Balance Sheet

Jeff Taylor from the January 2002 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

California's Orchard School District spends $79,856 for a BMW 740iL, giving the keys to its superintendent as a reward for higher student test scores. The district overshot its current budget by $2 million, and roughly 30 percent of its charges live below the poverty line.

File Lock

Attorney General John Ashcroft overwrites the Freedom of Information Act. Government agencies should withhold info and let the DOJ fight any challenge in court, he says. Janet Reno's crew, itself plenty secretive, had held that agencies should disclose info unless it was "reasonably foreseeable that disclosure would be harmful."

Toe Story

Shoe designer Manolo Blahnik nixes a pair of stiletto pumps from his latest collection. He worried that airport security would consider the 3.5-inch titanium heels to be weapons. Given that books and cameras now trigger interrogations and flight bans, killer heels are not that much of a stretch.

Juice Loose

California's adventure in electricity purchases hits a new low. The state has gone from losing money on power contracts to simply giving it to utilities -- or even paying them to take it. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power charged the state about $33,000 to take a 2,175 megawatt-hour surplus. Overall, the state lost $26 million in 90 days of power trading.

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