Limits

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court surprisingly reaffirmed yesterday sweeping power for the federal and state governments to curb donations to political candidates. After a long trend of giving the political financing system greater freedom from regulation, the court did a considerable turnabout, revitalizing a 24-year-old decision that supports strict limits on contributions to candidates. The justices, dividing 6-3, upheld a 1994 Missouri law that sets a limit of $1,075 on contributions to statewide candidates, slightly higher than the $1,000 limit that Congress imposed in 1976 for federal campaign donations.

Maryland plans to limit the blue crab catch again next year in hopes of replenishing the Chesapeake Bay's crustaceans, state officials announced yesterday. But they also said they're tweaking the catch rules in an effort to spread the economic pain more evenly among the state's watermen. The proposed restrictions, drafted in cooperation with Virginia officials, are aimed at maintaining a 34 percent reduction in the catch of female crabs for a second year so they can reproduce. To protect female crabs, Maryland's Department of Natural Resources plans to set daily limits on how many watermen can catch, and to ban catching females altogether for periods in the spring and fall.

IT'S NOT an issue that evokes much sympathy from fellow taxpayers, but it's a growing problem nonetheless: unprecedented home equity appreciation during the past decade has pushed a rapidly swelling number of homeowners beyond Congress' $250,000 and $500,000 tax-free limits on real estate gains. Boohoo, you say? That's understandable if you're nowhere near bumping into those limits or you're tired of hearing about billowing federal budget deficits. But new research from Harvard University and reports from the front lines by prominent tax lawyers and financial advisers suggest that the current congressional capital gains ceilings are being outrun by real estate inflation.

Janet Daley and her friends spent a day in the woods, where they climbed a 30-foot tree and jumped off. Then they rappelled down a wall and crossed a river on a tightrope.While her 8-year-old daughter cruised through swim-team training in a lane nearby, Nancy Roberts pushed down years of panic only to find she was not strong enough to complete even one length of the pool. It would be weeks, battling anxiety attacks, before she had stamina enough to do it.Margie Lawlor kept dancing when her daughters quit.

WASHINGTON -- Although President Clinton last wee renewed his pledge to "end welfare as we know it," aides drafting his plan acknowledge that the effort could be expensive and might even force him to scale back or delay action nationwide.The centerpiece of Mr. Clinton's plan is his pledge to impose a two-year limit on welfare benefits. It was one of his most popular campaign themes and holds an allure for the centrist and conservative legislators he is now courting, since it sounds like a tough-talking, economizing move.

While legislation to prevent corporate contributions by multiple related entities languishes in Annapolis, most other states have acted to prohibit the level of corporate giving made possible by Maryland's loophole. Twenty states prohibit corporate contributions to candidates for county and state office. Of the remainder, all but five impose limits on how much corporations may donate in an election cycle, and most of these states do not allow corporations to bypass financial caps by giving through related entities, said Aron Pilhofer, a campaign finance expert with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan group in Washington that tracks money in politics.

With the rate of development in South Carroll slowing to its lowest levels in recent years, the county commissioners are considering whether to ease controls on the number of homes that can be built there.At issue is the growth-control ordinance passed by the commissioners last year, which limits new residential units countywide to about 1,000 units each year for the next six years.The law gives the commissioners power to direct development to areas where schools, roads and public services are adequate and restrict it in areas without them.

THE FIRE that destroyed the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's education center on Smith Island reflects a smoldering distrust within the natural resources community over emergency crabbing restrictions imposed by the state last month.While culprits in the arson have yet to be named, it's no secret that tensions have flared between watermen who feel their livelihood is threatened by new limits on hours and working days, and the environmental organization, which doggedly pushed for those strictures.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court dealt a defeat yesterday to liberal reformers who sought to sharply limit the impact of money in politics. In a 6-3 decision, the court struck down a novel Vermont law that would have strictly limited how much state candidates can spend on their campaigns, as well as how much donors can give them. Had the law been upheld, these reformers saw it as a model for other states to limit campaign spending. Instead, the justices said the law violated the First Amendment and its guarantee of freedom of speech.

An ethics watchdog group is calling for an investigation into nearly two dozen companies and individuals it says broke Maryland's limits on political contributions. Using state Board of Elections data, Common Cause Maryland said it found 18 companies and four individuals who gave more than the $10,000 limit for the 1999-2002 election cycle. Previously, Common Cause had identified more than 60 contributors as breaking the limits in the same cycle, said James Browning, the group's Maryland director.