Salaries

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

The NFL Players Assn. has accused the NFL of putting a secret salary cap in place in the uncapped 2010 season — a violation of antitrust laws — and is seeking monetary damages that could climb into the billions. The union filed suit against the league Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, accusing the NFL of collusion for conspiring to set a $123-million cap for 2010, when owners would have required the consent of players to do so. The NFL flatly denied the claim.

If you are a teacher in debt, there's good news and bad news. There are literally dozens of programs that could potentially help wipe out your student loans. But most of them have narrow requirements that may lock you out. Just ask Troy Dale, a high school counselor from Ellis, Kan. He and his wife have $23,000 in student loans that they've been paying down for nearly a decade. At their current rate, they'll still be paying off their student debts when their oldest child enrolls in college.

University of California regents Wednesday discussed the possibility of a 6% tuition increase for next fall but pledged that they would lobby hard to avoid such a $732-per-student hike. With such money worries rippling through the 10-campus system, the regents approved the hiring of a new chancellor for UC San Diego at a $411,084 salary, which is 4.8% higher than his predecessor, Marye Anne Fox. In addition, Pradeep Khosla, now the engineering dean at Carnegie Mellon University, will receive a relocation bonus of nearly $24,700 annually for his first four years.

This is in response to Murray Nies' letter (Aug. 8) complaining about garbage collectors' salaries. Contrary to him, I don't think they're overpaid at $36,000 a year. Whoever is earning that money in Southern California is definitely not living "high off the hog." It's amazing, we have business executives earning more than $100,000 a year plus perks, sports players and actors earning millions of dollars and that's OK. We justify it by saying that those people are special and unique.

• Bell Police Chief Randy Adams: $457,000 Oversees a department with 46 personnel; 33 are sworn officers • Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck: $307,000 Oversees 12,899 personnel; 9,959 are sworn officers • Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca: $284,183.04 Oversees 18,000 personnel; 9,632 are sworn officers • New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly: $205,180 Oversees 50,000 personnel; 35,000 are sworn officers • Manhattan Beach Police Chief Rod Uyeda: $179,388 Oversees 100 personnel; 65 are sworn officers Source Times reporting

In exchange for a base salary of $3.1 million, the Dodgers have so far received 31 home runs and 103 runs batted in from Andre Ethier . Matt Kemp has been an even greater bargain, his 26 home runs and 100 RBIs costing the Dodgers only $467,000. Chad Billingsley is earning $475,000, and James Loney $465,000. But the kids are no longer kids, and the Dodgers will soon have to compensate them at a more veteran level. The Dodgers who will be eligible for salary arbitration in the off-season -- including the players mentioned above, as well as Jonathan Broxton , Russell Martin , George Sherrill and Hong-Chih Kuo -- could earn raises that total somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million.

Deans in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) should certainly be paid at a level commensurate with their efforts (Deans' Morale Plummets as Contract Talks Continue, Oct. 7). In the meantime, a quick fix might be to have the Board of Trustees make all of the deans instructors and all of the instructors deans. Doing so would immediately resolve the perceived disparity in deans' and instructors' salaries. Further, having a dean in every classroom would probably entice back many of the students lost to surrounding community college districts as a result of The Times' first series of assaults on the credibility of the LACCD that began during the critical enrollment period two weeks before the start of the current semester.

How do you solve a problem like Robert Rizzo? In the short run, there will be a push for greater transparency, pay caps and restrictions on pension benefits. These things may quell the immediate outrage over revelations that the city manager of working-class Bell and other top officials earned fat, six-figure incomes. But the truth is, the eye-popping salaries, platinum pensions and lavish perks accorded Rizzo and his colleagues are merely symptoms, not the disease. Nor is the disease confined to one small municipality in southeast Los Angeles County.

California's stem cell research agency says it needs billions more taxpayer dollars to deliver on promised cures to major diseases. Yet at a time when other departments are cutting back spending, the agency recently agreed to pay its new boss one of the highest salaries in state government. The 50-person grant-making body will pay a Los Angeles investment banker $400,000 to serve as its new part-time board chairman, pushing the combined salaries of its two top officials to nearly $1 million per year.

Once again addressing the controversial issue of executive pay, a panel of the California State University Board of Trustees voted Tuesday to freeze state-funded pay for new campus presidents but allow individual college foundations to raise funds to boost those salaries. The nonprofit campus foundations would be able to augment taxpayer-funded pay for new executives up to 10% above that of their predecessor. The policy would be reviewed in 2014. Four members of the Special Committee on Presidential Selection and Compensation meeting in Long Beach voted for the change, with one member absent.

Even a large pay raise for a college president is unlikely to have a noticeable impact on daily campus life. It wouldn't require an increase in student fees or lead to a significant reduction in the number of courses being offered. But that doesn't mean presidential pay at California State University is unimportant; a commitment to shared sacrifice is necessary to help everyone power through tough times. Four months after adopting a controversial policy that allowed new campus presidents a 10% pay increase over what their predecessors had earned, Cal State's compensation committee will try again on Tuesday.

Students at six Cal State University campuses have vowed to fast until university leaders agree to freeze tuition, roll back administrative and executive salaries, and meet other demands. Members of Students for Quality Education said that the hunger strike will begin Wednesday and involve 13 students at the Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, Long Beach, Northridge, Sacramento and San Bernardino campuses. In addition to a five-year tuition freeze and administrative pay cuts, students are calling for more free speech rights on campus and the elimination of housing and car allowances for the system's 23 campus presidents.

SAN DIEGO — The Dodgers' opening-day payroll was only slightly less than it was last season. The 25 players on the active roster will be paid $77,031,500, according to union filings of salary figures obtained by The Times. The Dodgers will pay an additional $13,456,000 to their four players on the disabled list and the major league minimum of $480,000 to Ronald Belisario , who is on the restricted list while serving a 25-game drug suspension. The opening-day payroll of $91 million was only $5 million or so less than it was last year.

TEMPE, Ariz. — The immediate future of one Angels veteran was secured Friday when 39-year-old reliever Jason Isringhausen was told he made the team, but the outlook for 38-year-old outfielder Bobby Abreu remained cloudy with a chance of trade. The Angels, according to a CBSSports.com report, were "on the verge" of dealing Abreu to the Cleveland Indians Thursday night, but Abreu was in camp Friday and had two singles — his first hits in a week — and drove in two runs in a 9-2 exhibition victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks in Tempe Diablo Stadium.

A financial riddle stumped officials in one NBA team's front office. It concerned the league's byzantine legalese regarding the salary cap. They needed help, fast. One official phoned the league office, seeking clarity. Another inspected the text of the NBA's collective bargaining agreement, a canon of lawyerly jargon as comprehensible as Sanskrit. Then, another official surfed to an exhaustively detailed online FAQ about the NBA labor deal authored by Larry Coon, a 49-year-old information technology director at UC Irvine.

Longtime Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward retired Tuesday rather than try extending his career with another team. The decision comes three weeks after Ward was released by the Steelers in a salary-cap maneuver. The 36-year-old Ward is the franchise's all-time leader in every major receiving category, including receptions, yards and touchdowns. Ward said following his release he believed he "still had some football in him," but changed his mind. Ward, a four-time Pro Bowler, saw his playing time decrease last season behind Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown . He finished with 46 receptions, the fewest since his rookie year in 1998.

Dozens of wealthy homeowners who got large, improper tax breaks from a rogue county employee in recent years had one thing in common: They had hired a consultant at the center of an influence-peddling investigation roiling the Los Angeles County assessor's office. Clients of the tax agent, Ramin Salari, dominate a list of 125 property owners in Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and other Westside communities who benefited from the actions of a former property appraiser who without approval wiped more than $56 million in taxable value from the county tax roll.