Fees

The state has been blocking cheap online access to used-car histories, forcing consumers to pay $30 to a private firm for fast information that is widely used to avoid buying a lemon -- and is readily available from many states for about $2.50. A contract the state signed with the owner of Carfax has left California behind the curve in providing such data to car buyers. But lawmakers this week passed and sent to the governor a bill that a calls for the state to make vehicle histories more accessible.

University of California undergraduates, who already have seen their basic fees rise $662 this year, face additional hikes of $2,514 over the next year, starting with a midyear increase this winter, according to a proposal released by the university Thursday. If approved by the regents, basic undergraduate fees for California resident students would rise to $10,302 by next fall, or 44% higher than in the fall of 2008. The first portion of that would be a $585 increase for the rest of the current school year, starting with the winter quarter or spring semester.

A battle is brewing over the processing fees that banks charge merchants each time a customer uses a credit or debit card. Congress is considering three bills that would regulate the so-called interchange fees -- which generally amount to 1% to 2% of a sale and totaled $48 billion in 2008. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office is doing a study of the fees, as required by a law signed by President Obama in May that bans many unfair credit card industry practices. Merchants across the country and the card industry are waging a fight for public support.

Californians could soon be paying new deposits on half-gallon juice jugs, small juice boxes and soy drink containers -- and handing over twice as much as they already pay on some soda and water bottles -- because lawmakers have been raiding the state's recycling fund to help balance the budget. Officeholders have yet to repay $451 million they've taken from the recycling fund since 2002 to cover the state's bills, siphoning away $100 million this year alone. Recycling and deposit redemptions, meanwhile, have risen amid the recession and the fund is now facing bankruptcy.

Earlier this year, L.A. County probation officials vowed to fix their system for billing parents of youth in detention after supervisors questioned why the agency had mistakenly billed low-income and foster parents. Supervisors gave a group of probation and other county officials three months to propose changes, but six months later a plan has yet to be presented. Probation officials declared a moratorium on new probation billing Feb. 13 after questions were raised by The Times and children's advocates about improper billing.

With summer over and vacation travel done for the season, the recession-battered airline industry took stock in the last week or so and found scant signs of improvement. Here's a rundown of the major findings: Pent-up passenger demand and cuts in airline capacity could lead to fare increases of as much as 6% globally and 7% in North America, according to the American Express Global Business Travel Forecast, which was released this week. Ancillary fees -- those charges to check an extra bag, change a flight or order a cocktail, among other costs -- are also expected to inch up, raising the overall cost of a domestic business trip by 1.2% to an average of $1,080, according to the report.

Bureaucratic bungling, red tape and political gridlock don't come cheap -- especially when they get in the way of paying California's bills. The state has shelled out more than $8 million in late-payment penalties to vendors, contractors and others over the last two years because Sacramento did not send the checks when they were owed, records show. The late budget last year was one reason bills didn't get paid when they were due, but not the only one. Confusion over which offices should make payments, delays in invoices being sent from field offices to headquarters and shortages of staff to pay the bills also are responsible.

A proposal is sitting on the governor's desk that would smack state hospitals with billions of dollars in new fees -- and hospital officials are begging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign it into law. In fact, they thought it up. In the latest test of anti-tax groups' clout in the Capitol, however, fiscal conservatives are trying to persuade the governor to block the new levies on the institutions that want them. At the root of the dispute is a plan by the hospitals to access $2 billion in federal funds.

The Federal Communications Commission is looking into complaints by AT&T Inc. that the Google Voice phone service blocks some calls within the United States to avoid a high connection fee. The FCC sent an inquiry to Google Inc. on Friday seeking information about the software's functionality, the number of users and the identity of its partners. Google Voice allows users to consolidate their home, office and cellphone numbers by routing the calls through a central Google number.