Leaves Of Absence

Although he has taken a 60-day leave of absence, Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona technically remains in office and can continue drawing his salary, Orange County's top lawyer told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. The report from County Counsel Benjamin P. de Mayo was intended to resolve questions about who is legally in charge of the department during Carona's leave. The sheriff, his wife and a former mistress were indicted in a public corruption case in October.

The federal guarantee of 12 weeks off to care for children or ailing relatives should apply to every worker, the Bush administration argued Wednesday, as the Supreme Court considered scaling back a law intended to ease work and family conflicts. The court could use the case to extend a line of rulings favoring states' rights, or it could mark a detour from that legal path.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would like Michael Vick to take a paid leave of absence, but the Atlanta Falcons star wants to play football this season, sources familiar with the situation said Friday. With the opening of NFL training camps looming, league and Falcons officials are under pressure to take decisive action against the quarterback, who was indicted this week on federal charges related to dogfighting.

On Feb. 5, 1993, when a newly inaugurated President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, he lavishly praised several of the bill's Republican supporters, many of them in attendance, and declared grandly that the two parties had ended gridlock in the interest of American families. One Republican missing from the sun-washed White House ceremony was then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole.

Employer groups, joined by Industrial Welfare Commission Chairman Bill Dombrowski, on Friday denounced an opinion by the state's top labor enforcement lawyer that said white-collar workers must be paid for furloughs of up to a month. Until now, employers had paid salaried workers for furloughs of up to a week and believed they could force them to take vacation time.

President Clinton on Sunday declared that America's working parents need to spend more time with their children, and he offered two government-subsidized family leave programs to help make it possible. Citing a new federal study that says working parents must contend with a worsening "time crunch," the president said both plans aim to give people the financial flexibility they need to take time off from work to tend to family needs.

President Clinton proposed spending $20 million to help states find ways to offer paid leave to working parents in need. Americans should not be forced to choose between their family and their job, he said Saturday. Clinton also said in his weekly radio address that he wants the family and medical leave law he signed in 1993 expanded to include 10 million employees of small companies not covered now. Republicans reacted coolly to both ideas.

Changing course slightly, the Supreme Court rejected a states' right claim Tuesday and upheld a federal law that gives employees -- including state workers -- a right to take unpaid leave to care for a sick relative. The 6-3 decision, written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, preserves a popular law championed by President Clinton and congressional Democrats. The outcome left supporters of the law surprised and relieved. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.

Six months after a new superintendent arrived to bring order to the troubled school system here, the school board is raising questions about a leave of absence he took for medical reasons that have not been publicly disclosed. Reed Montgomery's absence from the helm of the Laguna Beach Unified School District began Dec. 5 and had been expected to end Monday.

As many as 109 prison guards and other corrections workers have been placed on paid leaves that have gone on for months and sometimes years as authorities investigate alleged misdeeds ranging from having sex with inmates and selling drugs in the prison to spousal abuse and manslaughter, officials said Thursday. One guard has been on paid leave from a Southern California institution since Oct.