District Of Columbia

Rodney Walter Dennis, a Baltimore native and an administrator at American University in Washington, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 39 and lived in Washington.Services were being held today at City Temple of Baltimore Baptist Church, Eutaw and Dolphin streets.Since 1988, Dr. Dennis had been educational director for Return-to-School programs at American University. He worked to create links between the university and black churches in the District of Columbia and helped develop the Metropolitan Baptist Church-American University scholarship program for adults.

Maryland's neighbor, the District of Columbia, has 608,000 residents but no votes in Congress. A House committee yesterday sent to the floor a bill that would make the district a state called New Columbia, giving Washington residents full congressional representation. President Bush has said he will veto any legislation calling for the new state and other Republicans also oppose it.The Evening Sun would like to know what you think. Should the District of Columbia become a state?To register your opinion, call SUNDIAL at 783-1800 (or 268-7736 in Anne Arundel County)

John W. Hechinger Sr., whose family created a home-improvement store empire after World War II and who served as chairman of the first District of Columbia City Council, died of respiratory failure at his Washington home Sunday -- his 84th birthday. Mr. Hechinger led the family business, Hechinger Co., from 1958 to 1996. During his tenure, the company grew to a multibillion-dollar enterprise with more than 100 stores in the East and the Midwest. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1999, unable to compete with discount home industry giants like Home Depot and Lowe's.

WASHINGTON -The District of Columbia moved a step closer yesterday to gaining full membership in the House of Representatives as the Senate voted 61-37 to give the nation's capital and Utah each a House seat. Yesterday's historic vote will be followed by a vote next week in the House, where a similar bill is expected to pass easily. President Barack Obama has expressed support for Washington voting rights and is expected to sign the bill when it reaches his desk. Residents and officials of the District of Columbia - a 61-square-mile area with a population of almost 600,000, about 55 percent of it black - have engaged in a long, slow fight for representation in Congress.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maryland and its District of Columbia counterpart formally filed yesterday for regulatory approval to combine operations and market health insurance plans regionally in Maryland, the district and Northern Virginia.The filing sets in motion a promised in-depth review of the proposal by the Maryland Insurance Commission, the District of Columbia Insurance Administration and, eventually, consumer groups and the public.Under the merger agreement, Blue Cross Blue Shield of the National Capital Area, based in the District of Columbia, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maryland, based in Owings Mills, would operate under a not-for-profit holding company.

Seven years ago, a federal judge ordered the District of Columbia to close its Cedar Knoll Youth Detention Center in Laurel. On Monday, that order finally will be carried out.Just two months ago, more than 150 juvenile offenders were still housed in the facility, which has been criticized as a dumping ground for wayward teen-agers and for repeated escapes that frightened surrounding neighborhoods.Judges were still sentencing youths to the medium-security facility near Route 32 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway as recently as March, leading district officials to wonder if they could meet a deadline mandated by Congress.

WASHINGTON -- The drive to give the more than half-million residents of the District of Columbia a vote in Congress failed in the Senate yesterday, falling just three votes short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster and begin debate. But the bill garnered more Republican support than it has in 30 years of discussion on the issue, and its backers pledged to try again - if not in this session, then in a new Congress in which Democratic gains could spell the difference.

MARYLAND's lost but unlamented province, the District of Columbia, now has an offer it can't refuse -- provided Congress gives its okay. The Clinton administration, after trying to ignore the urban breakdown evident in all directions from the White House, is now proposing to take over major government functions D.C. can't handle. In exchange, the financial control system imposed on Washington a year ago would be continued and stiffened.All this means the district's 23-year experiment in home rule is a failure; its pretensions to statehood can be consigned to the deep freeze.

Employees of Chesapeake Directory Sales Co., a Greenbelt-based affiliate of Bell Atlantic, have sued the company, claiming it laid off minority employees while all whites were moved into "protected positions" and retained.The complaint, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt by 11 CDSC employees, claims the company used "false performance evaluations in weeding out African-American employees." And when the employees hired a lawyer to complain, the lawsuit charges, their jobs were eliminated in June and they were told they would have to sign a release form, waiving any rights to sue, to get severance pay and other benefits to which they should have been entitled.

Maryland is broken into 47 legislative districts. Each district in the General Assembly elects one member of the Senate and three members of the House of Delegates. To determine who represents you, consult the map and the list below of all 188 members of the General Assembly by district.In order to speak to a legislator or his office by telephone call th main General Assembly switchboard: 841-3000 (from the Baltimore-Annapolis area) or 858-3000 (from Prince George's and Montgomery counties, or the District of Columbia)