Commission

Congress has sent the United Nations a long-overdue message: Don't expect America to bankroll your farce of a Human Rights Council. Last month, the Senate followed earlier House action and voted to withhold about $3 million from our annual U.N. "dues" payment. The move has nothing to do with economizing. It's a fraction of the more than $400 million we pour into U.N. headquarters every year as our portion of the U.N. regular budget. But it represents that share of our dues money that flows into the Human Rights Council's kitty each year.

Gov. Martin O'Malley promised during his campaign to fire the Public Service Commission for approving huge electricity rate increases. Ironically, this will occur 100 years after such state commissions were established to take politics out of ratemaking. Although the PSC was a useful political issue for Mr. O'Malley, a politicized commission serves no good purpose. Therefore, assuming he follows through on his threat, the new governor would be wise to select widely respected, politically neutral experts.

A member of the state's hospital rate-setting commission took his colleagues sharply to task yesterday for approving an extra boost in hospital rates over the next two years without discussion. Joseph R. Antos said last month's decision means Marylanders will pay an extra $119 million over the two years that the hospitals don't need. Also, he said, the decision had been worked out in a private meeting between hospital representatives and three commission members, which "gives the impression of favoritism" toward the hospital industry and "undermines the public trust."

WASHINGTON -- Refco Inc., a global futures brokerage, agreed yesterday to pay $8 million to settle allegations that its lax procedures let a California money manager juggle customers' profits and losses.Refco, without admitting wrongdoing, agreed to pay $7 million to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, including $1 million for an industry study of how firms keep track of orders. In a related settlement, Refco will pay $1 million to the Chicago Board of Trade.Refco took Treasury futures orders from the money manager without account numbers, enabling him to decide who made and lost money, the commission said.

Seeking to moderate rising premiums for health plans offered by small employers, a state commission raised yesterday the costs to employees for many prescription drugs covered by such plans."

WASHINGTON -- With its fate possibly on the line, the commission that was entrusted to save Medicare from insolvency will meet today under mounting pressure to accept reforms that would subject the program to competition from private health care plans.Though the woes of the Social Security system have grabbed more headlines, Medicare is in more imminent danger, and the solutions to its financial crisis are almost certainly more difficult. The commission is supposed to complete its recommendations by Monday, and today's meeting to hash out the details of a reform proposal could be pivotal.

PARIS -- Western Europe got its closest thing yet to a supranational government yesterday, as former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi unveiled a 20-member European Commission whose most immediate task will be living down the cronyism and questionable incompetence of its predecessor.The incoming executive for the 15-nation European Union, the world's largest trade bloc, will face daunting tasks. Among them: managing increasingly testy economic relations with the United States, deciding Europe's role in rebuilding Kosovo and expanding the EU eastward into the former Soviet bloc.

Westminster-area homeowners whose water was cut off in a dispute with a well owner should know soon how much they'll have to pay to keep the taps running.The owners of 11 homes in a subdivision off Route 27 received water bills in August from the new owner of the Bramble Hills Water Supply Co. that were 10 times higher than before.One family was charged $900 for three months of service instead of the previous $90. State officials said the new rate of $60 per 1,000 gallons, up from $6, is one of the highest in Maryland.

Here is an editorial from the Boston Globe, which was published Sunday.A NEW national report on gambling has sound advice, making it hard to ignore gambling's many problems, from addiction and youth gambling to the industry's financial hold on elected officials. We hope the findings will not go unheeded.Issued by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, the report observes that too many governments make patchwork decisions about gambling. Instead of hasty action, the commission suggests, there should be a moratorium on any expansion of gambling so policy makers can take time to think.

WASHINGTON -- Divided and frustrated, the bipartisan commission entrusted with saving Medicare will limp into its final meeting this afternoon to vote on a reform plan that would open the federal health care program to private sector competition while promising a new prescription drug benefit for the elderly poor.But with the commission still far from a consensus, hope has dimmed that Congress and the White House can reach a deal on Medicare before Washington is swept into the political maelstrom of the 2000 election.

Trying to set political salaries four years into the future is a task fraught with peril, which is why Howard County executive Ken Ulman said he's writing checks for more than $11,000 in salary givebacks this year. In 2005, a citizens commission named to suggest pay levels wanted to keep the executive and County Council elected in 2006 from falling way behind the pay curve. The members included an inflation-based cost-of-living escalator in their recommended formula. But this year, the recession threw a monkey wrench into the plan.

Maryland energy regulators extended hearings Friday on Constellation Energy Group's proposed nuclear joint venture with a French utility, likely delaying yet again a decision on the fate of the deal. Additional hearings are scheduled for Oct. 14, and Oct. 15 if necessary. That means it's unlikely that the Public Service Commission will make a decision by its Oct. 16 deadline, even though the commission has tried to accommodate the companies' concerns over the timeliness of the deal's closing.

State and Baltimore County officials have asked federal energy regulators to rescind approval of a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal at Sparrows Point in eastern Baltimore County and an 88-mile pipeline to Pennsylvania. Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decision "hasty" and criticized the commission for issuing its approval order before the completion of critical environmental reviews. "By all appearances, the order was issued as quickly as possible after the issuance of the final environmental impact statement in an effort to approve the project before the change in presidential administrations," Gansler wrote to the FERC yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- National Guard and Reserve forces remain inadequately equipped and unprepared to deal with a range of domestic disasters, particularly an attack with unconventional weapons, a congressional commission has concluded. In a report yesterday, the panel said that policymakers in Congress and the Pentagon have been reluctant to acknowledge that the U.S. military remains the only institution that can respond quickly to natural and man-made disasters. That failure "places the nation at risk" because it has led to shortfalls in planning and readiness.

With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" passed the House 404-6 late last month and now rests in Sen. Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee. Swift Senate passage appears certain. Not since the "Patriot Act" of 2001 has any bill so threatened our constitutionally guaranteed rights. The historian Henry Steele Commager, denouncing President John Adams' suppression of free speech in the 1790s, argued that the Bill of Rights was not written to protect government from dissenters but to provide a legal means for citizens to oppose a government they didn't trust.

Concerned that rising hospital charges could jeopardize the state's system of providing care for the uninsured, state regulators trimmed yesterday a hospital rate increase that had been approved for the current fiscal year. The Health Services Cost Review Commission voted to allow hospitals a 5.25 percent rate increase for the fiscal year that began July 1, down from the 6.25 percent approved in April. The midyear adjustment - the first ever by the commission - will reduce the state's collective hospital bill, which totals more than $11 billion for the year including outpatient care, by about $65 million.

Congress has sent the United Nations a long-overdue message: Don't expect America to bankroll your farce of a Human Rights Council. Last month, the Senate followed earlier House action and voted to withhold about $3 million from our annual U.N. "dues" payment. The move has nothing to do with economizing. It's a fraction of the more than $400 million we pour into U.N. headquarters every year as our portion of the U.N. regular budget. But it represents that share of our dues money that flows into the Human Rights Council's kitty each year.

The average cost of a Maryland hospital stay rose $500 during the just-ended fiscal year to $9,440 - a 5.4 percent increase that was lower than the national average, according to a report released yesterday by the state's Health Services Cost Review Commission. Throughout the United States, the price tag for such inpatient medical care rose 6.4 percent. Keeping Maryland's increase below the nationwide average has been a goal of the commission, which was established by the Maryland legislature in 1971 amid public concern over rising hospital costs.

As a public utility, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. is obligated to get the lowest price possible for customers. By contrast, its corporate owner, Constellation Energy Group, has a duty to stockholders to sell the power it produces for as much as it can get. This disconnect is highlighted by the fact that Constellation, which assumed ownership of BGE's former power plants when Maryland adopted electricity deregulation, is the state's biggest seller of...

A member of the state's hospital rate-setting commission took his colleagues sharply to task yesterday for approving an extra boost in hospital rates over the next two years without discussion. Joseph R. Antos said last month's decision means Marylanders will pay an extra $119 million over the two years that the hospitals don't need. Also, he said, the decision had been worked out in a private meeting between hospital representatives and three commission members, which "gives the impression of favoritism" toward the hospital industry and "undermines the public trust."