Panel Members

Three days after being accused of trying to thwart an investigation of one of its members, the Carroll board of commissioners floated yesterday a proposal to turn over current county ethics probes to an outside party. The commissioners have scheduled discussion for today on possible changes to the ordinance governing the county ethics panel. Those changes could include suspending the current panel's operations and handing over current investigations to the state or another agency outside county government, said Frank Johnson, an aide to Commissioner Julia Walsh Gouge, board president.

A development's appearance and harmony with its surroundings - or the lack thereof - have sparked many a suburban dispute, but Howard County officials say they may have a solution. Legislation to create a design review panel is to be discussed at a county Planning Board meeting Thursday night. After consideration by the board, a bill will likely be introduced before the County Council. The proposal would create a five-member design advisory panel made up of architects, engineers and planners to make recommendations on aesthetics and compatibility while development plans are being processed.

The Hayfields Country Club proposal took one step forward and another back yesterday as the Baltimore County Board of Appeals approved a 48-acre expansion of the golf course but reduced by two the number of residential building lots allowed in the rural conservation zone.With the historic Merryman mansion counting as one house site, the Mangione family previously had approval to build 39 luxury houses on the residential part of the 475-acre tract at Interstate 83 and Shawan Road.However, two of the four house sites that would have been adjacent to the planned golf course were lost in the board decision, which is expected to be appealed with other issues to Circuit Court.

WASHINGTON -- Within the next two weeks, leaders of federal employee unions will sit down with departmental executives to work out a collaborative labor-management approach such as that used in private industry.With an executive order earlier this month, President Clinton created the National Partnership Council, a panel of labor and civil service decision-makers. The two historically warring camps are reaching out to each other in the wake of the National Performance Review, a sweeping bureaucratic overhaul to make government work better.

On the Saturday after Independence Day, about half of the 180 Anne Arundel County firefighters and paramedics scheduled to work took the day off. The Fire Department approved all 88 leave requests and used overtime to pay for enough workers to reach its minimum staffing of 128 uniformed employees. At yesterday's meeting of a panel assembled to study the Fire Department's rising overtime expenses, which topped $7.2 million last fiscal year, Chief Roger C. Simonds used July 5 as an example of how various kinds of leave - including vacations scheduled a year in advance and last-minute sick days - factor into the department's use of overtime.

A private panel of Baltimore leaders who want to substitute medical treatment for jail for the city's drug abusers is drafting a pilot program to prove that the controversial approach would work and to persuade businesses to help fund it.Details of the plan are developing, but members say the pilot program would take a sample of about 2,000 people from Baltimore's estimated 50,000 heroin and cocaine abusers and track them.Half would be treated medically and with traditional methods, and the other half would be watched as they go through the criminal justice system.

On the Saturday after Independence Day, about half of the 180 Anne Arundel County firefighters and paramedics scheduled to work took the day off. The Fire Department approved all 88 leave requests and used overtime to pay for enough workers to reach its minimum staffing of 128 uniformed employees. At yesterday's meeting of a panel assembled to study the Fire Department's rising overtime expenses, which topped $7.2 million last fiscal year, Chief Roger C. Simonds used July 5 as an example of how various kinds of leave -- including vacations scheduled a year in advance and last-minute sick days -- factor into the department's use of overtime.

The city's Design Advisory Panel sent architects of the proposed 750-room convention center hotel back to the drawing board yesterday, noting a variety of concerns about their initial plan, including that provisions for a high-speed magnetic levitation train prototype were inadequate. Members of the design panel also criticized the project, planned for a site just north of Oriole Park, for appearing too linear to encourage use as a gathering place. They were not satisfied with the design of the all-weather connector that would cross Howard Street linking the hotel to the Baltimore Convention Center.

On the Saturday after Independence Day, about half of the 180 Anne Arundel County firefighters and paramedics scheduled to work took the day off. The Fire Department approved all 88 leave requests and used overtime to pay for enough workers to reach its minimum staffing of 128 uniformed employees. At yesterday's meeting of a panel assembled to study the Fire Department's rising overtime expenses, which topped $7.2 million last fiscal year, Chief Roger C. Simonds used July 5 as an example of how various kinds of leave -- including vacations scheduled a year in advance and last-minute sick days -- factor into the department's use of overtime.