A.M. Splash: Edwin Ramos Found Guilty in SF Slayings; Funds For Free Muni Youth Plan Now Competing With Other Regional Proposals

A man with a long gang history was convicted Wednesday of the mistaken-identity murders of a San Francisco father and his two sons, the culmination of one of the most notorious crimes in the city in recent years. Edwin Ramos, 25, at first was still as the San Francisco Superior Court jury returned guilty verdicts on three first-degree murder counts in the killings of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. Soon, however, he began to cry.

If Muni wants $5 million in regional transit funds for its free youth pass plan, it will have to fend off a host of other Bay Area agencies. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has approved a plan to provide free rides for low-income youths, but only if the Metropolitan Transportation Commission pitches in $5 million. However, several other transit agencies are competing for that cash.

The owners of a tanker ship that spilled more than 400 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay in 2009, polluting 6 miles of Alameda County shoreline, agreed Wednesday to pay nearly $2 million in a settlement with local governments.

Mayor Jean Quan could survive a second of three efforts to force her out office if opponents cannot collect the nearly 20,000 signatures needed by Monday to trigger a recall election against her. According to Quan, they don't appear likely to succeed.

Yelp has given San Francisco a five-star rating, committing itself to stay in its hometown through at least 2020. The popular online review site, one of the first dot-coms to set up shop in the city after the Internet bubble burst, will announce Thursday that it has signed a roughly 100,000-square-foot lease at the Pacific Telephone Building, an Art Deco classic of the city's skyline.

Officials representing Gov. Jerry Brown met with state employee union leaders last week and delivered the news: A budget revision he'll release Monday includes a new proposal to cut payroll costs in the upcoming fiscal year. The decision to take a bite out of state workers' pay comes amid a deepening California budget deficit that Brown pegged in January at $9.2 billion through 2012-13 but now is thought to be considerably more.

...Since PG&E's sloppy record-keeping came to light, hundreds of technicians and engineers have spent thousands of hours poring through millions of individual documents in an unprecedented effort to build a detailed view of PG&E's vast gas transmission system -- and to repair the utility's tattered reputation. So far, the effort has involved collecting 3 million records scattered in file cabinets in about 60 PG&E offices between Eureka and Bakersfield, and shipping them to Emeryville.

Legislation ratifying a compact between Gov. Jerry Brown and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria to open a 3,000-slot machine casino in Rohnert Park is scheduled to come before the Assembly today. The bill, AB 517, was approved by the state Senate last week.