Government Agencies

The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the nation's financial regulatory system, combining what is now an alphabet soup of government agencies into three streamlined regulators. The proposal is the result of a year of study by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and has the support of the president, according to Treasury officials who spoke on condition of anonymity Friday.

California's "safe surrender" program, allowing parents to leave unwanted newborns at fire stations and hospitals without penalty, has become an orphan, with little money and no state agency responsible for publicizing or overseeing it, according to a highly critical state audit released Tuesday. Although 218 California babies have been surrendered safely since the state approved the practice in 2001, the audit said, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Gov.

Orange County's Emergency Operations Center, its nerve center during such disasters as October's wildfires, needs renovation or it may find itself a victim of a disaster, according to a grand jury report released Tuesday. Backup power is inadequate, the sewer system can be overloaded, and smoke wafted in during the fires, prompting people to wear breathing masks, the report said.

As head of analysis for all U.S. spy agencies, Thomas Fingar was making final edits last summer on a long-awaited intelligence report on Iran. The draft concluded that Tehran was still pursuing a nuclear bomb, a finding that echoed previous assessments and would have bolstered Bush administration hawks. Then, just weeks before the report was to be delivered to the White House, new intelligence surfaced indicating that Tehran's nuclear weapons work had stopped.

The first, busy days that same-sex couples will be allowed to wed in California promise to be chaotic and confusing, as counties throughout the state are coming up with widely varying procedures for implementing the Supreme Court's order lifting the ban on gay marriage. In Los Angeles County, marriage licenses will be issued Tuesday -- the first full day the court's order takes effect -- on a first-come, first-served basis.

Five months after the sudden dismantling of the public corruption unit in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, questions are still being raised in Washington, D.C., about the controversial move. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been exchanging letters with a top Justice Department official over the unit's disbanding, and the subject came up during a congressional oversight hearing late last month. In March, Los Angeles U.S. Atty. Thomas P.

The Bush administration unveiled a long-awaited reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community Thursday, boosting the authority of the director of national intelligence but prompting sharp criticism from congressional leaders who said they were not consulted on the changes. The executive order signed into law a day earlier by President Bush essentially designated Director of National Intelligence J.

A workers union sued the state Friday in an effort to reverse more than 10,000 layoffs ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as criticism of the decision mounted and Californians began to feel the effect on government services.

The top executive at Los Angeles' largest municipal pension fund wasted little time last spring jumping from his government post to a private sector job -- one that required him to drum up business from agencies like the one he had just left. On May 5, Robert Aguallo Jr. e-mailed his resignation to the chairman of the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System.

Responding to a Times video that showed city agencies wasting water last week, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa firmly ordered city officials to conduct ongoing audits of water use by all departments, saying he will publicly release the results, including any violations of the city's new "drought buster" restrictions. The action came Friday, the day after the mayor signed an ordinance doubling penalties for residents and quadrupling them for business owners who waste water.