A year after unexpectedly winning the Liga MX championship, the Xolos have advanced to the semifinals of Copa Libertadores. Last night, Tijuana tied Atlético Mineiro, which features Brazilian star Ronaldinho, and must win a game in Brazil next Thursday to advance. Two championships in two years for the Xolos, which won promotion to Liga MX in 2011, would be a boon on both sides of the border. It will be a little more difficult now, but it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

You’re reading the Sports Report, our weekly compilation of news and information for the San Diego sports fan.

Are the Chargers Ready to Compete in 2013?

• You may have thought free agency was over for the San Diego Chargers, but you’d be wrong. After losing Melvin Ingram to a torn ACL last week, General Manager Tom Telesco signed former Colts pass-rusher Dwight Freeney to a two-year contract. How much the 33-year-old has left in the tank might determine how good the 2013 Chargers can be.

• As if that wasn’t enough, the Chargers also signed veteran free agent left tackle Max Starks to a one-year contract after trying and failing to sign Bryant McKinnie. Starks is the likely starter at LT, where King Dunlap had been during OTAs, when the team returns to a normal practice schedule.

• Chargers rookie wide receiver Keenan Allen caused quite a stir this week after telling fans to follow him on Vine, a popular video-sharing website. Why? Because in his profile picture, Allen is wearing a Raiders hat. After taking a healthy dose of criticism from the fans, Allen apologized and said that he’d be more careful with what he wears in the future.

• Jerome Watson went digging through the offensive playbook of the Arizona Cardinals and found that Ken Whisenhunt likes to use “stack” formations in his offense. Click here to find out what a “stack” formation is, and why Chargers fans should be excited about it.

• Mike Klis from The Denver Post thinks the Chargers are making a mistake by shielding rookie linebacker Manti Te’o from the media. Klis speaks from experience, as part of the local media that covered Tim Tebow’s rookie season and he makes an excellent point about the media blackout affecting Te’o’s teammates.

The Padres’ Youth Movement Continues

• Second baseman Jedd Gyorko is having a tremendous rookie season for the San Diego Padres. He’s currently the third-best hitter (by OPS) and fourth-best player (by WAR) on the team, while trailing only Everth Cabrera and Yonder Alonso in plate appearances in 2013. If he keeps that up, the team might start looking to sign him to a contract extension while he’s still relatively cheap.

• Padres bloggers have fallen in love with Kyle Blanks, who is second on the team with an OPS of .811, and want to know why he isn’t getting more starts. Melvin from The Sac Bunt and Padres Public went digging through advanced stats to definitively show why Jesus Guzman should not be starting over Blanks in 2013.

• AvengingJM, who has long had a hate/love/hate relationship with Will Venable, explains why Venable shouldn’t be batting second for the Padres and decides on an optimal lineup so that Bud Black doesn’t have to waste any energy thinking about it.

Stories You May Have Missed

• USD’s Kris Bryant is apparently a man among boys, as he’s hit 30 home runs in 54 games for the Toreros. He’s not just a big power threat, either, as he’s hitting for average and getting on base with walks as well. Scouts rate him as “historic,” and he could be the second San Diego college player to be taken first overall in the MLB draft in the last few years, along with Stephen Strasburg.

• TheThinGwynn, a trading card connoisseur, took to Photoshop to see what Jedd Gyorko trading cards would’ve looked like in years past.

• Have you ever thought racing seems easy? Watch this video of a driver during a lap of the Nurburgring in the rain. I’m perfectly happy doing 65 mph on the freeway after watching that.

• GIF of the Week: LobShots found this GIF of Bo Jackson throwing out a Toronto Blue Jay at third base. I like to imagine Jackson as an equivalent of LeBron James playing baseball and/or football.

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Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donate to keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.

San Diego Unified’s efforts to raise student achievement did, indeed, get it noticed by the Broad Prize for Urban Education — and now the district’s fate in the elite competition lies with a team of reviewers fanning out across six San Diego schools this week to weigh whether San Diego receives the 2013 prize.

The district is already a semi-finalist, guaranteed to receive at least $150,000 in student scholarships. It is one of four districts selected nationwide. The top district will get $550,000 in scholarships for its 2014 graduating seniors.

But what, exactly, are the Broad Prize officials looking for when it comes to who fills the top spot?

The Broad Prize is designed to reward improvements in student achievement, especially in closing the education gap that exists for poor and minority students. Seventy-five urban school districts are eligible. All have large percentages of low-income and minority students. This is the first time in the award’s 12-year history that San Diego Unified has been selected as a finalist.

The Broad Prize “celebrates moving in the right direction,” said Greg McGinity, managing director of policy for the Broad Foundation, which sponsors the prize. He said the purpose of the prize is to “ensure that every student in an urban public school has the opportunity to succeed.”

The Broad Prize visiting committee’s team leader, Shelley Billig, said reviewers are spending four days this week visiting Crawford and Kearny high schools, Challenger and Farb middle schools and Edison and Sherman elementary schools. The district selected which schools to review, but Billig said a computer randomly selects which school staff members are interviewed during the site visits. “We’ll talk to 350 people while we’re here. We get a thorough and comprehensive picture of the district,” she said.

The six schools visited are chosen based on school type and test scores: two high-performing, two moderately-performing and two low-performing schools in each district. The committee has a list of 72 indicators to look for when making their determinations.

The indicators are divided into several areas:

• Teaching and learning, which includes a review of the districts’ curriculum and instruction, assessment and professional development

• District leadership, which encompasses instructional leadership, district governance, strategic planning and performance and accountability

• Organizational structure and climate, which includes financial resources, human resources, organizational structure and processes and organizational culture

Also included is a review of the district budgets for 2008-2009, 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12. The committee is tasked with determining whether the “district is financially sound, implements prudent financial planning processes, and displays strong fiscal accountability.”

The years under review were a time of economic downturn and decreasing state revenue for public education. The district dealt with the budget crisis by laying off teachers and administrators, cutting programs, increasing class sizes, and recently, approving the sale of property.

Nonetheless, Billig said the most important indicator for her committee is success in closing the achievement gap. Other factors are ACT and SAT test scores and participation rates, AP test passage rates and graduation rates. The indicators are compared with other districts with similar demographics.

Billig noted that the students who are awarded the scholarships are those who wouldn’t receive funding to attend college otherwise. The money doesn’t go to the straight-A students, she said, because they have other sources for scholarships. Instead, students with demonstrated financial need whose grades have improved are rewarded for their efforts. Broad Prize scholarships of $20,000 will be given to students planning to attend a four-year college or university, and $5,000 scholarships will go to students attending a two-year college.

The winner of the 2013 Broad Prize will be announced on Sept. 25 at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. The three other finalists are the Corona-Norco Unified School District in Riverside County, Cumberland County Schools in North Carolina and the Houston Independent School District in Texas.

Among those educators on the Broad Prize review board, which selected the four finalists, is former San Diego Unified Superintendent Tom Payzant, now a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The selection jury that chooses the winning district is composed of leaders in government and business, including several former cabinet members and governors.

Christie Ritter is a contributor to Voice of San Diego. You can contact her at christieritter@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @swisscritter.

As a candidate, Filner pledged to create an atmosphere of openness at City Hall with regular office hours and greater access to details on government happenings. Central to those plans was the open government department, a mayoral division Filner said would ensure residents get easy access to city documents and details on the workings of city government.

But former Councilwoman Donna Frye, who Filner tapped to lead the effort, abruptly left the job on April 2, just three months after Filner took office. Deputy Open Government Director Steve Hadley left a few weeks later, according to documents obtained by Voice of San Diego in a public records request.

Frye, who typically doesn’t shy from media attention, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the circumstances of the departure or the future of the city’s open government efforts. Hadley declined to comment.

Frye and Hadley were two of at least 11 senior-level or mayoral staffers who have left their jobs since Filner took office in December.

Frye’s appointment had generated criticisms from former mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio and Councilman Scott Sherman because Filner wanted to change a city rule to allow Frye to hold the permanent post. City rules prohibit city retirees who collect a pension from working for the city for more than 90 days and Frye, a former councilwoman, collects one.

Immediately after she left her city post, Frye told KPBS that the pension issue was not behind her departure and said she planned to focus on a volunteer position with Californians Aware, a nonprofit that advocates for government transparency.

Her departure, and Hadley’s, complicates the mayor’s ability to follow through on specific promises he made on the campaign trail.

Filner had pledged to publish his schedules, policies and memos. He also said residents and reporters should have easy access to information, and an advocate in the mayor’s office.

“The mayor’s office has a responsibility to ensure the public has an opportunity to obtain information and participate in government decision making so that they have faith in our government,” Filner said in a July 2012 Voice of San Diego survey. “Otherwise, any decision made becomes suspect and the public loses trust.”

Thus far, the only progress on those campaign pledges appears to be in the mayor’s monthly office hours at City Hall — short of the three per month he initially proposed — and an open government page on the city’s website. The site provides access to documents the city must share by law, as well as links to public notices and agendas.

But the mayor hasn’t posted his public schedule or memos or said whether he will in the future, and his office is now missing staffers whose sole responsibility is ensuring the city acts transparently.

Irene McCormack, a spokeswoman for Filner, said the mayor remains focused on those goals and plans to hire a new director of open government.

She couldn’t provide details on whether the mayor is already searching for a replacement or how the department might change following Frye’s departure.

The mayor’s initial proposed budget included about $105,000 for an open government director. His revised budget released this week includes an extra $71,375 to make the position permanent (there were restrictions on Frye’s work schedule).

The proposals don’t offer specifics on the future of the open government department or details on its key initiatives.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donate to keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.

In his second report on an investigation into the arbitration industry, Will Carless finds that if you take your dispute to arbitration, you’re almost certain to lose. The National Arbitration Forum, one of the largest providers of arbitration services, “was finding in favor of corporations in 99.8 percent of the thousands of cases brought before it,” Carless wrote.

One study found that exactly none of the scores of companies providing arbitration services are following the disclosure laws that obligate them to report on their work.

This is part two of our special report on the system. Here’s Part 1.

One Paseo Decision Delayed

City staff, who report to Mayor Bob Filner, have asked developers of the huge and controversial One Paseo project in Carmel Valley to resubmit an environmental impact report. We don’t know exactly what the request was or how long it will take the developers to comply because neither they nor the mayor would speak with reporter Andrew Keatts. It could have a major impact on the project, which includes both a large commercial and residential development.

The mayor doesn’t have a vote and cannot veto land use decisions but he does control city staff who can request things like this. And he has railed on this project before. He recently stopped another large project in its tracks.

City Heights Gets Creative on Funding

When redevelopment dried up, a lot of low-income communities took a big hit. Speak City Heights reporter Megan Burks reported on how communities like City Heights relied on redevelopment dollars to fund basic needs like street repair, and how they’re looking for replacement funding.

One study found that alternative source of funding could be found through a complex process under the Community Reinvestment Act. “Under the act, banks are pushed to inject dollars into low-income communities where investments are often perceived as too risky,” reported Burks. The study “concluded investment in street infrastructure would fall under the CRA’s purview,” she wrote.

Xolos Advance, “Ruthian Homers” at USD

If you’re a fan of the soccer team Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente, known around these parts as the Xolos, then you’ll want to catch up on the team’s most recent run at victory with our sports blogger Beau Lynott. “They have advanced to the quarterfinals of Copa Libertadores, the prestigious South American club championship,” Lynott wrote.

Lynott also highlighted a high-scoring baseball player who’s slugging his way to stardom right here at the University of San Diego. “Kris Bryant’s 30 homers in 54 games is tied for the 11th-highest total in NCAA history,” wrote Lynott.

Time For a Taxi Overhaul?

Next time you climb into a taxi cab, here are some facts to think about. The average cab driver in San Diego works 71 hours a week, often in 10 hour shifts. After paying for expenses, he makes about $4.45 per hour. The lease on his taxi cab can be as much as $1600 per month. KPBS reported that after it expires in June, San Diego will not renew its contract with the Metropolitan Transit System to regulate the taxi cab industry. Mayor Filner has assembled a task force to study reforming the taxi industry.

“Drivers face poverty earnings and working conditions that would be illegal if they were statutory employees rather than independent contractors,” said Peter Brownell, research director at the Center for Policy Initiatives.

San Onofre: Restart First, Investigate Later

“The restart of the San Onofre nuclear plant could be authorized before the conclusion of investigations into the conduct of the plant operator,” reported U-T San Diego. They referred to comments from Allison Macfarlane, the chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made to a Senate committee yesterday. She told the committee the NRC’s report on restarting the plant will conclude “around the same time” as the NRC will finish investigating whether Southern California Edison provided accurate information to regulators.

“Let’s just say (if) SoCal Edison wasn’t honest in what they said to the commission and you allowed them to restart — it’s a problem,” Senator Barbara Boxer replied.

We previously laid out an explainer on the breakdown at the plant.

News Nibbles

• Dwight Steet pedestrians, don’t be trippin’ over our most recent busted sidewalk at The Stumblr.

• The National Journal says Republicans like the chances of putting Carl DeMaio in the House of Representatives in 2014.

• Mayor Filner donned his webcam to appear on Huffington Post to talk about border crossing issues.

• Slain architect Graham Downes’ architecture firm will “officially close on June 30,” according to a press release.

• About 42,000 San Diegans owe the county more than $94 million in unpaid property taxes.

• Part of a bridge that holds up a section I-5 North in Washington collapsed yesterday. It was labeled “structurally deficient,” just like San Diego’s own Coronado Bridge.

SONGS Trek Delights… No One

In 2010, San Onofre engineers were busy planning the replacement of steam generators that would ultimately cause the shutdown of the plant two years later. But they were also busy doing something else.

10 News showed off a 2010 training video made by management at the time, in which they dress as the crew of “Star Trek” and use a training facility at the SONGS station as the mock “bridge” of the famous “Enterprise” ship. The result: “SONGS Trek,” complete with a well-eyebrowed Spock and lots of blinking lights.

Powerful stuff.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled Graham Downes and had an incorrect byline.

Seth Hall is a local writer and technologist. You can reach him at voice@s3th.com or follow him on Twitter: @loteck.

Brady Phelps, the prolific blogger of random cultural ephemera and all things Padres at LobShots.com, tweeted this dreamy photo of the Torero slugger this morning, along with an AP note that Bryant “has outhomered 227 of 296 teams in Div I.” Bryant’s 30 homers in 54 games is tied for the 11th-highest total in NCAA history, per AP.

That’s a lot of dinger-hitting. Especially considering the days of aluminum bats in college baseball are past.

Bryant’s proficiency is already legend among baseball-scouting types nationwide, despite his relative local anonymity. In April, the AP wrote him up for his “Ruthian homer” that helped put him in the conversation to be the top pick in the upcoming MLB draft.

An NCAA.com story from May 10 discussed Bryant under the headline, “All the tools.” Scouting site The Fantasy Fix says he’s progressed “from an excellent player to a great one to a historic one.” Their scouting report notes that the 6’5″, 215 pound Bryant “is long-limbed, still a little lanky, with room to add more muscle to his frame.”

Bryant’s slash line (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) is a ridiculous .338/.496/.715. He leads Division I baseball in home runs, walks, runs and total bases.

He’s not done adding to his gaudy stats. USD is currently playing in the West Coast Conference tournament in Stockton, where it hopes to succeed and move on to the NCAA Tournament.

Now I know the name Kris Bryant. Quite a few more people will know it soon.

San Diego’s Development Services Department is asking the developer, Kilroy Realty, to resubmit its formal review of the project’s environmental effects, said Frisco White, chairman of the Carmel Valley Community Planning Board. White plans to announce the request tonight at the board’s May meeting.

It’s unclear what changes city planners have requested, how long it will take Kilroy to resubmit and what effect those changes and the delay will have on the project’s scale or viability.

Once Kilroy submits a new environmental review, the public will have 45 days to look it over and submit responses. The initial public review is scheduled to end on May 29.

So far, opposition within the community has come down to two complaints that haunt virtually any new development: traffic and density.

Since the property is currently zoned to allow for just 500,000 square feet of office space, Kilroy has been forced to seek an amendment to the existing land use plan to make way for its desired 1.4 million square feet of office, retail and housing.

But project opponents secured an influential ally earlier this year when Mayor Bob Filner showed up to the planning board’s January meeting and panned the project, saying he couldn’t believe the size of Kilroy’s initial proposal.

“I didn’t understand how anybody who said they respect the community starts off with four times what the community plan says. I don’t understand how you start with that,” Filner said. “The community was a contract, as far as I could see. And we spent a lot of time on it. People put their heart and soul into it, I’m sure. Once something is there, there has to be a pretty good reason to have a massive amendment, like you all are proposing.”

And while Filner doesn’t have a direct role in approving the project — since land use decisions by the City Council aren’t subject to mayoral veto — he certainly can exert influence in other ways.

Under the city’s strong mayor form of governance, the Development Services Department reports to the mayor. So if the mayor, for instance, thinks the project’s environmental review is inadequate, he can instruct city planners to request changes from the applicant.

Filner’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment, or to a request to interview the city project manager assigned to One Paseo, Renee Mezo.

A Kilroy executive and consultants hired to work on the project also didn’t respond to requests.

The planning board in the past has asked for a less dense development alternative proposal. The board’s March meeting also centered on the traffic study included in the plan’s initial review.

Once public comment on the environmental document wraps, the planning board will vote on whether to recommend the project to the city’s planning commission.

Then the planning commission will decide whether to recommend the project to the City Council. Then the Council will make a final decision.

Recirculating the environmental review will delay that process at least another month and a half. Whether it does more than that depends on the specific request made by Development Services, which hasn’t yet been made public.

“I thought we might be getting to it this summer, but that doesn’t seem likely anymore,” White said. “Hopefully we’ll all find out what’s happening from (Development Services) soon.”

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donate to keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.

Infrastructure funds for neighborhoods like City Heights are scant. Low-income communities fare well in competition for planning grants, but not for construction grants. Local funding streams are set to a trickle. And the city’s once-dependable reservoir of capital funds — redevelopment — is all dried up.

But one of those many City Heights studies is at least laying the groundwork for a potential new funding stream: the Community Reinvestment Act.

Under the act, banks are pushed to inject dollars into low-income communities where investments are often perceived as too risky. Traditionally, CRA investments take the form of small business and home loans.

But a study conducted last year by the City Heights Community Development Corporation, WalkSanDiego and the Center for Urban Economics and Design at UC San Diego concluded investment in street infrastructure would fall under the CRA’s purview.

“The loss of redevelopment took the wind out of the sails in terms of the momentum that existed throughout San Diego in neighborhood revitalization,” said Cynthia Fargo, the project lead and economic development manager for the City Heights Community Development Corporation. “With that loss, it was just an immediately clear mandate for everyone working in City Heights that we needed to seek out the alternative.”

Fargo said the CRA hasn’t been used to stoke investment in street infrastructure this way.

Here’s how it would work:

1. The city sets up a bond for street and sidewalk enhancements along business corridors in a low- and moderate-income neighborhood.

2. Banks buy into that bond as part of their CRA activity.

3. The city uses the bond money to improve walkability, adding trees and lighting and calming traffic.

4. Property values goes up because the community is more walkable.

5. Property tax increment increases help to repay the bond (and banks).

Fargo said the strategy would only be successful if it were mixed with small business investment — communities only become walkable if there are good businesses to walk to — and philanthropy.

Study lead Jim Bliesner said the strategy is, by no means, a replacement for redevelopment. But it’s a step in the right direction.

“We need to be creative with tapping into existing resources,” Bliesner said.

Study organizers will unveil their full plan 3 to 5 p.m. June 20 at 4001 El Cajon Blvd. Fargo said the report, funded by The California Endowment, includes details on which areas in City Heights might benefit from the CDC’s upcoming efforts to harness the CRA for street improvements.

Disclosure: Speak City Heights is funded by The California Endowment but operates as an independent news collaborative.

Disclosure: Voice of San Diego members and supporters may be mentioned or have a stake in the stories we cover. For a complete list of our contributors, click here.

Corporations across the country had increasingly been inserting clauses into their contracts that barred consumers from taking them to court. Instead, consumers who signed the contracts were limited to challenging the companies in arbitration, a privatized form of justice that some experts and attorneys say is often heavily biased in favor of companies.

Mandatory arbitration clauses were becoming a part of almost every consumer contract from cell phones to car rental to medical care. Employers were inserting mandatory arbitration clauses into their workers’ contracts, barring employees who challenged their dismissal from taking their hearings to court.

Concerned about the growing ubiquity of mandatory arbitration, the state Assembly’s Judiciary Committee put together an aggressive, bipartisan package of legislation aimed at protecting consumers. One of the key bills to come out of that effort in 2002 required arbitration providers to make public key information about the thousands of cases being heard by their private judges.

If arbitration was to become widespread, lawmakers at least wanted the process to be transparent.

But a decade later, as arbitration has expanded into almost every corner of Californians’ lives, this private world of justice remains as secretive as ever. Many of the providers of arbitration in the state have paid little or no attention  to the legal requirement to provide data about their cases, and when companies do provide information, it’s almost always unwieldy and hard to find.

That’s prompted the Judiciary Committee to take a fresh look at its efforts to regulate arbitration. After a March hearing in which the committee learned that arbitration firms are frequently ignoring the law, the committee chairman introduced a new bill AB 802 proposing hefty fines for violations.

“We want to be very clear that if you don’t do this, here’s the penalty,” said Democratic Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, who chairs the committee. “These people are flouting the law and they’ve got enormous power over people’s lives.”

By compelling arbitration firms to be transparent, lawmakers and academics hope to answer a key question: Is arbitration as biased as its critics say, or as fair as its proponents claim?

In addition to anecdotal evidence from attorneys and academics who complain that the system is an uneven playing field, consumer advocates got some stark proof of just how one-sided arbitration can be a few years ago.

One of the country’s leading arbitration providers, the National Arbitration Forum, was sued separately in 2008 by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis J. Herrera, and in 2009 by Lori Swanson, state attorney general of Minnesota, where the company is based.

The claims made in the lawsuits were extraordinary: Herrera said NAF was finding in favor of corporations in 99.8 percent of the thousands of cases brought before it. Perhaps even more shocking, Swanson alleged that NAF was actually owned by an investment group that also owned many of the companies its private judges were siding with in arbitration hearings. NAF denied all the claims against it.

Now, California attorneys, academics and lawmakers want to know if there are other arbitration firms operating in the state with similar records.

They hope the new legislation they’re pushing will finally provide the data they need to figure that out.

“The Legislature passes laws and they have no idea whether those laws are working,” said Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco attorney who has been a vocal critic of mandatory arbitration for years. “This is the only way they can get the information they need to take corrective measures.”

‘I Don’t Know Where That Came From’

Victoria Walsh was confused.

“We don’t publish data and we never have. We very rarely release any data,” the communications specialist at arbitration giant JAMS told me on April 22. “I don’t know where that came from!”

Turns out that came from the California Legislature.

Section 1281.96 of the California Code of Civil Procedure requires companies like JAMS to put certain case information on their websites, including the name of the company being challenged, the name of the arbitrator who ruled on the case and how much the winning side received.

The law was introduced back in 2002. At the time, California was leading the country: No other state required arbitration firms to make their findings public.

Lawmakers wanted individuals and attorneys to be able to find out about the company that would oversee their hearings and provide the private judge who would decide their case.

They hoped the data would allow plaintiffs lawyers to avoid so-called “repeat players” — arbitrators who made a name for themselves as being business-friendly and received more work from companies as a result.

And by collecting data on arbitrations, more could be learned about how often plaintiffs win challenges against companies that have forced them into arbitration.

Two months ago, the Assembly Judiciary Committee discovered just how little attention was being paid to the law.

“Many firms simply don’t comply with the reporting requirements,” David Jung, director of the Center for State and Local Government Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, told the committee.

Jung and his staff had spent months studying arbitration providers in California.

They had scoured the internet searching for arbitration firms doing business in the state and came up with a list of 26 companies. After investigating each one, Jung’s team concluded that about half the firms weren’t making any information public whatsoever. Of the rest, only one, the American Arbitration Association, even came close to meeting the legal requirements.

“It’s really shocking that they’ve just disregarded this legal obligation,” committee chair Wieckowski said. “How can I be confident and trust them if they’re not going to do their reporting?”

After hours of testimony, including from San Diegan Jon Perz, whose six-year journey through the world of arbitration has made him the poster boy for the case against mandatory arbitration in California, the lawmakers were left to ponder how to fix a clearly broken system.

The day after her flustered response to my requests for data from JAMS, Walsh called back.

She had been mistaken, she said, and would email a link to the information I requested.

Walsh then sent a link to a sprawling 3,000-page document that was missing much of the required information.

‘Show the People of California’

To tackle the problems uncovered in the March committee hearing, Wieckowski introduced a new bill: AB 802.

The proposed legislation broadens the type of information arbitration companies must share and requires them to make their data searchable, in an Excel spreadsheet or similar format.

Most significantly, the bill also proposes steep fines for companies that continue to flout the law: up to $25,000 per violation.

Wieckowski said the bill, which he hopes will be voted on before the end of the month, is facing strong resistance from the arbitration industry and business lobbyists.

“These people never wanted a reporting requirement anyway, and when they got one, they just ignored it for 10 years,”“These people never wanted a reporting requirement anyway, and when they got one, they just ignored it for 10 years,” he said. “Now they’ve come together to oppose this bill and it’s challenging my patience. I say to them, ‘If arbitration is so fair, if it’s such a good thing, then show me, show the people of California.’”

A May 20 letter from the American Arbitration Association laid out the provider’s case against Wieckowski’s bill.

It states that arbitration providers can’t meet the additional reporting requirements, since they don’t have access to some of the information required to be made public. And the letter argues that allowing consumers and public prosecutors to sue arbitration providers who don’t provide information would be problematic for the industry.

It says:

The creation of grounds for potentially frivolous lawsuits against a reputable and ethical arbitration provider, in concert with 18 additional data points that are either impossible to provide or are exceptionally onerous in aggregate will likely lead AAA and other organizations to cease administering consumer and employment arbitrations in California.

A May 14 letter to members of the Assembly from the California Dispute Resolution Council, an arbitration industry trade group, made similar points, and urged lawmakers to vote no on the legislation.

Jennifer Barrera, a policy advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce, said companies should be compelled to make their data public, but argued the proposed legislation goes too far.

“What AB 802 does is basically shut down arbitration,” Barrera said. “Maybe if you’re a company that hasn’t been reporting for an entire year, let’s talk about a penalty for that. But if you’re a company that got an isolated thing wrong, in all these numerous categories, and now I have to cease arbitrating, that’s pretty significant.”

The penalties in the legislation aren’t automatic, however. Rather, they are at the discretion of a court, something Alan Schulman, a law professor at the University of San Diego, said is an important distinction.

“Generally speaking, a judge charged with discretion is not going to give a fine where the indiscretion is trivial or inadvertent as opposed to an institutional failure to report,” Schulman said.

‘It’s Not an Unregulated Industry’

For veterans of the consumer arbitration world, it wasn’t news that the law has long been ignored.

“There’s really only two alternatives: one is they don’t know about the law that governs their conduct or they know about it and they’re simply not choosing to comply,” attorney Palefsky said. “Neither one of those is acceptable when you’re talking about the only place you can go to have justice dispensed.”

Representatives of the arbitration industry present at the March hearing acknowledged that companies need to abide by the law.

But they were also skeptical of whether forcing providers to publish their data would really reveal much about their business.

“It’s not an unregulated industry where anything goes,” Barrera told the committee.

Barrera said that arbitrators are required to disclose the reasoning behind individual rulings. And she echoed the point made in the trade group letter: that arbitrators must also disclose any potential conflicts that they may have before hearing a case.

But consumer advocates like Palefsky say that’s not the point.

Many consumers fight arbitrations on their own, without attorneys to enforce disclosure from arbitrators, he said. For those plaintiffs, the sort of data required by law, in a format they could easily search, would be invaluable, he said.

There are a host of other reasons why consumers should be able to research arbitration providers too, Palefsky said. The providers make the rules for arbitrations. If either party to the case wants to have an arbitrator dismissed for bias or any other reason, that’s the arbitration firm’s call.

And the arbitration provider makes crucial decisions on individual cases, such as who will pay the fees for the arbitration, he said.

There’s also the overarching reasoning for collecting this data: to give lawmakers, academics and anyone else a detailed view of the guts of the arbitration industry, to see whether it is functioning fairly.

To understand how crucial such information could be, it’s useful to look to the last time an arbitration firm was forced to reveal its statistics.

Consumers: 30; Corporations: 18,045

In March 2008, Herrera, the San Francisco city attorney, sued the National Arbitration Forum, one of the largest arbitration companies in the country.

Herrera accused NAF of running an “arbitration mill.” The company was non-neutral, biased and unfair, he claimed, and he had the stats to prove it.

According to its own reported statistics, NAF had held 18,075 hearings before arbitrators in California between Jan. 1, 2003 and March 31, 2007. Of those, consumers had prevailed in 30 cases. That’s a success rate of less than 0.2 percent.

Following Herrera’s lawsuit, Swanson, the Minnesota attorney general, also sued the company, which is based in Minneapolis. Swanson’s lawsuit claimed that NAF was owned by a massive hedge fund that also owned several of the companies that were routinely bringing cases in front of NAF arbitrators.

NAF quickly reached a settlement with Swanson agreeing to get out of the consumer arbitration business permanently.

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Just one year after winning promotion to Liga MX, the Xolos won the league championship in 2012. It was the first top-level soccer championship for a team from Baja California.

Despite missing the Liga MX playoffs this season, the Xolos are still alive in their quest for more glory. They have advanced to the quarterfinals of Copa Libertadores, the prestigious South American club championship. Top Mexican teams have been invited to compete in the Copa since 1998 but have never won the tournament.

The Xolos host Atlético Mineiro, featuring Brazilian star Ronaldinho, at 5:30 p.m. Thursday night. The match can be seen on Fox Deportes in the United States.

The quarterfinal matchup at Tijuana’s Estadio Caliente is the first of a two-leg fixture to determine who moves on in the tournament. The Xolos will travel to Brazil for the second leg at Atlético’s home stadium in Belo Horizonte on May 31.

Last week, Tijuana became just the third Mexican club team to win in Brazil in the Copa Libertadores with a stunning victory over traditional Brazilian powerhouse Palmeiras in Sao Paulo. After holding on for a 0-0 draw in the first leg at Estadio Caliente, the Xolos dispatched Palmeiras from the tournament with a 2-1 win.

Tijuana benefited from some good fortune in Sao Paulo when the Palmeiras goalkeeper spilled a weak effort off the foot of Duvier Riascos for a howler of a goal. The early away goal was huge after the scoreless first leg, as Copa Libertadores uses the away-goals rule to break ties. The Xolos added a legit goal in the second half when Fernando Arce blasted a one-timer off a poor clearance for a 2-0 lead.

Tijuana conceded a penalty kick after a handball in the box, then held on with 10 men and some cynical time-wasting tactics for the historic 2-1 win in South America.

The Xolos might play it conservatively again tonight in hopes of again holding the visiting Brazilians without a crucial away goal.

The soccer excitement from our neighboring border city comes amid a few shakeups in Mexican soccer. After the historic win in Sao Paulo, Xolos coach Antonio Mohamed announced that he was leaving the team after the tournament. Much of Tijuana’s success has been attributed to their Argentinian leader, so they will head into an uncertain future after the Copa.

The news was much worse for supporters of three other Mexican teams. At the Liga MX league meetings, deals were finalized to sell and likely relocate Jaguares of Chipas, Michoacán’s La Piedad and San Luis F.C. of San Luis Potosí.

San Diego, of course, has been without a major pro soccer team since 1992. Despite Mayor Bob Filner’s bi-national Olympics politicking, the announcement of a second MLS team for New York and rumors that Los Angeles’ second MLS club, Chivas USA, may be sold, there appears to be little movement toward bringing top-level soccer back to town.

Homeless Service Center Snags

The city’s large new center for the homeless has had a few hiccups in its early days, including shortages of various types. These are anything than tolerable, an advocate for the homeless tells us.

And she should know: she’s the one who led efforts to convince transients to come off the streets and into the building. Some of those homeless people, she said, now feel betrayed.

“It should’ve been ready,” she says in a new story on our site. “And if it wasn’t, we shouldn’t have opened the doors.”

Nasty Race Is Finally Over

We finish off our coverage of the District 4 race for City Council, won by candidate Myrtle Cole, with a look at how things got so nasty. Various players say they’re appalled by the shenanigans, but there’s no word from anyone who’s actually dismayed by their own actions.

Over at The Plaza, our website’s new chatterbox feature, we take note that Cole went on KPBS and refused to say anything about a mailer that falsely accused her rival of a connection to crack cocaine.

Here’s what she had to say: “You know I will not say anything about that. Things happen over the course of a campaign.

Unfortunate things happen over the course of a campaign. Both to myself and to the opponent. So, you know, I hate to say that’s politics because that does not, that should not, be. But that’s how it was. And that’s all I can say about that.”

Finding Ways to Stop Food Waste

The Convention Center has been hopping lately, and not just because thousands of urologists showed up for a recent conference, spawning a steady stream of puns. (Well, from me at least.) The United Fresh Produce Association was in town too.

And, as our food politics blogger Clare Leschin-Hoar reports, “what was left behind turned out to be a windfall for anti-hunger group Feeding America San Diego.”

In total, the association left 32,000 pounds of fabulous produce for the hungry. This is “a very tangible example of how those on our food front lines are also actively working to reduce food waste,” Leschin-Hoar writes.

• In related news, KPBS checks in on a program called Fish. Food. Feel Good. that collects “fish from sports fishermen and distribute the product to local charities. This year alone, it has provided almost 15,000 pounds, or roughly 30,000 meals, of sushi-grade fish to San Diego’s Meals on Wheels program.”

Million Dollars Here, Million Dollars There…

• KPBS has created an online gadget that will let you take a crack at balancing the city’s budget. You’ll get to choose from a variety of specific options like increasing library hours and ending trash service, shutting down a couple city golf courses and booting the football stadium’s $17 million subsidy.

Unfortunately, there’s no option to add “hire a personal concierge for the guy who writes the Morning Report.” Maybe they’ll fix this bug later.

• I used to have a source I called Strep Throat. Now, CityBeat columnist John Lamb has one he refers to as “Deep Moat.” (Mine’s better.)

The aforementioned Mr. or Ms. Moat suspects that Mayor Bob Filner’s foes have a hefty amount of money available for a mayoral recall and are just waiting for the right moment.

In a new column, Lamb wonders: “So, what’s it gonna take to put the kibosh on a costly squirrel-chasing special-election cycle that has little chance of succeeding?” He has recommendations for Filner, including “stop the pie-in-the-sky pronouncements” (I’d put a cross-border Olympics in that category) and “Let your people go—that is, let them do their jobs. Unshackle them from the micro-managing, wrong-size-paper-clip mentality that promotes fear, which, as they say, is a darkroom where negatives develop.”

We previously explained what it would take to pull off a recall of the mayor and why the city’s recall law may not be legal.

Quick News Hits

• Who knows what darkness lurks in the heart of North Park’s Grim Avenue? The Stumblr knows.

• Public radio’s Fronteras Desk profiles the ongoing public-relations gambit to make people forget about the violence in Baja California and focus on its food and fun. The campaign’s been ongoing for three years, and the region’s tourism is on the upswing even though Mexico as a whole is struggling to woo visitors.

• Dylan Ratigan, one of the most well-known ranters on cable news, left his MSNBC show last year and landed in North County, just outside Camp Pendleton, on a farm.

And not just any farm: he’s building what he calls “the prototype for job-creating, water-saving, food-producing, veteran-led hydroponic organic greenhouses nationwide.” This week, TV’s “The Daily Show” profiled Ratigan’s “less angry” new gig after making a visit.

OK, that’s interesting. But how does Ratigan get out his famous frustration these days when he’s not screaming on the tube anymore? Does he yell at the plants?

If so, they deserve better. Just whisper to them softly. And always change the subject when they wonder if that stalk makes them look fat.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donate to keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.