Management And Budget

During a hearing last night on the proposed county budget for fiscal year 2000, the Deer Park recreation council pleaded with the Carroll County commissioners for $29,990 to pave the entrance to the popular Westminster sports complex."

WASHINGTON -- While booming stock prices contributed importantly to the government's now-certain budget surplus for 1998 -- the first in almost 30 years -- the market's recent swoon poses little threat so far to the nation's hard-won return to fiscal integrity.Indeed, economists and budget specialists say, the many investors who frantically or more deliberately decided to cash in some stock winnings will swell the surplus even further, at least for a while."As people are pulling out, they're having to take capital gains that have been built up," said James Glassman, managing director of Chase Securities in New York.

WASHINGTON -- Clinton administration officials yesterday reduced their forecast for this year's federal budget deficit by $14.7 billion because unexpectedly strong economic growth has produced enough tax revenue to offset the costs of higher interest rates.But they cautioned that unless long-term interest rates fell to their levels earlier this year, higher interest on the national debt would result in slightly higher deficits later in the decade.Yesterday's announcement of the revision was the latest in a series of estimates by government and private economists that the federal government's finances are improving.

WASHINGTON -- Nineteen-year-old Danita Hill jumped at the chance in July to work at the Health Care Financing Administration in Woodlawn, which participates in a popular federal program to give disadvantaged high school and college students job experience and pay at federal agencies."

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.

School administrators are used to getting only some of what they askfor around budget time: Cuts from the county Department of Management and Budget are par for the course."

The County Commissioners expect to remedy growing shortfalls in boththe 1991 and 1992 budgets by making what promise to be some painful cuts by Thursday.Management and Budget Director Steven D. Powell told the commissioners Thursday they would have to cut another $1 million to balance this year's budget because of lower-than-anticipated income tax receipts. The commissioners already reduced spending by $5.3 million in several stages to address the continuously worsening 1991 deficit.Powell also reported that the projected shortfall for 1992 had grown by about $900,000, to $1.94 million, largely because of reduced earnings on bonds the county sold to finance improvements for Carroll County General Hospital.

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 -- A congressional leader arranged an $8 million federal grant to his alma mater two weeks ago, but that small act may end up setting off spending cuts in a wide range of domestic programs.Representative Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, arranged the grant for Loyola University of Chicago as part of $4.5 billion legislation to cover U.S. military expenses in the Persian Gulf.The grant, which would go toward a $24 million Center for Commerce and Industrial Expansion at Loyola's business school, was one of several non-military items in the bill.

Feeding the elderly poor and counseling sexual abuse victims are more important to the Carroll Commissioners than sending county employees to conventions and seminars.During the second round of budget hearings Thursday, the commissioners restored social programs that only a week ago were proposed to be cut from next year's $112 million budget."We made a conscious effort find some money elsewhere in the budget," said Commissioner Julia W. Gouge. "Those social services have tobe a priority."