Some observers still believe, as Ken Auletta writes in this week's New Yorker, that the Pellicano saga will go down as "the biggest, and dirtiest, scandal in Hollywood's history."

But three months before Pellicano and seven other co-defendants are scheduled to go on trial, and nearly four years after his Sunset Boulevard offices were first raided, the predictions that Hollywood A-listers would be nabbed, studio chieftains dethroned and celebrity dirt unearthed have so far failed to pan out....

the lack of big names facing criminal charges is not for a lack of trying on the part of the reporters -- particularly at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times -- assigned to the Pellicano trail. Never have so many reporters dug so deep for so long to find so little.

"The beneficiaries of this didn't do anything wrong, so they shouldn't be penalized," Gerald Parsky, chairman of the board, said after the meeting in San Francisco.

The retroactive approval was, in part, a response to three separate audits that were launched after a series of stories in The Chronicle revealed that millions of dollars in extra compensation and questionable perks had been handed out but never publicly disclosed.

By launching searches to fill those positions, the regents acknowledged criticism from legislators and independent auditors that too many decisions about executive salaries and perks have been poorly handled and lacked proper oversight.

"Events of the past year have been traumatic for the university," said Regent Judith L. Hopkinson, who heads the committee on compensation and led the movement for increased oversight.