Local Governments

WASHINGTON -- The federal government will pay $8.8 million of the estimated $12.2 million needed to reconstruct the storm-ravaged Ocean City beach, leaving state and local governments responsible for the rest, officials said yesterday.The $3.4 million local share of the project to rebuild dunes and beach will come from an existing $8 million state and local beach repair fund, and will not require cash-strapped local governments to scramble for the money.Officials of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Baltimore said they expect to hire a contractor by the end of March to pump sand from offshore to restore 8.5 miles of beach and dune damaged by a Jan. 4 storm.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. -- Offering words of encouragement and the promise of "ships coming in" with gas, President Bush toured fuel-thirsty South Florida yesterday, meeting with local officials and a storm-stunned public as the area lurched uncertainly toward recovery. "Soon, more and more houses will have their electricity back on and life will get back to normal," Bush told a crowd of nearly 100 waiting at a lunch distribution center in Pompano Beach. "In the meantime, the federal government, working with the state and local government, is responding as best as we possibly can."

WELLSTON, Mich. -- At a Norman Township meeting last week marked by screams, boos and taunts of "Communist!" and the tears of an elderly woman upset to see neighbor turn against neighbor, a big man in the vortex of the storm seemed inspired.William Ordiway Jr., a leader in the Michigan Militia, had come here to pitch thunderbolts.Mr. Ordiway is at the forefront of a new course for paramilitary groups, which have hitherto focused on the federal government and the United Nations, but now are starting to look homeward for sinister plots.

Local government leaders took notice this month when declining tax revenue projections left a $432 million hole in the state budget. Naturally, they're worried that Baltimore and the counties are going to be left to do much of the shoveling. And the most likely pile of money to be shoveled is the more than $600 million the state contributes toward teacher pensions. Why? Not only is this a substantial sum, but it represents the wrong way to finance public education. The state doesn't set salaries, local governments do. But as salaries increase, teacher pensions grow proportionately, and that's a burden shouldered 100 percent by the state.

Spend our money more wisely. I think that's what the average person wants from government. We're not extremists. We don't want government spending indiscriminately on programs that don't work, nor do we want government indiscriminately slashing spending in a way that only makes our problems worse. We want leaders who are good with money - our money. That's why we're so disappointed with some officials (perhaps the minority) who are condemning a plan to put the Chesapeake Bay region under a "pollution diet.

SOLOMONS -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening tried last night to reassure nervous local officials that his proposed income tax cut and spending initiatives will not force a reduction in aid to local governments.Rather, he told a gathering of the Maryland Association of Counties, state aid to local governments will continue to grow as expected despite the drop in state revenue."Under our fiscal plan, local aid will increase more than 5 percent annually over the next three years," Glendening said.

If there is a general theme that runs through The Sun's investigation of speed camera programs on the state and local level in the Baltimore area, it is this: Governments have found ways to follow the letter of the law that maximize the number of citations issued while flouting the spirit of the law that protects the public from erroneous tickets. The law is designed to prevent the camera operator from being paid on a per ticket basis, but Baltimore City, Baltimore County and, to an extent, Howard County found a way around that.

TEZIUTLAN, Mexico -- From the photos, the La Aurora neighborhood of this bustling mountain city looked like a partially shaved face.The photos were circulated to news agencies after the disaster Oct. 5 in which half of La Aurora slid down a hill during torrential rains. They showed homes on either side of the sheared hill, with the houses that used to be in the middle slumped at the bottom in a mass of rubble.What the aerial photos didn't show was why it happened.Natural disasters have a way of baring the weaknesses in Mexico's centralized and authoritarian political system.

This is the season when local governments finalize their budgets for the next fiscal year, and the grousing about their penurious circumstances is in full swing. Some are even complaining that the state's revised budget and tax plan - signed into law by Gov.Martin O'Malleythis week - has put a serious crimp in their finances. In particular, they blame the state's decision to shift a portion of the cost of teacher retirement contributions to Baltimore City and the counties as ruinous to their own budgets.

Legislation that would have placed stricter limits on where local governments could put speed cameras and required them to appoint ombudsmen to hear complaints died in the General Assembly Monday night. The legislation would have strengthened language prohibiting governments from entering into new contracts under which they paid private companies for each ticket issued, but would have allowed current contracts to stand. A Republican filibuster prevented a Senate vote on the measure as the General Assembly session neared its end. Gov. Martin O'Malley had planned to sign the compromise legislation, which was prompted by a Baltimore Sun investigation that documented erroneous tickets and other problems in Baltimore's program.