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Villaraigosa wants another new fee on DWP customers, AP covers L.A's budget problems, Speaker Perez's influence issues, the Rafu Shimpo in big trouble and Ban Ki-moon comes to town. Plus a lot more catching up with Monday, after the jump.
- Mayor Villaraigosa is actively considering a "carbon surcharge" of about $2.50 a month on DWP bills and reportedly has polling that claims most would support the new fee as a way to wean the agency off coal. LAT
- L.A.'s budget problems go national via the AP
Plus: Pressure grows to cut more from the LAPD budget. DN
Plus: The Librarians' Guild is sponsoring a website and signature-gathering effort in hopes of staving off deep cuts proposed for the Los Angeles Public Library.
Plus: Former candidate for mayor Walter Moore argues the budget crisis is fictional, cooked up by Villaraigosa and investment bankers to scare voters into "letting him sell valuable public assets to private interests." DN Op-Ed - The Rafu Shimpo is hemorrhaging red ink with more than $500,000 in debt and may have to close, said the publisher of the Japanese American community paper that began here in 1903. LAT
- Incoming Assembly Speaker John Perez, who takes over today, has "a financial pipeline to billionaire developers and white-shoe investors who rank among the most politically active power brokers in the state" that seems at odds with his labor image. LAT
- The City Council is reverting back to three-day-a week meetings after going daily for awhile due to budget discussions. DN/Orlov
- Even with a $2.25-billion infusion of federal economic stimulus funding, concerns are intensifying that California's proposed high-speed train may not deliver on the financial and ridership promises made to win voter backing in 2008. LAT
- ABC News, after announcing it will cut 25% of its staff and half of U.S. correspondents, continues to grapple with charting a digital future. LAT
- Daniel Hernandez, former LAT and LA Weekly reporter now living in Mexico City, tweeted last night that the Times is sending him to Chile: "Madness at the Mex City airport. All routes to South America r messed up or overbooked. Now heading to Buenos Aires, then we'll see."
- Closing arguments in the Proposition 8 trial in San Francisco will not be televised. LGBT POV
- Philanthropist David Bohnett has put his A. Quincy Jones-designed home in Holmby Hills — the former home of Gary Cooper and location of the Baroda Wall sculpture — on the market for $18.9 million. LAT
- Marianne Ratcliff, opinion page editor of the Ventura County Star since 2001, has resigned. Deputy Mike Craft will move up. VC Star
- Former LAT Calendar editor Maria Russo has a book review in the Sunday New York Times. NYT
- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in town this week, guests with Patt Morrison on KPCC at the top of the 1 p.m. hour.
- Former Dodgers pitcher Chan Ho Park signed with the New York Yankees. NYT
- Andrew Jaffe, former business editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, died in Norwalk, Conn. at age 71. THR
- Gene Chenault, half of the radio programming team that devised the "Boss Radio" format here in the 1960s, died at age 90. LAT