MISSING: The Coast Guard searched Friday for...

MISSING: The Coast Guard searched Friday for a Valley-based outdoors columnist who apparently fell overboard during an assignment off the Central California coast. Daily News writer Jim Bertken was reported missing early Friday, several hours after he went on deck in rough waters during the middle of the night (B1).

CLEARED: The state ethics office has dropped its investigation of two top Cal State Northridge officials who received free home repairs from employees of the contractor who helped repair the quake-battered campus (B1).

ACT II: Not too many college baseball coaches maintain an apartment in New York and secretly yearn to attend graduate school so they can study fine arts and learn how to write plays. Cal State Northridge’s Bill Kernen, above, is just that fellow, however, and now he’s leaving CSUN after seven years to enroll at Columbia University (C1). . . . Said Kernen, 47: “I’m not going to be standing on a baseball field with a rake in my hand and a towel on my head when I’m 70.”

NO GO: Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale) will soon retire, but Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) doesn’t want the job. . . . “After having been one of 80 in the California Legislature, the thought of being one of 485 in Congress is not that attractive,” says Katz. But Katz must still plan for the future: Term limits will force him from the Legislature in 1996. . . . “My wife and I have to figure out what we want to do,” he said Friday.

ADD KATZ: In Sacramento, meantime, a Katz measure is advancing. . . . The state Senate on Thursday passed by 29-1 his bill that would allow police to arrest prostitutes and drug dealers on the basis of their intent. The bill, which is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union and supported by local homeowners groups, is expected to clear the Assembly and Gov. Pete Wilson’s desk by next month, Katz said.