Advisory Committees

Two City Council members called Tuesday for the creation of a Citizens Oversight Committee to review the way the Department of Water and Power will spend money generated by an upcoming series of water and electrical rate hikes. Council members Jan Perry and Eric Garcetti made their proposal shortly after the council's Energy and Environment Committee took testimony about the rate hikes -- almost all of it negative -- from roughly a dozen neighborhood council leaders.

State environmental regulators have decided to let a coalition of environmental groups take part in a review of agreements with three companies that want to build coal-fired power plants in Nevada. The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection took the action a week after the coalition known as Nevadans for Clean, Affordable, Reliable Energy sent a letter to the state seeking to open the process to the public.

For months, parents on a Los Angeles Unified School District advisory council have disagreed over whether their meetings should be conducted in Spanish or English. Such arguments became so abusive that district officials canceled meetings for two months and brought in dispute-resolution specialists and mental-health counselors. But Friday morning's gathering of the District Advisory Council proved dysfunctional in any language.

SACRAMENTO -- A blue-ribbon panel is poised to propose a multibillion-dollar plan for overhauling education in California just as the state has become immersed in a fiscal crisis that could make its recommendations dead on arrival. The 15-member committee, appointed by Gov.

The Coliseum Commission will gather for its regular monthly meeting today expecting to discuss a possible compromise to ensure USC continues to play its home football games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. USC's lease with the commission ended with the finish of Saturday's game against UCLA. School officials, who have submitted a lease proposal to Pasadena's Rose Bowl in case they are unable to reach an agreement to stay at the Coliseum, met in Los Angeles on Sunday with Gov.

Two days after a city commissioner was removed from his post, two other commissioners who had been criticized for comments on an Internet blog are resigning. Art Pedroza and Luis Rodriguez, both members of the Housing and Redevelopment Commission, gave notice Wednesday. The other commissioner, Thomas Gordon, was removed by the City Council on Monday. The three have been contributors to orangejuiceblog .com, which has been critical of city government.

Two days after a Santa Ana commissioner was removed from his post, two other city commissioners who had been criticized for comments on an Internet blog are resigning. Art Pedroza and Luis Rodriguez, both members of the Housing and Redevelopment Commission, gave notice Wednesday. The other commissioner, Thomas Gordon, was removed by the City Council on Monday. The three have been contributors to orangejuiceblog.com, which has been critical of the city government.

California Chief Justice Ronald M. George appointed a special task force Friday to investigate the state's troubled conservatorship system, saying it is imperative to protect the elderly from abusive and unethical conservators. The 16-member panel, headed by a senior appellate judge, will have broad authority to examine how courts monitor conservators and to recommend changes to the state Judicial Council, which could order reforms on its own.

Former U.S. Rep. James E. Rogan has resigned from the advisory board of a conservative UCLA alumni group after learning that the group's founder had offered students $100 payments to record professors' "non-pertinent ideological comments." Rogan, a Republican who represented Glendale and Pasadena for two terms and was a manager in the impeachment trial of President Clinton, said he did not want his name linked to the controversial effort to record professors in their classrooms.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa convened a national task force on poverty Wednesday, telling mayors from around the country that a new strategy is needed to recognize the economic dangers facing the working poor. Villaraigosa said during a session of the United States Conference of Mayors that the old way of thinking -- that people in poverty are victims of their own lack of direction or apathy -- must be replaced by concern for families who are poor despite being employed.