Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff
The State Assembly today approved and sent to Gov. Schwarzenegger SB 933, legislation authored by Sen. Jenny Oropeza to ban retailers from imposing surcharges on those who use debit cards. Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D- San Francisco), a proponent of the measure, presented the bill on the Assembly Floor. The bill passed with a bipartisan vote of 45 to 24.
Senate Bill 933 would close a loophole in current law by prohibiting a retailer from imposing a surcharge on consumers who elect to use their debit card or prepaid cards when making a purchase. A 1985 statue prohibits a retailer from charging a surcharge on a consumer who elects to use their credit card when making a purchase. Had debit or prepaid cards been in existence when the law passed, those forms of payment would have been included in the statute.
State-of-the-art technology to help California gambling addicts help themselves
The California State Attorney’s Offi ce unveiled this week, an innovative web-based computer program for all of California’s licensed cardrooms that is intended to help addicted gamblers break “their spiral of debt and addiction” by allowing them to voluntarily exclude themselves from gambling establishments.
“This system serves as a safety net for gambling addicts fi ghting to end their spiral of debt and addiction,” Brown said. “These are people who have chosen to help themselves, and we’ll assist them in keeping their pledges not to gamble.
An estimated one million Californians suffer from problem or pathological gambling, and more than 1,000 of them have signed up for the Attorney General’s Self Exclusion Program, which allows problem gamblers to voluntarily exclude themselves from licensed cardrooms. So far, the program applies only to card rooms and not to the California lottery, tribal casinos or horse racing, but if the cardroom program is successful, it can be expanded.
To join the Self Exclusion Program, a problem gambler fills out a form, has it notarized, attaches a photograph and chooses to be excluded for one year,five years or his or her lifetime. The Self Exclusion form can be found at http://ag.ca.gov/gambling/ exclusion_self.php.
In other state news, the State Attorney Offi ce also announced a half-milliondollar settlement with the operator of a sham nursing school in Los Angeles that created “the illusion it was training future nurses” by pretending to offer an accredited nursing program and tricking graduates into believing they had qualified to become registered nurses.
As many as 300 students paid $20,000 each to enroll and attend classes at RN Learning Center, which advertised its fast-track program for earning a bachelor of science degree in nursing in less than two years.
In the settlement negotiated by Brown’s offi ce on behalf of the Board of Registered Nursing, Junelou Chalico Enterina, owner and operator of RN Learning Center, which operated on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, agreed to close his business and pay victims restitution of $500,000. He also agreed never again to open a nursing school in California.
