Management And Budget

WASHINGTON -- After years of effort to transfer government work to private companies, the White House acknowledged yesterday that contractors are squandering vast sums because federal agencies fail to supervise how hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year.In a report prepared for Richard G. Darman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, federal auditors from the White House and 12 agencies said that private companies had been paid for unauthorized and, at times, illegal expenses, including tickets to sporting events, lavish cruises and excessive salaries for executives.

The Carroll County government has launched County Connection, a monthly newsletter, to keep residents informed of issues within the county government. The newsletter is expected to contain articles and lists of votes of the county commissioners and meetings of numerous boards and commissions, organizers said. "This newsletter is part of our commitment to put government actions before the public," said Commissioner Dean L. Minnich. "It puts us on the record and shows a willingness to continue a dialogue with the people we serve, to acknowledge accountability and accept responsibility for all that we do in the public interest.

Working quietly on 2,700 acres of unspoiled forest on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, prominent scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center study the complexities of the world's largest estuary and try to answer critical environmental questions on a global scale. The center has a photobiology solar radiation laboratory, an animal and plant interaction lab, and nutrient and plant ecology labs. And a "crab lab." The Edgewater research center, known as SERC, is home to a smorgasbord of ecological research projects.

WASHINGTON -- The administration is putting the finishing touches on an austere 1992 budget that will still show a record deficit of more than $260 billion, according to budget officials. The deficit will reach more than $330 billion if the large Social Security surplus is not taken into account.The rise in the deficit stems, officials said, from the economy's slide into a recession, which crimps revenues and accelerates spending for unemployment benefits and other programs to relieve hardship.

While few actually will pick it up and read it, the more than 200-page book due a week from today will touch the lives of about everyone in Carroll.More than five months in the making, the County Commissioners' annual budget message contains one of the gloomiest economicstories ever told in Carroll, replete with service reductions, budget cuts and salary freezes.The theme -- the county's proposed $115.2 million operating budget -- is not an uplifting one for the commissioners and the county budget office.

WASHINGTON -- The $2.13 trillion budget plan that President Bush will send to Congress tomorrow will for the first time formally assess the performance of government agencies and programs and to some degree link their financing to the grades they receive, administration officials said. Based on an internal review conducted by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the budget gives uniformly poor marks to all the major Cabinet departments in five categories of management, including personnel and finances.

The Department of Homeland Security abandoned its final court appeal this week in its push to take greater control over the way the agency fires, pays and negotiates with its workers. The decision leaves union contracts intact. Larry Orluskie, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said that the Solicitor General's office, which handles all appellate litigation on behalf of the federal government, made the call not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. A federal district judge and three-panel appeals court already had voided workplace rules that would have allowed top officials to "unilaterally" ignore union contracts and implement reforms without consulting with workers.

For an excursion through warped priorities, look at the Bush administration's plans for the billions of dollars the federal government will spend next year on research and development.From no less an authority than President Bush, the Cold War is over, the gulf war is expected to be brief, and the major long-term challenge facing America is industrial competitiveness. Science and technology, he has repeatedly said, are indispensable ingredients of our economic strength. So, guess what? Defense is budgeted for 60 percent of all the money Washington will spend on R&D next year.

While hundreds of thousands of federal workers brace for unpaid furloughs starting next month, Uncle Sam is still looking to hire. In one week alone this month, nearly 2,200 job listings available to the public were posted on USAJobs.gov, the federal government's recruiting site. Add in new postings open only to current or former federal workers , including those laid off, and the number of new openings jumps to more than 4,600. "One thing for sure about hiring freezes: They always begin to melt as soon as they are put into place," said Don Kettl, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy at College Park.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration's plan to reinvent government would force agencies to compete with private companies for much of their work, increase the independence of agency heads and eliminate the jobs of thousands of federal managers.A confidential 109-page draft of the plan obtained by Knight-Ridder News Service offers dozens of proposals, including promises that the U.S. Postal Service will deliver overnight local first-class mail, that the IRS will pay tax refunds within 21 days and that the Social Security Administration will answer its phones.