Government Programs

Irene Steinlage has trouble walking, getting dressed, making her bed, taking a bath. She has stayed in her Folsom home with the help of a health aide, one that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says the state can no longer afford. The governor's plan to take away such care is meant to save money. But it could end up costing California more by forcing the 85-year-old, who has Parkinson's, osteoporosis and other ailments -- and thousands like her -- into nursing homes.

It sounded like a good deal: The Port of Los Angeles offered to pay $20,000 incentives as part of its Clean Trucks Program, launched Oct. 1 in conjunction with the neighboring Long Beach port to reduce pollution from trucking fleets serving the harbor. That sent Vic La Rosa into overdrive. The owner of Total Transportation Services Inc.

The road to recovery for U.S. automakers could be jammed with hundreds of thousands of gas-guzzling used cars, which President Obama hopes will be traded in for more fuel-efficient vehicles -- with the lure of government money. So-called cash-for-clunkers programs in Germany and France have worked well this year to spur new car sales. But similar initiatives aimed at reducing smog in Southern California have not fared so well in recent years.

Toyota Motor Corp. is closing California's last automobile plant, but that isn't keeping the factory from asking the state for $2 million in taxpayer money for recent training that made some of its workers better car builders. The automaker says it deserves to be paid back money it spent on training this year at its Fremont plant under a Feb. 27 agreement with the state's Employment Training Panel. But critics are incensed, noting that there won't be any more auto assembly plants left in the state where workers can make use of their training.

Wearing a T-shirt labeled "YouthBuild" and wielding a green-paint-covered roller, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis visited Los Angeles on Monday to kick off United We Serve, President Obama's summer service initiative to create change in U.S. communities through long-term volunteer involvement, creating jobs along the way. "Our hope is our future, and volunteerism is one way of giving back . . .

Two Santa Monica police officers approached a woman as she knelt under a bush one sunny morning near City Hall, "looking for my dead son." Within minutes, Officers Jacob Holloway and Dan Smith had learned her name and age (Gloria Breslin, 55) and phoned her 17-year-old son (alive and well in Venice), who said his mother was a longtime methamphetamine addict.

A cash-strapped conservation credit program run by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has stopped paying vendors and customers for installing water-saving toilets and appliances. Though the program has been deemed highly successful, demand for the rebates has increased threefold over the last two years. In May, the water district moved to suspend the program, said Bob Muir, a spokesman for it.

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday approved a multiagency pilot program to combat gang activity in four targeted communities -- Duarte-Monrovia, Florence-Firestone, Harbor Gateway and Pacoima. County Chief Executive Officer William T. Fujioka and Sheriff Lee Baca said the plan focuses on improving coordination of services, such as law enforcement, probation and social services, for at-risk youth in those areas. If the pilot program succeeds, it could be expanded countywide.

Seated in the corner of a bustling classroom, school volunteer Hanan Masarwa is barely visible amid a scrum of first-graders. The 18-year-old Masarwa is teaching the children to add as part of an Israeli national service program created in August. The volunteer program is an attempt to provide avenues, other than mandatory military service from which they are exempt, for integrating Arabs and religious Jews more fully into the mainstream Jewish state.

Social service volunteers identified a 65-year-old homeless veteran as one of the people most likely to die on skid row in downtown Los Angeles. The man, who suffers from kidney and liver disease and has lived for decades on the streets, belonged at the top of a new list of 50 skid row residents deemed in urgent need of permanent housing, county officials said.