September 27, 2004 New York Times by STEPHEN LABATON

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE -- A proposal made by William H. Donaldson, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to give shareholders a say in removing the directors of troubled companies.

Mr. Donaldson embraced an agency report on the issue in the summer of 2003 and vowed to adopt new rules quickly. But the commission and the administration were lobbied heavily by the Business Roundtable, an organization of the chief executives of the nation's largest companies, and Mr. Donaldson has wavered. Agency officials now say there is virtually no chance they will complete the rules before the election.

Mr. Donaldson has been pressed to abandon the proposal by some administration officials, including Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, a former chairman of the Business Roundtable, who was critical of earlier versions of the proposal.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS -- New regulations governing wholesale telephone rates and a set of rules controlling how large big media conglomerates can grow.

Federal appeals courts struck down both sets of Federal Communications Commission regulations this year; the commission's response to those decisions is timed to come after the election.

The nation's largest telephone companies agreed not to raise rates before next year at the same time that the Bush administration agreed not to appeal a court decision that had rejected rules requiring them to lease their equipment to rivals at low rates.

LAND DEVELOPMENT -- A proposal to scuttle a rule from the Clinton administration that put nearly 60 million acres of national forest largely off limits to logging, mining or other development.

The Bush administration recently extended until Nov. 14 the comment period for the proposal, which had been scheduled to end this month. Completion of a second proposal, to make it easier to develop forests without considering the environmental impact, has also been delayed.

FOOD SAFETY -- A proposal by the Food and Drug Administration, after a case of mad cow disease was reported in Washington State, to tighten rules governing the content of animal feed.

Part of the proposal was delayed after heavy lobbying from the beef and cattle feed industries. A few weeks after the administration announced in July that it would slow the regulatory process, the beef association broke its nonpartisan tradition by issuing an endorsement for the re-election of President Bush.