State Aid

Hundreds of angry Holocaust survivors, some wearing yellow Stars of David like those the Nazis forced Jews to wear, marched on a sweltering Sunday afternoon to demand an increase in a supplementary stipend amounting to $20 a month that Israel's government has offered them. The rare public protest was an embarrassment for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had announced the extra payments last week in response to concerns about poverty among the 240,000 survivors who live in Israel.

SACRAMENTO -- When state Sen. Bob Margett walks among the manufacturers and dairy farmers of his conservative district, he says, "it's all attaboys" for his part in the seven-week budget stalemate that has paralyzed much of state government. " 'Bob, . . . thank God for the Senate,' " the Arcadia lawmaker recalled hearing time and again. "I'm getting all these attaboys to hang in there, and that's my constituency. I don't have a single vote in San Francisco."

For a state with so many traffic problems, transportation ended up getting little respect when lawmakers forged a budget compromise in Sacramento. The budget takes $1.3 billion of the sales tax on gasoline revenues away from local transportation agencies to balance the general fund budget. The cuts could imperil a variety of transit projects, most notably the Exposition Line light rail from downtown L.A.

A Southern California start-up company will receive $8 million in low-cost funding for a biodiesel plant at the Port of Stockton, the state treasurer's office said Tuesday. The plant, under construction since April, is being built by American Biodiesel Inc., an Encinitas-based company that does business as Community Fuels. Biodiesel from the plant would be sold to several wholesale distributors, including some that have retail fueling outlets in Northern California.

Class-size reduction was improperly implemented in Santa Ana high schools this past school year, according to an audit released Tuesday night. As a result, the audit found, the school district will lose nearly $90,000 in state funds. The same flaws may have occurred the year before, costing the district as much as another $20,000, according to the audit by accounting firm Nigro, Nigro & White that was presented at Tuesday night's school board meeting.

The Santa Ana Unified School District, already hurting from the loss of $2 million in state aid because it botched its class-size reduction program, announced Tuesday it was going to lose an additional $3.2 million because it overstated the number of special education students enrolled in its summer school programs.

Legislation approved in a post-midnight rush has positioned Anschutz Entertainment Group, a major political contributor and owner of Staples Center, to tap millions of dollars in state funds to spruce up the area near the downtown arena and the company's $2.5-billion L.A. Live development. The bill's approval early Wednesday, only a few hours before the Legislature adjourned for the year, angered several lawmakers and advocates of affordable housing, including some who called for Gov.

State officials said Wednesday they would release an unexpected $64 million to counties for mental health care. The state Department of Mental Health said the money comes from unspent administrative funds generated by Proposition 63, California's voter-approved, 1% "millionaires' tax," established to overhaul the troubled public mental health system. Under Proposition 63 rules, unused money must be disbursed to counties, although the state must approve county plans for spending the funds.

When Terry Badillo's teenage daughter Denise became pregnant, she didn't know what to do. Badillo's husband had health insurance through his job, but it didn't cover Denise, then 17. The Monterey Park homemaker, who made call after fruitless call for help, remembers that uncertainty a couple of years ago as "a terrible time." Badillo eventually learned about Maternal and Child Health Access, a Los Angeles nonprofit agency.

Adismayed Chuck Finck stood at his daughter's hospital bedside in Redding, a winding two-hour drive from his home in the alfalfa-rich Big Valley. It was Cheryl Medeiros' fourth hospitalization for psychiatric-related problems in the last few years, each time hours from the family's home in Modoc County, in the state's remote northeastern corner.