Panel Members

WASHINGTON -- Fellow Republicans increased pressure yesterday on national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, with one panel member saying the White House was making "a political blunder." Rice, in a prime-time television interview, reiterated the White House argument that the president's top advisers should not be forced to testify in public. "We have absolutely nothing to hide," she insisted. "I've already spent four hours with the commission.

WASHINGTON - President Bush's former counterterrorism chief testified yesterday that the Bush administration regarded the threat posed by al-Qaida as "an important issue, but not an urgent issue" in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks. By comparison, the Clinton administration had made the al-Qaida threat "an extraordinarily high priority," said Richard A. Clarke, who served in the same post under President Bill Clinton. Of his time in the Bush administration, he said: "Although I continued to say it was an urgent problem, I don't think it was ever treated that way."

Imagine this assignment: Find a way to raise $11 billion by 2010. That's the chore assigned to a 15-member Chesapeake Bay watershed finance panel appointed yesterday by the Chesapeake Executive Council. The group must come up with recommendations for financing bay restoration efforts by 2010 because state and federal officials have set that year for meeting bay cleanup targets. Their recommendations are due by the end of the year. Panel members include a former interior secretary, a former governor, financial and economic experts, and officials with experience in agriculture, air quality and funding for wastewater treatment plants.

WASHINGTON - The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is refusing to accept strict conditions set by the White House for the panel's interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and is renewing its request for Bush's national security adviser to testify in public, commission members said. The panel members, interviewed after a private meeting yesterday, said the commission had decided for now to reject a White House request that the interview with Bush be limited to one hour, with the questioners limited to the panel's chairman and vice chairman.

A similar debate erupted in the association last yearFor the second time this term, some Columbia Association board members are crying foul because a colleague is sending e-mails about board business without specifying the missives represent only the author's personal views. Board member Pearl Atkinson-Stewart has written e-mails to Columbia's village boards, the Howard County Council and Howard County's state legislators to lobby the groups to not support state legislation that would limit the association's assessment income.

WASHINGTON - The White House is declining to make public the financial histories of the commissioners President Bush appointed to investigate U.S. intelligence failures. Administration officials say the arrangement has helped to attract the best-qualified people to the panel, but critics say the White House's refusal to disclose financial information raises questions about potential conflicts of interest that could cloud the commission's work. Citing an exemption to federal ethics regulations, the White House says the financial disclosure statements filed by the commission's nine members will remain confidential because they are not being paid for their work.

Charles E. "Chick" Partridge Sr., a former member of the Oxford Planning Commission and retired federal employee, died in his sleep Saturday at Methodist Manor House in Seaford, Del., where he had lived since 1990. The former Oxford resident was 97. Mr. Partridge was born and raised in Philadelphia and earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural economics from Pennsylvania State University in 1928. He went to the Eastern Shore in the 1930s to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture's cannery products grading service in Easton.

Accusing their colleagues of an abuse of power, several board members of the Columbia Association, which governs the huge homeowners group, are raising protests that some of their meetings are being illegally closed to the public. Board member Barbara Russell, one of the original residents of the 36-year-old planned community, is leading the charge. She claims that the board is shrouded in secrecy as she attempts to garner community support to make CA -- one of the nation's largest homeowners associations -- conduct more of its business in public and document its executive sessions appropriately.

The $130 million Four Seasons hotel and residence project, billed as an "urban resort," at Harbor East received preliminary approval from the city's design panel yesterday, opening the way for construction to start. Plans are to break ground by the end of summer and to open as early as 2006. Members of Baltimore's Design Advisory Panel praised the work done by Hill Glazier Architects of Palo Alto, Calif., in simplifying the design of the project, which is to feature 200 hotel rooms, 26 to 28 condominiums, spa facilities and retail space.

Nearly two years after Naval Reserve commander and school board member Thomas G. Hiltz first suggested that Junior ROTC might have a place in Carroll County public schools, he and his colleagues voted yesterday to start the system's first such unit at Winters Mill High School. The measure - approved by a 4-1 vote over the objections of a board member who questioned the cost and appropriateness of inviting the military into the school system - paves the way for Winters Mill Principal Sherri-Le W. Bream to schedule a site visit with Army officials, who also must approve the school's request to start a Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.