A.M. Splash: Katehi Says Police Told Not to Use Force; Ed Lee Signs Law Closing Health Law Loophole; Occupy Oakland Chased Out Again

As the tent city on the University of California, Davis, tripled in size, Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi insisted Tuesday that the school's police department defied her orders when it used force against students in last week's pepper-spray fiasco.

For two hours Tuesday night, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi and other campus officials took the stage in a town hall meeting - fielding questions and listening to the concerns of students - in a mostly full Freeborn Hall, which holds nearly 1,200 audience members.

Mayor Ed Lee wasted no time in signing legislation approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday intended to close a loophole in San Francisco's groundbreaking law that mandates employers provide some health care coverage to their uninsured workers.

A confrontation between police and a diverse group of Occupy Oakland protesters ended late Tuesday, when campers moved out of a vacant lot that they had taken over a day earlier. About 100 people gathered on the sidewalk outside the lot after police issued a 30-minute warning to vacate the lot inside a chain-link fence that surrounds 18th and Linden streets. The displaced campers were scrambling to figure out a new plan late Tuesday, and it was unclear if they planned to camp overnight.

Mayor Ed Lee's office is talking with Occupy San Francisco about relocating its tent encampment at Justin Herman Plaza to a former high school site on Mission Street between 15th and 16th streets, officials tell us.

With life hanging in the balance, San Jose police and firefighters will take minutes longer to respond to emergencies. City libraries and community centers, some newly built, will sit locked and empty. There will be no more city recreation programs, and roads will continue to deteriorate. That was the ugly picture of San Jose's future that city leaders laid out Tuesday as they unveiled their case for declaring a "fiscal and service-level emergency" to justify rolling back the soaring costs for city workers' pensions.

...Crab fishermen and seafood processors remained deadlocked Tuesday over price, virtually eliminating the possibility of fresh Dungeness crab on Thanksgiving tables.

In a sometimes contentious legislative hearing Tuesday, state senators told California Department of Transportation officials that their management of data falsification by a technician in one of the agency's testing units suggests pervasive management problems.

Early Tuesday afternoon, the San Jose City Clerk's Office announced that medical marijuana activists had turned in enough valid signatures to qualify a referendum on the city's recently approved pot club regulations, setting up a City Council decision in two weeks on whether to put the new rules to a public vote. A few hours later, however, the clerk essentially said, "Not so fast."

California energy regulators proposed a way Tuesday for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers to opt out of receiving one of the utility's wireless SmartMeters. But the proposal from the California Public Utilities Commission closely mirrors PG&E's own opt-out plan, imposing fees on people who reject the wireless meters. Critics of the devices, who consider them a health threat, immediately rejected the commission's plan.