Job Promotions

The promotions of more than 4,000 Navy and Marine Corps officers are on ice because a Senate panel is demanding to know whether any of the candidates were involved in a 1991 sexual harassment case, Pentagon and congressional sources said. The move by the Senate Armed Services Committee appears to have effectively stalled the traditional summertime job changes within the senior ranks of the two services.

If it were up to the Long Beach City Council, the new chief of police would come from within the ranks of the Police Department. The mayor and a majority of the council say they hope City Manager James Hankla, who last week fired Lawrence Binkley as police chief, will choose a successor from within the Police Department. "We've had some fine officers rise within the ranks and I don't see why one of them can't be the chief," Mayor Ernie Kell said Wednesday.

The Los Angeles school board voted Monday to seek court approval to extend for five years a consent decree requiring the school district to promote more women into administrative posts. The decree was part of the settlement of a 1980 class-action lawsuit alleging the district discriminated against women seeking promotions to administrative positions.

William K. Black, the federal thrift regulator in San Francisco who recommended seizing Lincoln Savings & Loan in 1987, was promoted Friday to head the litigation efforts for the Office of Thrift Supervision in the West. Black, 39, had been district counsel for the agency's San Francisco district, which covers California, Nevada and Arizona. He oversaw regulation of Irvine-based Lincoln and told his superiors that it was being run in a reckless way two years before it was seized.

State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) complained to the Los Angeles City Council Tuesday that Latinos are "severely under-represented" in city government jobs and demanded a more aggressive affirmative action program. Torres said he was "dismayed" by recent figures that show that Latinos make up 37% of the county's population but only 19.5% of the city's work force. "The Latino community will no longer stand for this blatant inequity and injustice," Torres said.