Boards

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

SAN FRANCISCO - The Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee filed suit Wednesday against the University of California Board of Regents, demanding the release of police officers' names removed from a critical report on the controversial pepper spraying of UC Davis students. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, contends that when university officials agreed in a court settlement last month to redact all but two names, they "failed to represent the interests of the press and public," leaving the newspapers with "no choice but to bring this petition to protect the public's right of access to this important information.

The combination of Martin Hanzal's first offense in terms of NHL law and order and Dustin Brown's (apparent) lack of injury led league disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan on Wednesday to suspend Hanzal one game. Thus, the Coyotes forward will miss Game 3 of the Western Conference finals between the Kings and Coyotes on Thursday night at Staples Center. He received the supplementary discipline for his hit on the Kings' captainat 11:01 of the third period Tuesday, a five-minute major for boarding and automatic game misconduct.

The bizarre and complicated world of thoroughbred blood testing and sanctions reached the mainstream Thursday, when the California Horse Racing Board penalized the trainer who has won the first two legs of the sport's Triple Crown. The seven-person, governor-appointed board, ruling on a case that has been argued and litigated since the summer of 2010, suspended Doug O'Neill for 45 days and fined him $15,000. The penalty actually carried an additional 135 days of suspension, but that will be voided if there are no further findings involving O'Neill in the next 18 months.

Question: Our homeowner association is up against a bad economy and years of maintenance neglect. The board is fairly upfront with owners, but we have a new homeowner who came into his very first board meeting up in arms about suing the board and wanting to be a director at the same time. He knocked on doors, promising lower association fees and amnesty on past-due fees. Once elected, he began making false and ridiculous accusations against prior boards. He initiated his own investigations at association expense into all allegations he has heard since he purchased his unit.

Re Highlights, April 9. It sez here: "George C. Scott to trod Coronet's boards. . . ." My surely obsolete dictionary and my memory define trod as past tense and alternative past participle of tread . As an aid for future Highlights, here are some more neologisms to run up the linguistic flagpole: to made ; to wrote ; to spoke . And an aphorism might come in handy: "To erred is human, to forgave divine."...

"Battleship"is not the first major motion picture to be based on a board game - who could forget 1985's benighted "Clue"? - but it is surely the most expensive. With every superhero more celebrated than Amazing-Man or the Chameleon already spoken for (ditto for hot toys like Transformers), Hollywood has fallen back on popular games as likely fodder for action epics. If "Scrabble: The Movie" or "Qwirkle or Death" appears on a future marquee, don't say you weren't warned. As its north-of-$200-million budget indicates, "Battleship" has been expanded considerably from its origins as a pre-World War I pencil and paper game to include a major alien invasion that puts the very fate of the human race at stake.

The current economic mess is caused in great measure by the boards of directors of corporations. These boards are composed mostly of corporate officers of other companies, who often select their own boards from among the officers of the corporations on whose boards they sit. This mutual support arrangement results in incredibly high salaries and retirement packages, stock options and other benefits. All the top executives have to do is plan short term to push the value of the stock as high as possible and then cash in their stock options, usually multimillion-dollar gains, and forget about the shareholders, employees and the companies themselves.

Was it irony when you printed "Condo buyers in driver's seat" adjacent to "When fees get out of control" (Aug. 10)? I've often marveled at how someone can traverse the mortgage approval process to purchase a condo, only to be held at the mercy of a homeowner association whose assessments are neither fixed nor negotiable. It's a shame when foreclosures occur to homeowners who cannot meet "special assessments" of immovable boards of directors without resorting to legal recourse. Many past Associations columns in The Times have outlined near-fraudulent activities of some boards.

Conrad Giedt's assertion that practically all financial statements today are misleading is itself misleading ["CPAs Responsible for Enron Crisis," Letters, Feb. 3]. In fact, most financial statements are reliable and give a true picture of the financial status of the companies that produce them. It may be true that, due to the increased sophistication and complexity of modern business, financial statements are more opaque than they should be. And there may in fact be instances in which that opacity is purposeful.

Robert Van Handel remembered the boy as about 9 years old, tan, effeminate. "Now that I think back on it, he was probably the most beautiful child that I molested," Van Handel wrote to a therapist. Van Handel, a priest who ran a boys choir in Santa Barbara, said he coaxed the boy into posing for nude photographs. He described the experience as "stimulating" in a graphic account of improprieties he said he carried out at a Franciscan boarding school there. For decades, the now-shuttered St. Anthony's Seminary was awash in dark secrets.

As travelers gear up for Memorial Day, families flying coach on United Airlines who don't have "elite" flier status may need to pack an extra dose of patience. United has dropped the “families can board first” do-si-do from its boarding process. "We figured it would be better to simplify that process and reduce the number of boarding groups," United spokesman Charles Hobart told CNN. If you and your family are flying first- or business-class, you can board early. United isn't the only airline that doesn't give families priority.

SACRAMENTO — The California State Teachers' Retirement System will cast its 5.3 million shares of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. against the reelection of the company's board after allegations of bribery in the retailer's Mexican operations. Citing "a breakdown of corporate governance and lack of oversight," Jack Ehnes, chief executive of CalSTRS, made the announcement Tuesday "CalSTRS believes former and current Wal-Mart executives and board members breached their fiduciary responsibilities," Ehnes said.

Well into his 70s, Terry Martin could be found most days in his Dana Point workshop sanding blocks of polyurethane foam into precision-shaped surfboards. With his big white beard and barrel chest, Martin looked like Santa riding out a blizzard of swirling white dust. Over a nearly six-decade career, Martin is said to have shaped more surfboards than anyone - some 80,000 - although the exact number is unknowable. Martin himself once said he stopped counting after 50,000. Martin's output and perfectionism made him an icon among the tight-knit fraternity of surfing's best shapers, one of a dwindling number of craftsmen who earn a living making surfboards by hand.

The fate of trainer Doug O'Neill, charged by California Horse Racing Board enforcement officials with a substance abuse violation involving one of his horses, will be addressed Thursday morning at a board meeting at Hollywood Park. These are usually low-profile procedural meetings, but the item on the agenda involving O'Neill, whose I'll Have Another will take a run at racing's coveted Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes June 9, has triggered much interest and speculation. Racing's enforcement officials ruled that an O'Neill-trained horse, Argenta, tested positive for high levels of carbon dioxide after a race Aug. 25, 2010, at Del Mar. High levels of carbon dioxide are considered evidence of the use of a "milkshake" to illegally boost a horse's stamina.

As cities and schools across California celebrated the 82nd birthday of slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk, Orange County elected leaders remained steadfastly silent. Activists, for the second year, asked Orange County supervisors Tuesday to recognize Milk's birthday with a proclamation, but the board declined the opportunity, as it did last year. One of the supervisors, Janet Nguyen, walked from the board room shortly after the activists began their presentation. Last year, Nguyen also left the meeting as the activists spoke.

Re: David Lazarus' consumer column "It's time for boards to limit CEOs' compensation," May 24: CEO salaries have been a major part of the increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots for some time. It is past time when members of boards of directors exercised their responsibilities to help stabilize our economy. Karl Strandber Long Beach

If you have watched enough old "Gidget" movies that you are ready for some real action, push the off button on your remote and hit the beach for some sunshine and fresh air. Once there, you could bring that reliable old shovel and spend your day digging a big hole in the sand. But why not venture out into the surf and ride the waves like those guys you always see off in the distance? But first, here are some ins and outs of buying a surfboard. Not all boards are alike. Some are long--called, appropriately enough, long boards.

BOSTON -- Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said he supports cable and telecommunication companies adopting a usage-based pricing plan for broadband. "Usage-based pricing could be a healthy and beneficial part of the ecosystem," Genachowski said in an appearance at the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn.'s annual convention here.

The newly formed SAG-AFTRA board of directors has confirmed David White as the merged union's sole national executive director. The national board of SAG-AFTRA voted overwhelmingly Sunday to select White for the job, approving a new three-year contract. White, the former Screen Actors Guild executive director, was expected to assume the new position as the chief administrative officer for the union of about 160,000 members. He had been serving as co-national executive director with former American Federation of Television and Radio Artists leader Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, who announced last month that she was resigning.