Paperwork

The coalition opposed to slots at Arundel Mills mall has filed necessary paperwork with state officials to begin work on its referendum campaign, coalition officials announced Monday. The newly branded "No Slots at the Mall," which will work to overturn zoning legislation allowing Baltimore-based Cordish Cos. to construct a 4,750-unit slots parlor at the mall, named David Jones, a Hanover resident, as its chairman and Brion Umidi, of Arnold, its treasurer. The group filed a "statement of organization for campaign finance entities" with the State Board of Elections on Friday.

Firefighters from the Rivers Park Fire Station had only one question for Casey Dyson as they sampled home-baked cookies from her fledgling delivery service: Does she pack cold milk on her scooter? Dyson, a Columbia resident who launched CookieRide in August after four months of paperwork and preparation, carries six varieties of cookies - but no beverages. The firefighters at the Old Columbia Road station gave their approval to her quarter-pound chocolate chip cookies and smaller Power Bites - an original recipe made of nuts, flax seed, and dried blueberries and cherries that was inspired by a physical therapist seeking a snack high in antioxidants.

South River football coach Steve Erxleben will return to coach the Seahawks this fall, but his suspension was extended through the first three games of the season for failing to file the proper paperwork after one of his players suffered a back injury and was hospitalized Aug. 16. Erxleben said he forgot to file an accident report, which should have gone to the school principal. "It was a mistake," he said. "But it's my fault. I don't want to miss any games. I don't want to miss practice, but you have to pay the piper.

UPDATED (10:55 p.m.) -- St. Frances won the semifinal game, 4-0, and will advance to play The Heights in the championship game on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at a site to be determined.   On April 27, members of the St. Frances baseball team were near tears. Today, the Panthers are in the Maryland State Private School semifinals and putting a positive ending on a season that could have been a disaster. Until that Friday in April, St. Frances had been among the leaders in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference.

Budget cuts throughout the federal court system will delay the processing of papers in U.S. District Court, an official said.Joseph A. Haas, clerk of U.S. District Court in Baltimore, said he has been told to reduce his 77-member staff by 15 through attrition. Three are temporary employees, who will be released this year when their contracts expire.Mr. Haas said a smaller work force will cause delays in processing paperwork received by the court each day and to slower responses to phone inquiries.

Washington. -- Like a feverish thermometer reading or a worrisome blood count, the alarming news from the world of medical practice is that times are good for the managers of medical practice.These are laymen -- not doctors -- who have mastered the mysteries of insurance forms, reimbursement regulations and the scheduling of patients to keep the doctors busy. The fact that the managers are doing well means that the administration of medical paperwork has ascended to a level of complexity that warrants a well-rewarded place on the payroll -- financed, of course, by patients.

William E. Roberts, 72, a former insurance salesman and cabdriver, and a perennial candidate, has quietly joined the Baltimore mayor's race.He is among the first candidates to officially file paperwork to run for the office.Roberts filed as a candidate in late December without fanfare. He said he didn't publicize his candidacy because he didn't want to get caught up in the political posturing that he said is diverting attention from the issues."I was trying to be as quiet as possible so I wouldn't be tagged as a perennial candidate, a candidate muddying up the waters," he said.

WHEN MY FRIEND LINDA CALLED, I told her I'd have to get back to her. "I'm in the middle of a pile of paperwork," I said. It was almost a week before we talked. And she called me. "Done with your paperwork?" she asked, laughing. I think she thought I forgot. "Nope," I said. I am going to have to start taking these calls from my friends because I will never be done with my paperwork. I may soon run out of friends, but I will never run out of paperwork. And it isn't even tax season yet. I have been hearing that we are entering a paperless age -- when everything is recorded and all business is transacted in electronic ways.

Paperwork is the lifeblood of the legal community. Fax machines pump out paperwork.A. Gordon Boone III equates paper with profit.The former Baltimore County Circuit Court clerk recently started Legal Legs Ltd., a Towson legal services company that locates county documents, then faxes them to customers. Since fax machines receive, too, Mr. Boone also serves as a middleman for attorneys filing papers at the county's courthouses."You fax it to me, I reproduce it on nice bond paper and immediately walk it across the street for filing," Mr. Boone said.

Poor handwriting, incomplete information, inadequate forms and lack of automation are obstacles that make restraining orders ineffective and give accused abusers the opportunity to purchase handguns, court and law enforcement officials said yesterday. But the state has taken an initial step toward improving processing to help keep victims safe with its first in a series of training seminars, which began yesterday with a seminar for supervisors of data entry clerks, sheriff's deputies, prosecutors and court employees involved in the paperwork.

The St. Frances baseball team, which had been among the leaders in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference, has been forced to forfeit all of its games because of incomplete paperwork on two transfer students. “It's an unfortunate situation,” said Rick Diggs, executive director of the MIAA. “It was absolutely not intentional. It's just that over the past two years our paperwork involving transfers has become more complicated.” Diggs said the paperwork errors were discovered by the league office during routine cross-checks of team rosters that are done for the entire league, and the decision to impose forfeits was made Thursday.

Disclosure of possible conflicts of interest is crucial to maintaining public trust in government and in ensuring that elected officials maintain the highest standards of conduct. But Baltimore has managed to render something so important a near total waste of time. Sun reporters Luke Broadwater and Julie Scharper found plenty of questionable actions by elected officials when they investigated how often Baltimore politicians avail themselves of free tickets to cultural and sporting events.

The Sun's recent editorial regarding ground rents ("Fixing ground rent," Oct. 27) objects to the Maryland Court of Appeals finding that the legislature cannot just take property from ground rent owners. Of course, the legislation developed because of reporting by The Sun on abuses of the system by some in the past. However, you seem to feel that all current ground rent owners need to be punished because of this. Why is that? The government has data on who owns the ground rents, except their records are screwed up. My sister and I had a few properties turned over to us by a relative in 1992, and appropriate fees and paperwork were filed with Baltimore City.

Robert McMillan, a five-year employee with the Harford County Department of Public Works, Division of Water and Sewer, has been named Employee of the Month for July. He was nominated by his crew chief from the Division of Water and Sewer, Tim Smith. McMillan recently went above and beyond what was called for to return money and paperwork left behind by a customer of the 7-Eleven where he and Smith had stopped for lunch. The crew chief pointed out paperwork on the counter thinking it belonged to McMillan, not wanting him to forget it. When they returned to their vehicle, McMillan noticed it was not his paperwork or money.

Federal agents seized documents related to insurance claims during a search earlier this year of a Rosedale auto body shop, possibly indicating that a corruption probe into a towing scheme that has ensnared 30 city police officers may now be broadened to include insurance fraud. According to court documents that were recently made public, boxes of documents and other items were seized during searches conducted at Majestic Auto Repair Shop and the Rosedale home of one of the shop's owners, who has been charged with paying kickbacks to city police officers for steering business his way. Prosecutors say that officers who responded to car accidents got $300 for each damaged car they sent to Majestic.

The Obama administration would not support a nationwide temporary freeze on home foreclosures, said a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. The adviser, David Axelrod, said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation" program that, while faulty paperwork that prompted many banks to put foreclosures on hold has "thrown a lot of uncertainty into the housing market that is already fragile," the administration would not support a nationwide moratorium....

Now that your fund's annual statement has arrived, it's time to do the right thing with your paperwork. That means something more than filing it away. Your final statement from 2003 should show all of your account activity - purchases, redemptions, gains payouts and the like - from the calendar year, making it a valuable tax document for the future. It makes every other account statement you got last year from the fund obsolete. If you're the average investor and hold on to funds for years, not months, the monthly statement or the account activity sheet that comes with the occasional fund purchase serves more to create a fire hazard than to provide valuable information in the files.

The deadline looms tomorrow night, and many will find themselves in a line of cars streaming toward Baltimore's main post office -- or even in its lobby, working out the math -- to file income taxes before the witching hour.But for those caught in a last-minute nightmare of missing information and lost W-2 forms, all is not lost, the state comptroller's office said yesterday: They could file a request for a four-month extension.But Marvin A. Bond, spokesman for the comptroller, cautioned that an extension is not for everyone.

Major lenders have halted foreclosure proceedings in 23 states after revelations that in many cases, paperwork was signed by people who didn't so much as read what they were signing, much less do the research to verify that all the details were accurate. Maryland is not among those states. The reason for this is not because the lenders have demonstrated that they employed some large corps of highly effective employees in Maryland to make sure all the paperwork was perfect. It's because those 23 states, unlike Maryland, handle the foreclosure process entirely through the courts, and in those cases, the lenders face the possibility that judges will impose huge penalties — and maybe even start giving delinquent borrowers their houses back — because of the errors.

South River football coach Steve Erxleben will return to coach the Seahawks this fall, but his suspension was extended through the first three games of the season for failing to file the proper paperwork after one of his players suffered a back injury and was hospitalized Aug. 16. Erxleben said he forgot to file an accident report, which should have gone to the school principal. "It was a mistake," he said. "But it's my fault. I don't want to miss any games. I don't want to miss practice, but you have to pay the piper.