Disclosure

ANNAPOLIS -- A bill to require home sellers to give buyers a detailed disclosure of the property's condition easily passed a Senate committee yesterday.The 9-1 vote on the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee sends the bill to the full Senate for consideration later this week.Real estate agents have hailed Senate Bill 576 as a consumer protection measure, but it also is intended to protect agents from lawsuits by buyers."No one is losing, but everyone is going to benefit from it," said Edgar C. Hilley, executive vice president of the Maryland Association of Realtors.

When Helen and Robert Burdess bought a four-bedroom house in Edgewood last fall, a painful lesson came with it.The couple learned last month that their new, $147,000 house, with its garage, family room and wooded lot, is a quarter-mile from one of the most dangerous chemical weapons burial sites in the country, at Aberdeen Proving Ground.The lesson: Buyer beware.Maryland and its localities have a hodgepodge of laws and policies to encourage builders and real estate agents to disclose important information to prospective homebuyers.

ALL YEAR long, Congress has been talking a great game about the information it wants consumers to get from mutual funds. But even if the legislative wish list were to go through - and the bulk of it looks as if it will die in committee while the politicians wait for the Securities and Exchange Commission to act voluntarily - it wouldn't change the basic reality that confronts regulators and the fund industry: The disclosure system is a mess. The industry went to "plain English" prospectuses a few years back, but that has mostly been a sham.

The County Council has approved an updated master plan for water and sewer service that preserves language requiring disclosure statements to buyers of homes near three former landfills in the Route 7-Bush Road area.The language applies to about 550 planned homes in a development called Harford Town and 57 already constructed in the Hidden Stream subdivision. The two developments are on 134 acres bounded by Abingdon Road, Route 7 and Bush Road. Harford Town and Hidden Stream are being built by Morris Wolf.

Michael Crichton looks like a winner but feels like a dinosaur.True, he stands to make millions from his new novel, "Disclosure," just as he did with "Jurassic Park," "Rising Sun" and other blockbusters. Yet to hear him talk, he and other free-thinkers face extinction in a fight for survival with feminists and the pooh-bahs of political correctness."There's absolutely a chill in the workplace these days," Mr. Crichton says, picking lint off his Armani suit and scowling down at Central Park, 43 floors below his hotel suite.

Federal officials said yesterday they are trying to determine whether city Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III complied with conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements in the awarding of contracts by his agency to firms with links to himself and members of his family.James S. Kelly, state coordinator for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, said the agency was seeking the information in response to a story June 29 in The Sun that detailed many such links.In one instance, a company headed by Henson's sister is working as a subcontractor on the $115 million Lafayette Court project.

ANNAPOLIS -- A bill to require home sellers to give buyers a detailed disclosure of the property's condition easily passed a Senate committee yesterday.The 9-1 vote on the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee sends the bill to the full Senate for consideration later this week.Real estate agents have hailed Senate Bill 576 as a consumer protection measure, but it also is intended to protect agents from lawsuits by buyers."No one is losing, but everyone is going to benefit from it," said Edgar C. Hilley, executive vice president of the Maryland Association of Realtors.

WESTMINSTER -- City Planning and Zoning Commission members will study a zoning disclosure ordinance more before sending it to the City Council for approval.Proposed by the Carroll County Association of Realtors, the legislation would require property owners or real estate brokers to provide copies of the zoning map, Westminster's comprehensive plan and the subdivision plat to perspective buyers."We've been caught up in a situation, particularly in Wakefield Valley, that the disclosure was not in writing," said Sylvia Gorman, president of the association.

In a move intended to shore up confidence in government, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz on Wednesday proposed to place public officials' financial disclosure forms online and add teeth to a charter rule that prohibits County Council members from state employment. The proposal, which Kamenetz has asked the County Council to introduce Monday, follows Councilman Kenneth N. Oliver's decision to quit his state job after revelations that it apparently violated the charter.

With corporate scandals still fresh in the minds of a public that can be fascinated by the rich but resentful of their lifestyles, federal regulators proposed new rules yesterday to shine a brighter light on how top executives are compensated. Heralded as the most sweeping reform to executive compensation disclosure in 14 years, the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed changes include requiring publicly traded companies to clearly disclose the total annual pay, including perquisites, for the chief executive officer, the chief financial officer and the next three members of top brass.