Disarray

This is probably the tip of the iceberg ("Report finds disarray at IRS," May 15). Most government employees believe in large government where can you work and get a pension that you do not pay into and have health care that you do not pay into as well as paid vacation, sick time, lots of holidays and never have the department that you work in audited or held accountable for your performance because your union protects you. I am sure if someone looks...

This is probably the tip of the iceberg ("Report finds disarray at IRS," May 15). Most government employees believe in large government where can you work and get a pension that you do not pay into and have health care that you do not pay into as well as paid vacation, sick time, lots of holidays and never have the department that you work in audited or held accountable for your performance because your union protects you. I am sure if someone looks...

WASHINGTON -- Disorganization and weak management reign at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, according to the General Accounting Office, which recently issued one of the toughest reports it has done on a federal agency.Take this scathing capsule from the auditors:"The agency has degenerated into a group of segmenteautonomous programs, each trying to handle its own set of problems with little attention given to their interrelatedness. Without coherent overall direction and basic management reforms, the organization has been unable to effectively address changing enforcement responsibilities and long-standing service delivery problems."

Harford County Sheriff's deputies say they made a grisly discovery early Sunday morning after receiving a call at 9:30 a.m. asking them to check on the well-being of an Edgewood resident. Deputies arriving at the house in the 1700 block of Fountain Rock Way, found the home locked but could hear a TV playing inside, according to Harford County Sheriff's Office spokesman Edward Hopkins. No one came to the door, and as they continued their search, deputies observed blood and a body on the floor, officials said.

WASHINGTON -- The spectacle of "the White House in disarray" has become such a hardy perennial it has become ritualized. All the elements of the ritual are on display in President Bush's summer of discontent.The president, of course, is obliged to act as if nothing untoward is going on, as Bush has been trying so manfully to do while the polling data defining his problems mount. President Jimmy Carter didn't follow that course in 1979, choosing instead to convene what became known as the "malaise summit" at Camp David, which was one of the reasons he was on his way out a year later.

HOMELESSNESS IS NOT just an urban problem. Suburban families can be evicted because they are unable to meet the rent. Women fleeing abusive partners also can end up on suburban streets lacking money or much hope for righting their lives. For 10 years, Sarah's House has provided a temporary home, food and counseling to thousands of Anne Arundel residents who find themselves in such dire straits.When the shelter opened in 1987 in three barracks that the Army had turned over to the county at Fort George G. Meade, Sarah's House could accommodate 34 people.

COLLEGE PARK-- --Gary Williams probably won't look any less hunched over this morning than he has all season, even though his team just finished handling Duke about as well as Duke could ever be handled. No, he can't straighten all the way up yet, because everybody will still be on his back. On his Maryland players' backs, too, but mainly on his, because, you know, this disaster that has befallen the program the past three seasons is all his fault, and it's a miracle he still has his job. Hey, maybe beating Duke yesterday saved his job. Because, think about it, what has he ever done for that school?

Johnny Oates is considered a leading candidate for American League Manager of the Year, but he stated emphatically yesterday that the award should go to Oakland's Tony La Russa."

Maybe this is where Baltimore City and its suburbs finally come together -- on the issue of where the state government should insert its surgical scalpel in the body politic. Gov. William Donald Schaefer and legislative leaders want to cut $147 million in local aid next week by eliminating the state's contribution to Social Security payments for school, community college and library employees.The cut would take the greatest toll on Montgomery and Prince George's counties, which have higher Social Security payments due to higher teacher costs.

Once upon a time, long, long ago in a country far, far away, Prince Charming married his beautiful Princess and they lived happily ever after.But life being what it is -- which is to say, just one damn thing after another -- this halcyon period in the history of royal marriages was relatively brief. What followed was not pretty.Unhappy kings and princes began trying a number of techniques to get rid of the queens and princesses who no longer pleased their fancies.There was, you may recall, the beheading technique, the get-thee-to-a-nunnery scheme, the banishment to an out-of-the-way castle gambit and the always popular let's-establish-a-new-religion-that-allows- us-to-have-many-wives ploy.

Grace-Kelly Anoma stood in front of a special committee convened to address Coppin State University's troubles and let loose with her frustrations. Some professors teach by reading straight out of the textbook, Anoma told the panel Thursday evening. The dorms often run out of hot water. Students are frequently awarded financial aid, only to wait months for it to be posted to their accounts. The cafeteria food is inedible. Some staff have "the nastiest of attitudes. " "I'm one of those people where I feel like enough is enough," the sophomore nursing student said, drawing applause from a crowd of hundreds.

Halfway through Baltimore's long-term plan to end homelessness, advocates complain that the strategy is in disarray and worry that the number of men, women and children without permanent homes has grown - despite millions of dollars being pumped into local services. The 10-year Journey Home strategy, the advocates say, has fallen short of its objective, floundering without a direct line of leadership or accountability and frustrating the social services community that is pushing for solutions to a primary cause of homelessness: the lack of affordable housing.

Round-the-clock work to repair a broken downtown water main was expected to snarl the morning commute for a second day Wednesday, the latest in a series of disruptions caused by the deterioration of the city's aging infrastructure. Lombard and Gay streets, where a rupture in the 20-inch main early Tuesday flooded downtown, were to remain closed until the completion of repairs. Work was delayed yesterday while crews pumped out water, shut down gas lines and rerouted electricity. "Barring a miracle, this is going to last at least into [Wednesday]

Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller called on a slots commission yesterday to consider tossing out all bids submitted to build casinos around the state and starting over. The startling suggestion from a powerful lawmaker underscores frustration in Annapolis with the outcome of this week's bidding process, which resulted in six proposals to install fewer than half of the 15,000 slot machines authorized by voters last fall. Two of six bidders failed to put up more than $20 million in required licensing fees.

MADRID, Spain -- On the eve of national elections, an activist from Spain's ruling Socialist Party was gunned down in the Basque city of Mondragon, throwing a hard-fought political campaign into disarray. There was no claim of responsibility, but the government was quick to blame the militant Basque separatist organization ETA, which has set off a series of small bombs ahead of the vote and killed two Spanish policemen just across the border in France on Dec. 1. The group ended a cease-fire last year.

During his nine-year tenure in Baltimore, coach Brian Billick often has delivered a great nugget of information, but the Ravens' front office obviously wasn't paying attention. Billick would say that the shelf life of an NFL head coach is 10 years, and that makes you wonder why the Ravens signed him to a four-year contract extension at the end of last season. We all know why Billick signed. He couldn't wait to complete an agreement that reportedly pays him $5 million per season. But it was a mistake to sign Billick to an extension of that length.

YES, NORTHERN Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. The dithering D.C. Council has left an opening that may be wide enough for the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority to drive a team bus carrying the Washington Nationals all the way into the suburbs, and I can't wait to see how this latest twist in the District stadium drama plays out. The Anacostia waterfront ballpark may still get built, but the hopes of baseball fans in Northern Virginia and even Las...

MARK BOMSTER'S article, "The principal is diving right into the future" (Evening Sun, Oct. 29) was bittersweet to alumni of the Samuel Coleridge-Tayor Elementary School.It was sweet to learn that the school is still alive at its original location on West Preston Street; bitter to hear that it is now "a combat zone." The neighborhood around it was always poor, but we who attended the school in the late '30s got a first-class education.In that long ago, Samuel Coleridge-TayMagdaleneB. Fennelllor was called a platoon school and administered much like the junior highs of recent times.

Legg Mason Inc., one of Baltimore's marquee companies, is without a successor to longtime CEO Raymond A. "Chip" Mason after James W. Hirschmann stepped down yesterday as president, saying he didn't want to disrupt his family life by moving to Baltimore. As the heir apparent to Mason, who built the investment company that bears his name, Hirschmann had been splitting his time between Legg Mason's Baltimore headquarters and California, where his wife and two children live. Hirschmann said in a statement yesterday that the arrangement was untenable, both for the company and his family.

COLLEGE PARK-- --Gary Williams probably won't look any less hunched over this morning than he has all season, even though his team just finished handling Duke about as well as Duke could ever be handled. No, he can't straighten all the way up yet, because everybody will still be on his back. On his Maryland players' backs, too, but mainly on his, because, you know, this disaster that has befallen the program the past three seasons is all his fault, and it's a miracle he still has his job. Hey, maybe beating Duke yesterday saved his job. Because, think about it, what has he ever done for that school?