Public Scrutiny

There are times when the nation's capital takes on some of the attributes of a shark tank at feeding time. That is one of the complaints left behind in some notes by Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide. Reviewing the brouhaha in the White House travel office, Mr. Foster makes some vague accusations and offers a flimsy defense of White House staff behavior. These are deserving of some attention, but Mr. Foster's remarks about life in Washington raise a more substantial issue.

On July 30, The Sun published an op-ed by Mary Alice Ernish, founder of the grassroots non-profit Audit Baltimore, which contained a series of questions about the city's auditing practices. This week, Comptroller Joan Pratt, who oversees the city's auditors, provided responses. • Why have some city agencies not been audited in over three decades? The city's financial statements, which are prepared by the Department of Finance, include all of the expenses and revenues of all city agencies.

Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III is a can-do, combative administrator who is not loath to challenge the federal officials who are his chief source of funding. Mr. Henson's style marks a sharp contrast with his predecessor, Robert Hearn, under whom the federally financed public housing agency had deteriorated into a disaster during the first six years of the Schmoke administration. But Mr. Henson's aggressive style brings another set of problems.Evidence of trouble in the housing agency under Mr. Hearn's leadership prompted Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to spend $50,000 in January 1993 to hire Claude Edward Hitchcock, a private attorney, to review the city Housing Authority.

Final votes on the two bills that will map out Columbia's future likely won't come until the Howard County Council's Feb. 1. legislative session. And that will be after a series of discussions, amendments and more public hearings, council members said. "I actually think it is going to take until February," said council Chairwoman Mary Kay Sigaty, a west Columbia Democrat whose district includes the central area proposed for a huge redevelopment over the next three decades. By law, the council has 95 days from a bill's introduction to act on it or see legislation die. The two Columbia measures were introduced Nov. 2. Sigaty and other members said that although they've heard from more than 100 speakers in a multi-session hearing that began last Saturday and stretched through this past week, the council will need time to discuss changes, draw up amendments and let the public see them.

* Alan Newcomb, 42, of Spencerville, manager of Fast Frames in Dobbin CenterMeetings should not be closed. As public office holders, they are beholden to the public, and the records should be available to the public. There should be very limited circumstances when and where they should have closed meetings. Officials don't want to be on the record with a lot of things. If you're quoted, it can be devastating. But I don't agree with it. They should be accountable 100 percentof the time.

IMAGINE THE reaction if information about Elfreda Massie's financial problems had surfaced after she had accepted the position of Montgomery County school superintendent.Still, the county's Board of Education looks foolish because poorly handled background checks of its leading candidate failed to turn up a bankruptcy filing. Had the board been more open about the finalists for the job, information about Ms. Massie's financial affairs might have surfaced sooner.Maryland school boards often cite the personnel exemption in the state's open meetings law as justification for keeping the names of candidates secret.

NEW YORK -- TRW Inc. is considering selling its credit reporting business, in part because of the growing public outcry and regulatory scrutiny of the business of tracking and selling sensitive consumer financial data, says Joseph T. Gorman, TRW's chairman and chief executive.In recent months, he said in an interview yesterday, he had become less convinced that the information services business made sense for TRW. "We need to take some strategic action" on the unit, which accounted for about 11 percent of sales in 1990.

TOKYO -- When environmentalists in southern Japan started worrying that the chemical runoff from a proposed golf course would pollute an unspoiled island, they asked local officials for a copy of the environmental impact report on the envisioned development -- and were told that it was none of their business."

A state delegate is proposing to introduce legislation that would strengthen protections for volunteers in medical experiments and open up the records of university review boards to public scrutiny. Del. James W. Hubbard, a Democrat from Prince George's County, said he plans to introduce the bill Feb. 4 because he was disturbed by the process by which a much-criticized Kennedy Krieger Institute lead paint study was approved. "We don't want to cut off research, but we do want to improve the protection of human research subjects and make sure it's done in everybody's best interests," said Hubbard, a 10-year veteran of the House Environmental Matters committee.

As an agency that does the public's business, operates with public funds and reports to a board dominated by mayoral nominees, the Baltimore Development Corp. could have acknowledged its responsibility as a public entity and conducted its business more openly. That would have been the right thing to do. Instead, the city's development arm last week chose to challenge an appeals court ruling that dismissed its claim to privacy because it is a nonprofit organization. Shame, shame. The BDC (represented by the city's top public lawyer and at public expense)

The Baltimore Development Corp., the quasi-public agency that has shepherded countless major building projects in Baltimore to completion, has certainly done its share of good over the years in helping to revitalize the city. But the progress the agency has made also has come at a cost: The BDC operates under a shadowy set of rules that, even agency alums acknowledge, are rarely codified and instead are more or less handed down from generation to generation in a kind of municipal oral tradition.

Barney R. Putnam Jr. of Columbia wants to find help for a woman at his church who has cancer but no health insurance. Rick Larsen works for a small contractor, and his fiancee, Annette Martinez, is a waitress. Both Elkridge residents are healthy, but they, too, are uninsured. They were among the small group who came to speak to Howard County Executive Ken Ulman and Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the county health officer, at the first of three public meetings on the Healthy Howard health access plan intended to eventually cover all 20,000 of the county's uninsured residents.

Harford County technology company SafeNet Inc. ended its life as a public company yesterday, shielding it from scrutiny of its accounting issues and stock options investigations and eliminating the threat that its shares would be delisted. The company was taken private by California-based private equity firm Vector Capital, which acquired it for about $634 million, or $28.75 per share. Shares halted trading on the Nasdaq about 9 a.m. yesterday, according to Nasdaq. "Vector Capital is a leading technology private equity firm, and we are extremely excited to have the opportunity to work with them," Chris Fedde, SafeNet's president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.

OK, so now Barry Bonds has some Hall of Fame company in the hot seat of public scrutiny - or, at least, he should. On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported that surefire Hall of Fame pitcher Roger Clemens is among the ex-teammates former major league pitcher Jason Grimsley accused of using performance-enhancing drugs in an affidavit filed with federal agents. Grimsley is the former reliever who has been out of baseball since June, when federal agents raided his home after he admitted using human growth hormone, steroids and amphetamines.

As an agency that does the public's business, operates with public funds and reports to a board dominated by mayoral nominees, the Baltimore Development Corp. could have acknowledged its responsibility as a public entity and conducted its business more openly. That would have been the right thing to do. Instead, the city's development arm last week chose to challenge an appeals court ruling that dismissed its claim to privacy because it is a nonprofit organization. Shame, shame. The BDC (represented by the city's top public lawyer and at public expense)

WASHINGTON - It doesn't matter much whether you liked the budget that President Bush presented to Congress last month or didn't. The spending plan is going to be changed a lot by Congress, and, in the end, it likely will be hard to tell just what was decided. Members of Congress will push a long list of pet measures this year. But barely any of the significant proposals will pass unless they're consolidated into a few large packages known as omnibus bills. This time-honored - and increasingly used - device means that members often don't have a chance to vote on individual policies that could affect their constituents.

WASHINGTON - It doesn't matter much whether you liked the budget that President Bush presented to Congress last month or didn't. The spending plan is going to be changed a lot by Congress, and, in the end, it likely will be hard to tell just what was decided. Members of Congress will push a long list of pet measures this year. But barely any of the significant proposals will pass unless they're consolidated into a few large packages known as omnibus bills. This time-honored - and increasingly used - device means that members often don't have a chance to vote on individual policies that could affect their constituents.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Since winning the California recall election, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been vague about how he would deal with the state's mammoth budget problems, the driving force behind the ouster of former Gov. Gray Davis. Yesterday, his first full day as governor, Schwarzenegger offered a glimpse of his strategy: He intends to borrow up to $15 billion to cover most of the existing deficit and impose a constitutional spending cap to avoid future overspending. To make sure his plan survives Sacramento's notorious political infighting, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, will ask the Democrat-controlled Legislature to put both proposals to a statewide vote in March.

WANTED: A risk-taking change agent with proven experience in lifting big social agencies out of the muck. Persistence and political finesse preferred. Must work well with others, even if one's bosses may not. Now that state and city officials have apparently agreed on how they'll choose a permanent head of Baltimore's Department of Social Services, placing ads in The Sun and elsewhere, we can't wait to see who they jointly choose. The political dispute over how the department's interim chief, Floyd R. Blair, got the job has taken too much attention away from the desperate needs of the people it serves -- and cost too much, in lawyers and court time, to remind everyone that "appointed jointly" means when both parties agree.