Government Agencies

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will refund $160 million that it overcharged other government agencies for more than a decade, the state attorney general's office announced Monday.

The worldwide credit market freeze may be claiming a new set of victims: states, cities and other government entities that issued variable-rate bonds and are now facing interest-rate shocks akin to those that hammered homeowners with adjustable-rate loans. The government agencies at risk issued a hybrid municipal bond known as a variable-rate demand note. The payouts on many of these issues have been driven sky-high by the credit crisis.

President-elect Barack Obama's selections Saturday of a Harvard physicist and a marine biologist for science posts signal that he plans a more aggressive response to global warming than the Bush administration's was. John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco are leading experts on climate change who have advocated forceful government action. Holdren will become Obama's science advisor as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Despite calls from the incoming Obama administration to bolster the embattled Food and Drug Administration, the agency is unlikely to see major reform soon as bigger problems with higher profiles once again shoulder aside food safety in the competition for resources.

How encouraging to see President-elect Barack Obama selecting real regulators to run government agencies rather than spineless industry lap dogs. ("Obama to pick Mary Schapiro as SEC head," Dec. 18.) Richard Varenchik Santa Clarita

Criticizing "exorbitant" payouts in lawsuits against the city, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa issued an executive order Wednesday that gave his office more control of municipal risk-management efforts. The city paid more than $37 million to settle lawsuits and claims last year. Although the amount is down from previous years, Villaraigosa said he had been frustrated by some of the decisions, including a settlement proposed by City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo that would have paid $2.

Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on the Internal Revenue Service and other government repositories of personal financial information as an important source for leads in terrorism investigations. The masses of detailed data give investigators broad power to sift through the finances of people, charities and businesses suspected of illegal activities. But they also worry privacy advocates who fear that tax and other financial records may be used improperly.

A federal judge Monday said she would personally review the government's investigation into the disclosure of confidential documents in the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping case, amid claims that the latest leak was triggered by a previously unreported FBI interview of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. U.S. District Judge Dale S.

To a small-business owner, the federal government can seem as remote and aloof as the Great Sphinx of Egypt. Working to change that is Nicholas N. Owens, the new head of the Office of the National Ombudsman at the Small Business Administration. "Small business should know we have the ear of the federal agencies, that there is transparency through our office for small businesses," said Owens, who joined the SBA last year.

Los Angeles County public health officials failed to document more than 90% of raw sewage spills that have occurred since 2002, largely because city, county and state agencies did not report them, according to a study released Wednesday. Most of the 208 potentially health-threatening sewage spills between January 2002 and July 2006 were neither officially recorded nor cleaned up, according to the 24-page report by the Los Angeles County auditor-controller.