Is the director gravy train finally slowing down? It sure seems like it.

For one thing, Towers Watson's annual analysis of director compensation at Fortune 500 companies found that 2009 pay packages for directors rose by a mere 1 percent over 2008 levels.

When the going gets tough, Congress punts.

That's what it did with Proxy Access. Although the financial reform bill contains a number of provisions that no doubt irk regulation opponents in general-such as the curbs on proprietary trading and the creation of the consumer protection board-when it came to corporate governance, Congress cowered to the interests of the Business Roundtable and US Chamber of Commerce.

So much for shareholders gaining much more say over the Board of Directors.

It looks like the financial overhaul bill being hammered out by Senate and House conferees will exclude one critical earlier proposal and include a greatly watered down version of another.

With all the attention being paid to derivatives reform and consumer protection in the financial reform bill, some new amendments seem largely to have slipped under the radar.

I'm talking about amendments recently introduced by Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Delaware) to remove the proxy access and majority voting provisions from the Restoring American Financial Stability Act.