Kach

For months, builders, legislators and bureaucrats had labored to build a foundation that would result in the first statewide bill to regulate homebuilders. Optimism was high that a consensus would be reached and consumers would have some recourse against rogue builders.But last week in Annapolis, House Bill 967, which would establish the Office of Home Builder Registration to license homebuilders, was attacked by builders who are seeking to bulldoze the bill into oblivion. They plan an encore Thursday on a similar bill, sponsored by Sen. Delores G. Kelley, a Baltimore County Democrat, when it comes before committee.

Maryland builders launched a full-scale legislative assault yesterday against a bill intended to protect buyers of new homes from unscrupulous builders.Builders, led by Dennis McCoy, a lobbyist and former delegate, lined up in solid opposition to the bill sponsored by Baltimore County Republican A. Wade Kach and eight other delegates."This is bad for the industry and bad for consumers," McCoy testified before the House Economic Matters Committee.Kach's bill would create a statewide, self-supporting registration system to cover builders, who currently are licensed only in Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

THE DEFEAT of Sen. F. Vernon Boozer in the Republica primary election last month shocked Maryland's political establishment, which had grown fond of the Senate minority leader's pragmatism and non-ideological approach.The winner, Andrew P. Harris, was painted by critics as a right-wing loony for his uncompromising opposition to partial birth abortion. It is an unfair caricature.Dr. Harris, 41, an obstetric anesthesiologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, was brought up by his anti-communist EasternEuropean immigrant parents as a staunch conservative.

SINCE HIS election in 1981, Republican Sen. F. Vernon Boozer has been a voice of reason, a leader and a conscientious representative of the 9th Legislative District -- a largely rural area of central Baltimore County. Unfortunately, his moderation has made him the target of Republican ideologues who often influence primary elections.They have an aggressive, intelligent candidate in Andrew P. Harris, a Johns Hopkins anesthesiologist running on a hard-right, social issues platform. Dr. Harris charges that the senator is too liberal, but Mr. Boozer has supported many conservative causes, such as stiff penalties for child pornography and registration of convicted child molesters upon release.

Someone who steals property worth more than $300 in Maryland can go to jail for up to 15 years.But a custom home builder who walks off a job with $20,000 or more of a customer's money -- leaving an unfinished house full of defects and subject to liens from unpaid subcontractors -- risks no more of a criminal penalty than a $1,000 fine and/or a year in jail.Anyone with doubts need only ask Yolanda Bruno of Columbia, Alice Frascoia of Calvert County and Alan Downes of Berlin in Wicomico County.

JERUSALEM -- Israel branded two Jewish extremist groups "terrorist organizations" yesterday, breaking an official myopia that saw danger only from Arabs.The Cabinet acted after hearing secret evidence that members of the two groups of settlers "may be responsible for certain unsolved murders of Arabs," according to Israel radio.Israel also "clarified" orders to allow soldiers to shoot Jewish gunmen as well as Arabs, and pronounced security a matter for authorities, not rifle-toting citizens.

When Sandra Guthorn went to the supermarket last year, only a few days before she was to settle on the $370,000 house she and her husband, Lester, planned to grow old in, she heard a rumor that couldn't be true.The house has water problems, a friend told her. But Mrs. Guthorn had already had the house inspected, and the inspector cleared the Green Spring Valley house again on a final inspection before the deal closed. "The inspector told me it was a well-maintained, fantastic house," said Mrs. Guthorn.

JERUSALEM -- The Monday night shooting of anti-Arab militant Rabbi Meir Kahane by a gunman in a New York hotel was followed yesterday by the murder of two elderly Arabs 6,000 miles away on a quiet road near the small West Bank village of Lubban as-Sharkiyah.In what a spokesman for Rabbi Kahane's organization suggested was an act of "revenge," by admirers of the 58-year-old rabbi, a gunman in a car with Israeli license plates shot down Mohammed al-Khatib, 73, while he was riding a donkey, and Mariam Seleiman Hassan, 71, while she was picking olives.