Mismanagement

The European Union's parliament debated Monday whether to unseat the top officials of the group's executive agency amid reports of fraud and financial mismanagement. All 20 officials of the European Commission who would lose their jobs attended the debate in the 626-member assembly, which has scheduled a no-confidence vote Thursday.

In a stinging denunciation, the president of the former parent company of failed Homefed Bank in San Diego has called on the Clinton Administration and Congress to abolish the Resolution Trust Corp., accusing the federal agency of massive "waste and mismanagement." Meanwhile, RTC President Albert V. Casey will leave his job at the end of this week--two weeks early--at the urging of the Administration, sources said Tuesday.

A group of Granada Hills High School parents Tuesday called on state authorities to conduct a "complete audit" of the Los Angeles Unified School District's finances, accusing the district of mismanagement and wasteful spending practices. At a morning news conference in the campus parking lot, about a dozen parents gathered to denounce the district for hiring what they contend are unnecessary employees, such as administrative consultants.

Confronted with the loss of confidence of its membership and possible decertification by the U.S. Olympic Committee because of financial mismanagement, the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation's Board of Directors has resigned. Jim Hickey, USBSF executive director, said Monday that the board members unanimously voted themselves out of office during a meeting Saturday at federation headquarters in Lake Placid, N.Y.

The general manager of four South County water agencies has resigned, effective in six months, after being accused of mismanagement and inappropriate behavior by a fellow agency official, according to several water board members. William P.

The Energy Department sold 23 trucks for 17 cents each, a $9,000 copier for a nickel and a drilling rig for $50,000, just a few examples of hundreds of deals that squandered government resources, federal investigators have found. The sales, which also included motor homes, laboratory equipment and cranes, occurred at the Energy Department's Nevada Test Site, the sprawling installation north of Las Vegas where nuclear bombs were once tested underground.

The Navy, acting at the eleventh-hour of the George Bush Administration, awarded a $365-million contract for a supply ship in an effort to preclude President Clinton from blocking or delaying the controversial and troubled program. Just two business days before Bush left office, the Navy awarded the contract to the National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) in San Diego to build the AOE-10, the fourth and last in a series.

Top executives of Golden Eagle Insurance Co. engaged in a "conscious strategy of misleading the state" by manipulating the company's data records, state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush charged Thursday. At a news conference here in which he accused ousted Chairman John Mabee and Mabee's lieutenants of conducting a "shell game" with Golden Eagle's finances, Quackenbush produced what he said was new evidence of the scale of their mismanagement.

A confidential report that apparently triggered the resignation of the director of the Department of Children and Family Services describes the troubled agency as in "chaos" and raises serious questions about its ability to adequately care for the 70,000 abused and neglected children legally in its custody.

A shareholder of Rockwell International Corp. sued directors Tuesday, alleging that they recklessly disregarded environmental laws at the company's beleaguered Santa Susana field laboratory, thus exposing the company to potential damages in the millions of dollars. The lawsuit, which seeks an unspecified amount of money from all 13 directors, asserts that they grossly mismanaged the company by allowing it to "engage in criminal conduct" at its Rocketdyne division facility in Santa Susana.