Paperwork

MIAMI — Walk through the modern new document depository in Medley, Fla., and one thing becomes clear: Paper can be a hard habit to break. Opened 16 months ago, the facility owned by an Atlanta company employs a team dedicated to digitizing records and storing them in secure computerized archives that can scan millions of files in a moment. But that part of the business in Medley occupies a tiny portion of Recall's operation, which remains dominated by old-fashioned paperwork.

Two families, both loving and stable, are vying to adopt a 4-year-old girl with strawberry blond hair and large blue eyes. One is certain to be broken-hearted. The tug of war began in May 2011, when Los Angeles County child protection authorities took the girl away from her drug-addicted mother and placed her in a foster home. Five weeks later, her paternal grandparents found out and moved to get her back. But the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services sat on the couple's paperwork for nearly a year, according to a claim they have filed against the county.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty filed paperwork with federal elections officials Monday to become a formal candidate for president, the first major Republican to take that step in what is expected to be a multi-candidate field against President Obama. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently announced his interest in the presidency and formed a fund to begin collecting money, but he has not yet filed a formal statement of candidacy. Pawlenty already has put together a team in Iowa and New Hampshire and has visited both states repeatedly.

Southern California Edison, majority owner of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant, submitted to federal regulators a draft request for a license amendment that would allow the plant to be fired back up again before summer. The plant's fate has been a subject of contention since it closed more than a year ago due to excessive wear on steam generator tubes that carry radioactive water. Edison has proposed to restart one of the plant's two units, the one at which the damage was less severe, and run it at 70% power for five months before taking it offline again for inspections.

We've all heard that government paperwork is a drag on productivity and a backdoor tax on the economy. Here's a case where it may actually be helping to improve people's lives. The paperwork at issue is a questionnaire of up to 38 pages nursing homes now have to fill out for every resident upon admission. The form has to be filled out again periodically during the resident's stay, and again upon the resident's discharge, no matter whether he or she is being sent home to live with family, or sent to a hospital by ambulance in the middle of the night.

When David Bloom of Los Angeles shipped to Iraq in 2005 with the U.S. Army Reserves, the last thing he expected to find there was a wife. But the first time he set eyes on an Iraqi woman named Zee, who worked for U.S. forces as a translator, Bloom told a buddy he was going to marry her one day. Marriage, as we know, can be a complicated undertaking. All the more so when international complexities and military rules are thrown in. Here now, just in time for Memorial Day, is the saga of Sgt. Bloom, 41, and 24-year-old Zee, who asked that I not use her last name because of concerns about her family's safety in Iraq.

Re: "Billing fraud crackdown is dealt setback," Aug. 19: Workers' compensation insurers don't want to send notices to injured workers to check whether the workers received all the medical services insurers are being billed for. They say the "high cost of increased paperwork" makes sending notices "prohibitively expensive." As if billions of dollars being funneled through these insurance companies to pay fraudulent claims isn't "prohibitively expensive"? Katie MacMahon Orange

JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to lift its 40-state freeze on home foreclosures later in November but said it would take several months to redo improperly filed paperwork. The company, the No. 3 U.S. mortgage lender, imposed the freeze on about 127,000 delinquent home loans last month to assess whether they were being handled correctly. The loans were made in states that require court orders for foreclosures and states with relatively complicated nonjudicial processes, but not in California and other states with streamlined procedures.

If anything, "Gov.'s Loan for Recall Ruled Illegal" (Jan. 27) shows the futility of trying to interpret and comply with the myriad laws, rules and regulations now on the books. The Legislature passes about 1,000 new laws each year. The inevitable result of laws piled on top of laws is that process (how something is done) becomes more important than product (what is done). Forget the goal or objective. We live in a time when legal requirements and paperwork are measured in pounds. All the i's must be dotted and t's crossed to the satisfaction of some judge, lawyer or bureaucrat.

All MarkAir Planes Get OK to Fly: All six of the carrier's jetliners have been cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration to resume flying, nine days after the agency grounded the discount airline because of safety concerns. None of the planes required repairs, MarkAir spokesman Tom Medland said. The last two MarkAir planes got the green light to resume service late Thursday. The other four had been cleared earlier in the week and had resumed flights to the 11 cities served by MarkAir.

SACRAMENTO - The state Assembly moved swiftly to OK the addition of $2 million to the secretary of state's budget to speed up the processing of business paperwork. The California secretary of state's office relies on a system of paper and not computerized filings for corporate, partnership and other business records that an entrepreneur must submit before hiring workers, opening doors or selling products. The $2-million appropriation bill (AB 113) was approved Monday by a 71-1 vote in the Assembly, and now must be approved by the state Senate.

Time really is money. Nobody knows that better than Elvis Dumervil and the Denver Broncos. Dumervil found himself out of a job and the Broncos were without their best defensive end Friday afternoon after they reached an agreement on a new contract but saw it all come undone when tardy filing of the paperwork forced Denver to release him. A person familiar with the negotiations gave the Associated Press details about the confusion. The person did not want to be identified because the negotiations were not public.

It was just before Christmas when customs officials at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport discovered 18 pieces of cargo that had arrived from Rome. Labeled as human specimens, each piece came individually wrapped and were contained in three large coolers. The 18 pieces were embalmed heads - skin intact - but had an unknown destination thanks to incomplete paperwork, Mary Paleologos, spokeswoman for the Cook County medical examiner's office, told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.

When Amber Oberg left the U.S. Army after eight years of active duty, her timing seemed perfect. Congress was creating a Post-9/11 GI Bill, with generous payments for veterans seeking higher education. But a month into her first semester at UC Davis, Oberg has yet to receive her tuition, housing and book money from the Department of Veterans Affairs. "I didn't expect to get out of the military and then have to wait and wait for the education money that was promised me," said Oberg, a single mother of two. She said she went back to school after a personal bankruptcy and the loss of her home to foreclosure.

MIAMI — Walk through the modern new document depository in Medley, Fla., and one thing becomes clear: Paper can be a hard habit to break. Opened 16 months ago, the facility owned by an Atlanta company employs a team dedicated to digitizing records and storing them in secure computerized archives that can scan millions of files in a moment. But that part of the business in Medley occupies a tiny portion of Recall's operation, which remains dominated by old-fashioned paperwork.

The Italian government has been persistent, tenacious and very effective in forcing repatriation of its looted antiquities. Seizing the ethical high ground, then playing legal and diplomatic hardball, it has extracted scores of prized objects from American museums. None was hit harder than L.A.'s Getty Museum, which has bid adieu to 40 pieces Italy was able to prove had been illegally dug from its soil. But last week, the tables turned. This time, the Italian government was the party caught owning an ill-gotten prize, "Christ Carrying the Cross," painted around 1538 by Renaissance master Girolamo Romanino.

The frequently ticketed daughter of Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) entered Ventura County Jail to begin a 30-day sentence for violating conditions of her traffic offense probation. Victoria Wright, 24, was conditionally accepted for the county work furlough program two weeks ago, but failed to submit the required paperwork until Monday, said program manager Richard Humeston. He said he expects to make a final decision today.

It was just before Christmas when customs officials at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport discovered 18 pieces of cargo that had arrived from Rome. Labeled as human specimens, each piece came individually wrapped and were contained in three large coolers. The 18 pieces were embalmed heads - skin intact - but had an unknown destination thanks to incomplete paperwork, Mary Paleologos, spokeswoman for the Cook County medical examiner's office, told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.

Four years after Countrywide Financial became a symbol of the mortgage meltdown, the company and its questionable dealings have become a potent political issue in the Santa Clarita congressional district held by Republican Howard "Buck" McKeon. Congressional investigators allege that McKeon and Rep. Elton Gallegly, a Republican colleague whose neighboring district includes much of Ventura County, got cut-rate home loans under a Countrywide VIP program known as "Friends of Angelo," named for the now-defunct Calabasas lender's former chief executive, Angelo Mozilo.

About one-fourth of the cases filed so far against Occupy Los Angeles protesters have been dismissed because of paperwork errors by police. In seven of the 26 cases filed as of last week by the Los Angeles city attorney's office, the arresting officer was misidentified in the police report, according to William Carter, chief deputy city attorney. Prosecutors requested the dismissal of six of the cases, and a judge dismissed the seventh on similar grounds, he said. Without the correct name of the arresting officer, prosecutors are not able to call police to testify, he said.