Management

Lily Hixon flung open her kitchen cupboards with pride. "Look," she said, doing a Vanna White impression as she gestured to boxes of cereal and crackers. "I like everything organized." The one-bedroom Monrovia apartment decked out in Ikea has been Hixon's introduction to independent living, a privilege the 25-year-old born with Down syndrome still can't believe is hers. Built on an old rail yard, Regency Court Apartments is a quiet, mini-neighborhood of sage-green apartments and bungalows where Hixon greets neighbors with a wave.

The California State Athletic Commission, one of many consumer-protection boards, is responsible for ensuring the safety of athletes in boxing and mixed martial arts by licensing them and event promoters, among other tasks. But records from the state and the boxing industry reveal a pattern of poor performance by a board that has had trouble following its own rules. An internal audit in late 2003, around the time Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, found sloppy record-keeping, inaccurate revenue collection, outdated technology and staffing shortages.

Garfield High, which became nationally known as the real-life setting for the film "Stand and Deliver," will be among the initial 12 local campuses, including six high schools, eligible for takeover because of persistent academic failure, officials announced Friday. The nation's second-largest school system will invite bidders from inside and outside the district to run these schools next year through a proposal process that is still being developed. The Los Angeles Board of Education authorized this school-control plan in August; it applies to low-achieving existing schools and to 51 new campuses set to open over the next four years in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Van Nuys Airport has been plagued with budget deficits for years. Audits have uncovered mismanagement, poor tenant relations, lost business opportunities and facilities that were leased in violation of federal regulations. Now, a dispute between two prominent business leaders and political heavyweights is raising more questions about the management of one of the busiest general aviation airports in the nation. Real estate magnate Robert F. Maguire and billionaire David H. Murdock, the chief executive of Dole Food Co., are locked in a legal battle involving their aviation service companies, which are competitors at Van Nuys.

The cost of Michael Jackson's private funeral topped $1 million, with more than half that amount going to buy a crypt in a celebrity-studded Glendale mausoleum and $35,000 spent on clothes for the singer, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. Jackson, who died in June, was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in September in a nighttime ceremony arranged by his family and paid for by his estate. The probate judge who signed off on those expenses made public the funeral costs at a hearing in which he also appointed two longtime Jackson associates, entertainment attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain, as executors of his estate.

Kelly Rowland says she will always be a part of Beyonce's family, but she no longer will be managed by the star's father. Rowland and Matthew Knowles announced Wednesday that he is bowing out as her manager. Both called the split amicable. Knowles has guided Rowland's career since she was youngster, when he put her in Destiny's Child along with Beyonce. She sold millions of records as part of Destiny's Child, but her solo career hasn't matched that success. Rowland, 27, did not say who her new manager will be.

I've long collected frequent-flier miles haphazardly. With each flight, 1,000 or so miles go into one of several accounts I have with various airlines. I don't fly a lot, so the miles don't add up fast. But it's like putting loose change into a jar each night -- you hope that someday it'll amount to something. Still, keeping track of my miles has become a chore. This is compounded by the fact that I also monitor the accounts of my wife and our two children. When I looked recently, I found 23 frequent-flier accounts in our household.

Women hold nearly half the executive and managerial jobs in the United States, but they fall short of men at the top rungs of the salary ladder, the Census Bureau reported. Nearly 46% of management positions were filled by women in 2002, up from only about a third in 1983 but virtually unchanged from a record high set in 2001. Almost 16% of men working full time earned at least $75,000 a year, compared with 6% of women. And 20% of men made between $50,000 and $75,000, compared with 12% of women.

CorVel Corp., an Irvine-based medical case management firm, said it has signed an agreement to begin handling case management for several Nationwide Insurance Enterprise's workers' compensation, liability, accident and health insurance units. Nationwide, based in Ohio, is one of the largest insurers in the country. CorVel officials said the deal represents the largest case management contract ever between a major insurance company and a single vendor.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday moved to give the city's top bureaucrats an expanded package of perks, but balked at a proposal by Mayor Richard Riordan to boost the salaries of eight high-ranking officials. Responding to concerns that it can be difficult to recruit from the outside, the council voted 12-1 to increase paid vacation for general managers and assistant general managers from two weeks to three or four weeks, depending on their level of experience.