Payments

Enron Corp. paid its executives huge one-time bonuses last year as a reward for hitting a series of stock-price targets in 2000 - at the time, investigators say, when those executives were improperly inflating the company's profits by as much as a billion dollars. The bonus payments and other special cash distributions include $320 million paid just 10 months before Enron's collapse into bankruptcy, company records show. Legal experts said the payments could provide strong evidence of a motive for the financial machinations that investigators think distorted the company's reported performance and ultimately led to its demise.

A foreclosure action against Linda R. Tripp, whose secret recordings of White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky resulted in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, was dismissed yesterday after the mortgage-holder for her Columbia home asked trustees working on its behalf to halt the proceedings. Joseph Murtha, who represented Tripp in the state's unsuccessful prosecution on wiretap charges related to the scandal, said yesterday that Tripp had caught up on any missed or late payments before the foreclosure on the Cricket Pass house was filed, but those payments were not recorded in time to forestall the legal paperwork.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate, forging an unusual alliance between free-market Republicans and liberal Democrats from urban states, yesterday adopted a sweeping rewrite of farm policy that would phase out most payments to farmers by the year 2002.Touted as a "freedom to farm" bill that would liberate farmers from planting crops according to federal government dictate, the measure passed in a 64-32 vote that ended several days of debate and compromise.Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, a Republican presidential contender long interested in farm issues, called the reforms "really a historic change the biggest since the 1930s."

Eldridge and Selma Miller are taking the money they saved by refinancing their mortgage and using it to pay off their loan early."The closer you get to retirement, the less financial obligation you want to have," said Mr. Miller, the 46-year-old elementary school principal in Stone Mountain, Ga. "We want to get our mortgage paid off while we're working."And they have found an interesting way to do it.In addition to making their regular monthly payments, the Millers are paying the following month's principal in advance.

WASHINGTON -- The number of credit-card holders behind on their payments rose in the second quarter, after two back-to-back quarters of declines, the American Bankers Association said yesterday.The trade group said 3.69 percent of credit-card accounts were delinquent in the second quarter of 1997, up from 3.51 percent in the first quarter and the second highest since record-keeping began in 1980. In the second quarter of 1996, 3.66 percent of accounts were behind in payments. In the fourth quarter of 1996, the delinquency rate reached an all-time high of 3.72 percent.

Robert L. Waybright has made eight trips to court since 1988, but after his Friday trip, he had a new destination -- the county DetentionCenter.Waybright, 28, owes his former wife $4,862.95 in court-ordered support money for the couple's 4-year-old child.He is one of almost 3,000 county residents whose support paymentsare tracked by the Child Support Enforcement Unit at the Carroll Department of Social Services.On June 13, Carroll Circuit Judge Francis M. Arnold found Waybright in contempt of a court order to pay hisformer wife, Elizabeth Marie Waybright, $100 a week in child support.

Maryland's insurance commissioner ordered a hearing yesterday to determine whether the former chief executive of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield should be allowed to receive a $17.65 million retirement and severance package from the health insurer. William L. Jews left his post a year ago in what CareFirst's board chairman, Michael R. Merson, described as "a mutual decision." Merson said at the time that Jews would receive "substantial" payments after his departure, but the amount hadn't been made public until the insurance commissioner specified it in his order yesterday.

While public housing was crumbling and most municipal employees were being furloughed or denied raises, the city's Housing Authority workers received an extra $1,000 each -- a total of $1.4 million that could have been spent on blighted buildings.Money for the worker payments in August was drawn from federal accounts and grants given to the Housing Authority of Baltimore City for administering the public housing program.The payments to about 1,400 workers resulted from a collective bargaining agreement between the Housing Authority and two union locals that represent maintenance employees and supervisors, in lieu of a pay raise.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland is auditing millions of dollars of its payments for the Owings Mills headquarters complex because the company is concerned about why it is scheduled to pay up to $30 million more than is called for in its lease.The headquarters buildings are owned by a partnership formed by the Blues and the Rouse Co.; the Columbia development company also receives management fees and oversees all operations of the complex.Blue Cross officials have concluded that most of the extra money the insurer is paying on the 20-year lease is in lieu of an escalator provision -- absent in its lease agreement but standard in such contracts -- that automatically raises payments to compensate for future inflation.

WASHINGTON -- In its final weeks before leaving office, the Bush administration took a series of little-noticed steps to allow the petroleum industry to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in additional royalty and interest payments to the government.At the same time, Bush administration officials lowered the government fees for some ranchers who graze livestock on federal lands.The actions were taken in late December and January as outgoing administration officials prepared to relinquish control to the Democrats.