A.M. Splash: SF Budget Restores Funding; Judge Wants New Investigation Into OPD

San Francisco's new annual city budget will top $7 billion for the first time, a massive figure but one with merit, Mayor Ed Lee said Thursday. The first citywide, two-year spending plan restores funding for local HIV and AIDS services targeted for federal cuts, includes additional money for public schools, and ups funding for employment and small-business programs.

A federal judge ordered a probe Thursday into how Oakland police investigate officer-involved shootings and threatened the department with sanctions if misconduct is uncovered. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson also ordered Oakland to provide by June 8 additional information showing how it will complete already past-due internal affairs investigations stemming from last year's Occupy protests. He threatened to levy daily fines against the city if it again misses deadlines to complete the investigations.

City College of San Francisco may be forced to close or combine some campuses - it has 12 of them - to help stave off a financial crisis and retain full accreditation, The Chronicle has learned. More immediately, college trustees voted 4-1 Thursday evening to seek an independent, top-to-bottom financial evaluation even as they prepare to restore nearly 100 summer school classes that were cut to save money.

A judge has ordered two East Oakland motels, both sued by the city after decades of prostitution and child sex trafficking, to close for a year and for the owners to pay hefty fines, according to tentative decisions issued earlier this week. The National Lodge and the Economy Inn are expected to close by the end of July, a spokesman from the Oakland City Attorney's Office said Thursday. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brenda Harbin-Forte on Tuesday ordered the owners of both motels to each pay $45,000 fines, Oakland's attorney fees and to cover the cost of upkeep of the properties while they are shuttered to avoid blight.

In a significant win for Google ( GOOG ), a federal judge Thursday rejected Oracle's ( ORCL ) claim that the Android mobile software violated copyrights on key elements of the Java programming system. While the case is still subject to appeal, the decision by U.S. District Judge William Alsup clears away the last big claim that Oracle had pending in what started out as a multi-billion dollar lawsuit alleging that Google stole some of Oracle's intellectual property when it created the popular Android software.

Occupy the Farm supporters packed an Alameda County courtroom Thursday for arguments in a University of California lawsuit seeking to ban them from the Gill Tract in Albany, where they camped and farmed for three weeks this spring before being removed by police. Judge David Hunter was asked to issue a preliminary injunction banning eight specific farmers and anyone else from trespassing or farming the land. The university uses part of the land for crop research.

For the past year, Chevron Corp. has refused to pay an $18 billion pollution lawsuit judgment from a court in Ecuador, arguing that the judicial process there was marred by politics, official misconduct and fraud. So on Wednesday, the company's Ecuadoran opponents moved the case to Canada, a country whose court system enjoys a rock-solid reputation. They filed suit in Ontario, in a bid to seize enough of Chevron's assets to satisfy the $18 billion judgment from their homeland.