judge affirms right to 'aid in dying'

Aja Riggs, 50, thought a lot about dying after she was diagnosed with uterine cancer.

She endured surgery in October 2011, then underwent aggressive chemotherapy that made her feel as if her skin was burning. She was constantly tired. Then doctors found a second tumor, which they treated with two different types of radiation.

"It was a pretty darn rough winter, actually," said Riggs of Santa Fe, N.M. "I thought to myself, I don't know if I want to go all the way to the end with a death from cancer." She considered "what I needed to do if I would like to perhaps have a more peaceful and gentle death."

Now, a New Mexico judge has ruled that terminally ill patients like Riggs have the right to "aid in dying" under the state constitution. "Such deaths are not considered 'suicide' under New Mexico's assisted suicide statute," ruled Judge Nan G. Nash of the 2nd District Court in Albuquerque last week.

The state's assisted suicide law classifies helping with suicide as a fourth-degree felony.

Aid in dying refers to doctors prescribing a fatal dose of drugs so patients can "achieve a peaceful death and thereby avoid further suffering," Nash wrote.

"This court cannot envision a right more fundamental, more private or more integral to the liberty, safety and happiness of a New Mexican than the right of a competent, terminally ill patient to choose aid in dying," the judge wrote in a 14-page ruling.

Riggs became a plaintiff after hearing about the case in spring 2012, she said. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life choice advocacy group, had filed suit on behalf of two New Mexico doctors, Katherine Morris and Aroop Mangalik. Riggs is the only patient in the case.

The defendants, Bernalillo County Dist. Atty. Kari Brandenburg and New Mexico Atty. Gen. Gary King, argued that New Mexico's assisted suicide law was consistent with the state constitution.

In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, they wrote, "As plaintiffs describe it, the provision of 'aid in dying' is unquestionably assisted suicide.... Calling assisted suicide 'aid in dying' does not make the conduct so defined any less an assisted suicide."

Riggs and the other plaintiffs dispute that.

"Patients who choose aid in dying find the suggestion that they are committing 'suicide' deeply offensive, stigmatizing and inaccurate," said Sean Crowley, media relations manager at Compassion & Choices.

Laura Schauer Ives, legal director of the ACLU of New Mexico, said the organization "believes it is a basic fundamental right for a terminally ill patient to make this decision for themselves at the end of their life."

The New Mexico attorney general's office is deciding whether to appeal.

Opponents to Nash's ruling include the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, citing both "religious and moral grounds."

"This [ruling] places the right to die in the hands of a second person who has to make a judgment about you ... and that's riddled with ethical problems," said Allen Sanchez, executive director of the conference.

The bishops hope the state will appeal, he said.

In her ruling, Nash cited laws in Oregon, Washington and Vermont that permit aid in dying. She also cited a Montana Supreme Court decision allowing it, and noted that Hawaii had no law against assisted suicide.

"In those states, there is no uncertainty in the law and the practice has developed as one of the standard-of-care options for mentally competent, terminally ill patients at the end of life," Nash wrote.

Riggs sees the lawsuit as a chance to spare others from agonizing choices and agonizing deaths.

"I didn't want anybody else to have the feeling that I had of needing to choose between suffering and dying in isolation or in fear," she said. "I don't think anyone should be required to suffer at the end of their lives."

With her cancer in remission, Riggs is in Texas on a "no regrets remission trip" around the U.S.

If her cancer returns, she isn't sure what she will do. "There's no way to anticipate what I might decide at the end of my life," she said. "But I want to have the choice."

saba.hamedy@latimes.com

of my life," she said. "But I want to have the choice."

saba.hamedy@latimes.com

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Many passengers dislike airlines' 'slim-line' seats

"Slim-line" seats, with thinner seat-back cushions, are increasingly popular with airlines because they weigh less and help squeeze more passengers into a plane.

But the seats may not be so popular with passengers.

A new survey by the travel website TripAdvisor shows that many passengers who have tried slim-line seats are not fans.

In the survey of 1,391 travelers, the website found that nearly half weren't sure whether they had sat in slim-line seats. But of those who said they had tried the seats, 83% said they were less comfortable than traditional seats, 8% said the slim-line seats were more comfortable, and 9% said they couldn't tell the difference.

Delta Air Lines is the latest of several major carriers to announce plans to install slim-line seats. Delta spokesman Paul Skrbec said the TripAdvisor survey was lacking because it didn't ask passengers which airlines they flew when they tried the seats. The airline's internal surveys show passengers like Delta's slim-line seats, he said.

United, Alaska, Southwest and Spirit are among the other major airlines that have installed slimmer, lighter seats in the last few years.

At United, internal passenger surveys show that the slim-line seats get higher ratings several months after being installed, suggesting the seats get more comfortable over time, airline spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said.

Among the critics of cramped cabins is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who fired off a tweet last week about his flight to Washington from Phoenix.

"Are you as frustrated as I am that the airlines keep moving the rows of seats closer and closer together?" he said.

Business travelers grab quick bites

Business travel has rebounded from the Great Recession, but lots of travelers remain frugal when spending company money on the road.

That was one of the findings of a new report that analyzed millions of business travel expense reports.

For breakfast, the most frequent eatery for business travelers was Starbucks — 14% of travelers bought food from the coffee shop, spending an average of $8.44 per meal, according to an analysis for the last three months of 2013 by Certify, a travel and expense report management company in Portland, Maine. The company processed more than 15 million expense reports and receipts in 2013, worth about $4.5 billion.

For lunch and dinner, the most frequent expense report was for the fast-food giant McDonald's, for an average lunch cost of $7.19, and $7.47 for dinner, the report said.

Certify's chief executive, Bob Neveu, said the report makes sense because fast-food and quick-service eateries are speedy and convenient and usually offer wireless Internet access.

"Most people are traveling individually, and they are out for the week trying to get something fast, convenient and consistent that is within their company policy," he said.

Airport installs pot-disposal boxes

Colorado Springs Airport recently installed three green metal containers in the terminal where travelers can deposit marijuana, which is legal to buy in Colorado but banned in the airport.

Sorry, but the airport is not taking job applications for pot container attendants.

With recreational marijuana now on sale in Colorado, Denver International and Colorado Springs airports have made it clear that travelers cannot bring pot through their facilities. Even medical marijuana is forbidden.

But the folks at the Colorado Springs airport, about 70 miles south of Denver, don't want travelers to dump bags of overlooked pot into the terminal trash bins. For that reason, the airport has installed "amnesty boxes."

A spokesman for the airport said the boxes will be monitored 24 hours a day, with Colorado Springs police responsible for emptying the boxes and destroying any drugs.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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The Peyton Manning of old spurs a new Denver Broncos feat

DENVER — As the clock ticked to zeros amid a roaring sea of rattling orange, Peyton Manning took off his helmet and ran away from the celebration.

Before even shaking his fist into the air, he shook hands with the defeated New England Patriots.

As his Denver Broncos teammates danced into the raucous Sports Authority Field locker room after a dominating 26-16 victory in the AFC championship game, Manning walked quietly through the madhouse with the most unusual of posses.

He was accompanied by his two brothers. They hugged and posed for photos. Peyton would not stand in the middle.

It was long after the quarterback's brilliant 400-yard game Sunday returned him to his third Super Bowl that one could confirm this was really about Peyton Manning. That moment finally occurred when he was sitting alone, facing his locker, shirtless.

Only then could one see the long scar running down the back of his neck.

Manning, 37, is back in the Super Bowl just two years after many thought he would never be back in football. Manning is taking the Broncos to the biggest sporting event in America just two years after being cut by the Indianapolis Colts after missing a year because of neck surgery. Manning is headed for what could be not only his most glorious football moment, but perhaps his last football moment, as he may be forced to retire depending on a postseason neck exam.

It was an unseasonably warm afternoon chilled with such emotion that Manning's close friend and tight end Jacob Tamme wept on the field, his father Archie teared up in the locker room, and his teammates set the record for superlatives.

Said receiver Demaryius Thomas: "To do what he just did in a conference championship game? Now, that's amazing."

Said defensive tackle Terrance Knighton: "All the years going against him, all he's been through, he is just unbelievable."

Start spreading the news. The New York Super Bowl is Manning up.

"You do take a moment to realize that we've done something special," said Manning later.

With the league's narrative dominated by the deeds of flashy young quarterbacks, the NFL needs Manning's kind of special. Amid the coldest of Super Bowl settings, the NFL needs his warmth in this game.

"He's probably not very hip," said Tamme. "But he loves to win."

Manning, in his 16th season, runs in the tiny, halting steps of a chicken. He throws passes that frolic like a butterfly. In an era when quarterbacks kiss their biceps, he doesn't really have any biceps. During a time when quarterbacks pose after touchdowns, you often can't even find him after touchdowns. Manning was physically notable Sunday only in that he wore one black glove on his right throwing hand and was constantly adjusting the pads around his aching knees.

Oh yeah, and during his audible signals, he would shout out not only his trademark "Omaha," but also the name of his son, Marshall.

His appearance was wonderfully old-fashioned, but his record in these types of games was wholly unremarkable. Manning took the field with a 4-10 lifetime record against the seemingly flawless Tom Brady, as well as a 10-11 playoff mark that recently led a Denver newspaper to run his photo with a dark cloud over his head.

"To see what he's gone through, what happened makes me so happy for him," said Tamme. "When it hit me, there were tears in my eyes."

It hit the Patriots early, when Manning bobbled a shotgun snap for three agonizing seconds and still managed to grab the ball and hit Eric Decker for seven yards.

"I'm sure some people will have some fun with me tomorrow when we're watching the game film of that particular play," he said.

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New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward is still marked by Hurricane Katrina

NEW ORLEANS — The Rev. Charles Duplessis navigated the new landscape of the Lower 9th Ward, crossing from newly paved streets to those still muddy and rutted as riverbeds.

He drove past a gleaming duplex designed by Frank Gehry and the skeletons of vacant homes, past a community garden and overgrown lots with "no dumping" signs, until he reached his destination: Flood Street.

Here were more examples of the progress made after Hurricane Katrina — and the problems that remain. Construction cranes hovered over a new community center taking shape nearby. A city crew poured concrete for new sidewalks that stretched past several vacant lots and his unfinished church.

Mount Nebo Baptist Church, like so many other buildings here, was destroyed by Katrina.

Duplessis, 62, has mustered only enough support to raise the backbone of a new church: metal beams and a roof. He needs to raise $500,000 more to finish construction. His congregation shrank from 120 before the storm to 50.

The sign out front proclaims, "Through God's promise we will rebuild!" But the pastor is frustrated.

"This is nine years after the storm," Duplessis said, pointing to an uneven, brambly lot nearby with weeds the size of small trees. "It will take at least 20 years before we get it back."

The Lower 9th Ward, or "Lower Nine," struggled with poverty and crime even before Katrina struck in 2005. It was home to 14,000 residents, mostly African American homeowners.

Only about 25% of residents have returned, according to a homeowners association. About 1,700 addresses in the neighborhood were receiving mail as of June, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

For many, the neighborhood embodies the shortcoming of the city's rebuilding strategy, in which New Orleans officials vowed to rebuild every neighborhood, not just the Lower Nine. A nonprofit group even adopted the motto, "How's the 9? This is the question by which the recovery of New Orleans must be judged."

Mayor Mitch Landrieu says he is focused on "place-based" redevelopment of battered city neighborhoods. He says his priority has been to invest federal money where it can do the most good and to encourage private investment. Hence the Lower 9th Ward's new community center, pool, high school and police and fire stations under construction.

New Orleans officials have spent more than $200 million rebuilding the Lower 9th Ward — on pavement, utilities and playgrounds, among other things, Landrieu's staff said.

"The challenge for the 9th Ward is that, before Katrina, it was the poorest part of the city," Landrieu said. And although city officials can work to bring businesses back, "we can't force people to go someplace."

Alan Mallach, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Center for Community Progress, which has an office in New Orleans, says that the mayor and others helped orchestrate a successful revival of the city as a whole, but that unoccupied areas of the Lower 9th Ward will probably remain fallow.

"Hopefully over time they can assemble enough lots so that instead of this crazy patchwork you have now, it would be something more coherent. It's going to be a slow process," Mallach said.

Robert Green was among the first to move back, in a trailer in 2006. Three years later, he moved into one of the ultra-modern homes built by Brad Pitt's nonprofit group Make It Right. The group has built 100 homes and plans to erect an additional 150.

Green, 57, who lost his mother and 3-year-old granddaughter to the storm, is now president of the Historic Lower Ninth Ward Assn., and its meetings are standing room only — a testament, he says, to local demand.

"Things are coming back. There is a need and there is a population to support them. If you watch the school buses coming out of here — children need to be fed and clothed," he said. "I could see a Starbucks here, a Dunkin' Donuts."

A year and a half ago, Keisha Henry opened one of the area's first post-Katrina sit-down restaurants, Cafe Dauphine. Some warned that the menu was too pricey — $6.99 for her signature Cajun egg rolls, $11.99 for a fried oyster po' boy and $22.99 for the seafood platter.

Henry, 35, says the restaurant is thriving. She lives across the street with her 9-year-old son in her childhood home, has a dozen people on staff, 60 to 80 customers each weekday and up to 150 each weekend day. A new grocery store would generate foot traffic, she said, and anchor a shopping mall for smaller stores.

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Serena Williams upset by Ana Ivanovic at Australian Open

MELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams' long winning streak has come to an end in a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 upset loss to Ana Ivanovic in the fourth round of the Australian Open.

Williams, who reclaimed the No. 1 ranking in the world last year, hadn't lost a match since August, one of only four defeats in 2013, and came into the fourth round with 25 consecutive wins. It was her 70th match at Melbourne Park, a record in the Open era, and she set the mark for most match wins ever at the Australian Open with her third-round victory.

Ivanovic, a 26-year-old Serbian who rose to No. 1 in the world in 2008 when she won her only Grand Slam tournament title at the French Open and was a finalist in Melbourne, hadn't taken a set off Willliams in their previous four matches.

"It's not easy, you know, playing such a champion ... but she is also just a human and I know she has lots of pressure, too," Ivanovic said. "I just went out there swinging at the ball."

Ivanovic had 33 winners, including 20 on her forehand side. Williams hit 22 winners but made 31 unforced errors.

Ivanovic, currently ranked No. 14, advanced to a quarterfinal against the winner of Sunday's later match between Australian wild-card entry Casey Dellacqua and No. 30-seeded Eugenie Bouchard of Canada.

Another quarterfinal will feature two women who'll turn 32 next month, with two-time finalist finalist Li Na beating No. 22 Ekaterina Makarova 6-2, 6-0 and No. 28 Flavia Pennetta upsetting No. 9 Angelique Kerber 6-1, 4-6, 7-5.

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Clippers are easy marks on the road

INDIANAPOLIS — The Clippers knew that facing one of the elite teams in the NBA in the Indiana Pacers would require them to execute at all costs.

The Clippers failed to execute far too often, leading to a 106-92 defeat to the Pacers on Saturday night.

Against a Pacers team that has the best record in the NBA at 32-7 and now has a 21-1 home record, the Clippers couldn't afford to play a lesser brand of basketball.

But they did.

They shot 39.8% from the field, 25% (five for 20) from three-point range, much of that because "we just didn't execute offensively," Coach Doc Rivers said.

They were out-rebounded, 48-39. They had eight of their shots blocked.

Blake Griffin had a tough night, scoring 19 points. But he missed 12 of his 18 shots and got into a situation with Pacers forward David West.

J.J. Redick missed 13 of his 17 shots, all seven of his three-point shots and ended the game with a bruised left knee.

Starting point guard Darren Collison suffered a sprained left big toe and Matt Barnes suffered a swollen left thumb.

That was just part of the pain the Clippers felt after their winning streak ended at five games and they fell to 10-11 on the road.

"The Pacers are arguably the best team," Griffin said. "They are playing the best right now. So you look to play well against teams like this."

Paul George and Lance Stephenson did all they could to keep the Clippers at bay.

George had 36 points on 12-for-17 shooting, five for six on three-pointers.

Stephenson had 22 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists.

George had the play of the game after he got a steal and threw down a 360-degree one-handed dunk that had the crowd going crazy and even drew looks of admiration from the Clippers on the bench.

"I wanted to put on a show for our fans," George said. "They support us and I want them to keep coming back."

The Clippers fell into a 20-point hole in the third quarter, looking like a team unable to cope with playing back-to-back games against the Pacers.

But the Clippers did find a little spark, cutting their lead to nine points in the fourth.

Then the Pacers went right back to work, opening up a 22-point lead later in the fourth.

"I think it was a lack of execution," said Jamal Crawford, who led the Clippers with 22 points. "We had it in spurts, but not for a complete game. Against a team like that, you have to kind of stay disciplined and stay executing the whole time."

The game had just moved along with the Pacers handling the Clippers pretty easily in the first half.

Then West and Griffin got entangled just before the first half was over, leading to West elbowing Griffin in the head.

After the officials reviewed the play while both teams were in their locker rooms, West was ejected from the game for a flagrant foul two.

"I didn't do anything," Griffin said about his incident with West. "We were kind of just both kind of grabbing for the ball and I felt the elbow."

broderick.turner@latimes.com

Twitter: @BA_Turner

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Spaccia could draw a longer prison term than Rizzo

Bell's former second-in-command is an unrepentant thief who stole from the working-class citizens in the small Los Angeles County city and then lied on the witness stand in an effort to blame others, Los Angeles prosecutors wrote in a scathing sentencing memo that urges the court to punish her with a 12-year, eight-month prison sentence.

If that recommendation is followed when Angela Spaccia is sentenced later this month, she would draw a longer prison term than is expected to be handed to Robert Rizzo, her former boss and the longtime face of the corruption in Bell.

In a pre-sentencing memo to the court, the Los Angeles district attorney's office said "the court would be hard pressed to find a more egregious case of public corruption" and a "more unrepentant defendant" than Spaccia.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Sean Hassett also asked that Spaccia be ordered to pay restitution of more than $8.2 million.

In a letter to the probation officer investigating the case, Bell City Manager Doug Willmore also took a hard line.

"If a life sentence could be awarded for a nonviolent crime, this would be the case to award that," wrote Willmore, who is part of a new team of administrators and elected leaders running the city.

Spaccia was handcuffed and taken to jail immediately after the jury found her guilty last month, the only one of seven former city leaders to be jailed after they were convicted. Rizzo and five former council members are free on bail as they await sentencing.

Spaccia is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday. However, her attorney, Harland Braun, said he will go to court Friday to ask the judge for a delay.

By the time they were ousted in the summer of 2010, Rizzo was drawing an annual paycheck of $1.18 million a year and Spaccia, the assistant city manager, was earning $564,000, making them among the highest-paid municipal leaders in California, and probably in the nation.

When Rizzo pleaded no contest to 69 felonies, Kennedy said she would sentence him to 10 to 12 years in prison.

In addition, Rizzo pleaded guilty this week to two counts of federal tax fraud. Spaccia is also expected to be indicted for tax fraud.

Rizzo could receive eight years in prison for the tax crimes, but his lawyer is trying to arrange things so Rizzo can serve his sentences concurrently in a federal institution that houses nonviolent criminals.

Braun said Hassett was exaggerating Spaccia's role in the Bell scandal.

"To equate Angela Spaccia with Robert Rizzo is bizarre. What they're really mad at is that she went to trial," he said. "They didn't want a trial."

Braun said he would like Spaccia to receive her sentence after Rizzo is sentenced March 12 so he can question Bell's former top administrator.

The district attorney, he said, has done only a perfunctory interview with Rizzo.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

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Big changes to California's school-funding rules are approved

State education officials pushed forward sweeping changes to public school funding Thursday, approving rules to give more money to needy students and more power to local educators to decide how to use the dollars.

At a daylong state Board of Education meeting, more than 300 speakers underscored tensions over the need to balance newfound flexible spending authority with assurances that the money will be used to improve services for students who are from low-income homes, learning English or in foster care.

More than 30 civil rights and community organizations urged the board to add requirements that districts with large numbers of disadvantaged students must "principally" use the money on specific services for them. The draft regulations had allowed districts where needy students make up at least 55% of pupils to use the extra funding for any purpose so long as they benefited the disadvantaged, such as buying tablet computers districtwide.

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) said plans to restore districtwide summer school, for instance, rather than targeting the aid to specific students at their particular schools, would not reflect the spirit of the new funding law.

"We run the unfortunate risk of funds being diluted and going to students of less need," Weber said.

But the 11-member board unanimously passed the rules as written, giving schools a road map to begin crafting spending plans for the 2014-15 school year. Board President Michael Kirst said the community concerns would be addressed as the process begins to adopt permanent regulations for subsequent years.

The new system represents the most dramatic change in four decades in how California schools are funded. It gives all schools an average base grant of $7,643 per pupil, with an extra 20% boost for each disadvantaged student and an additional grant for those who attend schools where at least 55% of students are low-income, learning English or in foster care.

Gov. Jerry Brown first proposed the change in 2012; the Legislature initially rejected it but approved it last June.

During the eight-hour Sacramento meeting, a long parade of district leaders, including L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy, urged board members to trust them with expanded local control and described efforts to reach out to parents and community members for input on how to use the money.

Long Beach Unified, for example, has formed a 69-member committee representing educators, parents and community members to work on a plan; the district has posted all meetings online and has solicited 13,000 spending ideas.

L.A. Unified has collected more than 10,000 responses to surveys on the new system, conducted town hall meetings and is putting together advisory committees on the district's spending plan, Deasy told board members. The district has also worked to collect input with the California Endowment, the state's largest health foundation, which organized 12 forums drawing more than 1,600 people to weigh in on their desires for the new system.

The rules "strike the right balance between empowering districts to work with their communities to decide what's best for our students, and ensuring that our investments prioritize the neediest children," Deasy said.

The governor also weighed in, telling board members that "minute prescriptive commands from headquarters" don't work as well as local decisions.

"We don't want to micromanage.… We want to give wide latitude to teach and to explore and light that fire in every student," Brown said.

Among other things, the new rules lay out how districts must calculate their spending increases on needy students and report efforts to boost their academic performance, parent outreach and other state priorities.

Mary Lou Fulton of the California Endowment hailed the effort but said improvements were still needed, along with close monitoring, to "make sure that school districts stay true to the letter and spirit of the law."

State Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson cautioned that it would take some time for the new system to work out its kinks.

"Because it's a historic shift," he said, "it can be a bit rough and tough at times."

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

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