Resignations

The director of Orange County Public Works announced his retirement this week after a scathing review of his planning department resulted in an official call for its overhaul. Bryan Speegle had worked for the county for more than 26 years. He became director of the public works department in January 2004 after serving as planning and development director. On Monday, he gave notice that he would retire. "He did not state his reason for his decision," said county spokesman Howard Sutter.

South Carolina's lieutenant governor on Wednesday called for the resignation of Gov. Mark Sanford, citing "serious misconduct" and "serious distractions" that have stemmed from Sanford's extramarital tryst with an Argentine woman. But Sanford declined to step down, calling his understudy's move "pure politics, plain and simple." Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who, like Sanford, is a Republican, said that he was in fact trying to depoliticize the deliberations over the fate of Sanford, who is facing potential impeachment.

Maybe the Rock and Triple H will serve as campaign managers. Linda McMahon, chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., announced Wednesday that she was resigning to run for the U.S. Senate in her home state of Connecticut. McMahon, a Republican, will look to unseat Democratic Sen. Christopher J. Dodd in the 2010 election. Although not nearly as flamboyant as her husband, WWE Chairman and ringmaster Vince McMahon, Linda McMahon is considered the brains behind the brawn.

Google Inc. has endured the ire of the Chinese censorship machine. In its nine years in China, it has been slowed down, shut down and accused of peddling smut. The Mountain View, Calif., search engine also has been humbled by its main Chinese rival, the home-grown Baidu Inc., which enjoys double the market share and has long been suspected of receiving preferential treatment from the government. Now, with the resignation of its popular chief of China operations, Kai-Fu Lee, Google appears to have taken another punch to the chin in its quest to win over the world's largest and fastest-growing Internet market.

With seven children to care for and a caseload that quadrupled this past year, U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson says he can no longer afford his prestigious lifetime appointment. The 44-year-old, named to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California less than four years ago, is the latest defection in an accelerating nationwide trend toward leaving the federal bench long before retirement age to earn more money in private practice. Vacancies in the federal judiciary are mounting, and too few of the best legal minds are stepping forward to replace them, judicial analysts say. They attribute what they see as a troubling phenomenon to Congress' failure for nearly two decades to pass a significant pay increase for federal judges or to expand their numbers to handle a soaring caseload.

Guy Mehula, the highly regarded head of the Los Angeles Unified School District's massive school construction program, has resigned after an apparent power struggle with district leadership. In a brief letter to subordinates Monday, Mehula gave no hint of discord, painting his departure as an opportunity to search for new challenges. "The work that we have done together and the investments we have made in our schools, community, and economy are significant," he wrote. But critics say Mehula's resignation is fallout from a growing rift between his facilities services division and district headquarters, prompted by policy changes made by Supt.

Kenneth D. Lewis, who became a focus of public and political outrage while presiding over Bank of America Corp.'s stunning fall from grace in the financial crisis, is stepping down as chief executive at the end of the year. Lewis, who had helped build the company into the nation's largest bank, faced widening criticism in particular for the company's acquisition of faltering giant Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. He joins a line of once widely admired CEOs who quit or lost their jobs in the wake of huge losses stemming from the mortgage meltdown, including the heads of Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros.

Officials at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plan to give a consulting contract to the agency's outgoing general manager that would pay him the same salary he earned as its top executive. Days after he resigned, H. David Nahai is slated to receive nearly $6,300 per week as a consultant to the utility. The DWP commission, whose five members are appointed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, is scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss the plan. DWP commission President Lee Kanon Alpert said he asked Nahai to stay on as a consultant for the rest of the year.

The president of Los Angeles' largest employee retirement system has resigned, becoming the sixth pension appointee of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to quit over the last six months. Eric Holoman stepped down last week from the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System board after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law placing new limits on private financial work performed by publicly appointed pension board members. Holoman is president of Magic Johnson Enterprises. Assemblyman Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina)

For all the rumblings in Hollywood that Dan Glickman was miscast as the industry's top Washington lobbyist, the next head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America could well be closer to his technocrat mold than to the suave celebrity of the man who made the job famous: Jack Valenti. That's because, with Glickman disclosing Monday that he'll step down next September, the movie industry knows it has evolved since he took over in 2004 as MPAA's chairman and chief executive. Preventing piracy of movies and TV shows dominates the trade association's lobbying agenda, and the desire for a glitzy face in the nation's capital has lessened as the major movie studios have become divisions in larger media conglomerates with sometimes competing agendas.