Working Group

COLLEGE PARK -- The group studying alternatives to a much-debated intercounty connector between Montgomery and Prince George's counties says it could support an east-west toll road.The 8-4 straw vote by the Transportation Solutions Group is the first indication of what will be recommended to Gov. Parris N. Glendening in July.Glendening created the working group last year after backing off from 15 years of solid support for an intercounty connector.The road, which would ease east-west travel, is also considered by officials at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to be essential to keeping BWI competitive with Dulles and Reagan National airports.

The NCAA yesterday announced dozens of proposed reforms designed to clean up college basketball. Linking scholarship allotments to graduation rates and lessening the importance of AAU tournaments in the recruiting process were among the recommendations of a 27-person committee, which spent 10 months studying the game and its ills.Some of the committee's recommendations could become NCAA rules as early as the 2000-2001 school year."We asked these folks to be `practical idealists,' " said Kenneth Shaw, the Syracuse chancellor who chaired the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues.

UNITED NATIONS -- Reflecting the changes that democratically elected governments have brought to Latin America and the Caribbean, political "disappearances" have almost ended in the Western Hemisphere, a U.N. group of experts has concluded.Asia is now the region with the largest number of people who have vanished, apparently at the hands of armies or police forces.It is also the region with the most new cases of disappearances, say members of the panel, known as the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which met recently at U.N. headquarters.

They feed the hungry and teach the three R's. They bathe the sick and spread the Good Word.Maryland's nonprofit organizations -- churches, hospitals, museums, soup kitchens -- benefit from this do-good image, but they also do more, a new study says.They not only feed the hungry; they also feed the economy."The importance of the sector goes far beyond the good work of these organizations. Maryland's nonprofit sector is also a major economic force," said Peter V. Berns, executive director of the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations, which is scheduled to release the study today on the state's nonprofit sector.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's task force on welfare reform has translated his pledge to "end welfare as we know it" into a plan to spend significant new sums on child care, work and training programs. But the group says its ambitious goals can be entirely financed by cuts or savings in welfare or other programs for the needy.The draft plan was completed 12 days ago and is subject to revisions before it is presented to Clinton. The confidential plan reiterates his pledge to impose a two-year limit on welfare benefits, after which recipients would have to enroll in a work program or face financial penalties.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is considering a new government-subsidized program to provide long-term care to people with chronic illnesses or disabilities.Elderly people have long sought federal help with the cost of long-term care, one of their biggest health expenses.Confidential work papers from the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform show that a major goal of the "new long-term care program" is to shift spending from nursing homes to "community-based services" that provide medical care and other types of assistance to people living in their own homes.

WASHINGTON -- Although President Clinton last wee renewed his pledge to "end welfare as we know it," aides drafting his plan acknowledge that the effort could be expensive and might even force him to scale back or delay action nationwide.The centerpiece of Mr. Clinton's plan is his pledge to impose a two-year limit on welfare benefits. It was one of his most popular campaign themes and holds an allure for the centrist and conservative legislators he is now courting, since it sounds like a tough-talking, economizing move.

The report of the first White House Conference on Children proclaimed in 1909 that the best way to preserve high standards of citizenship and a productive economy is to ensure each child ''humane treatment, adequate care and proper education.''Eighty-four years later, we live in a society that is failing to protect its children and all but abandons them in crisis. A society in which the legal rights of children are abused or ignored.A society in which potentially useful laws exist but are not enforced; with existing laws that interfere with children's well-being; and a society in which children and their families too frequently end up enmeshed in the overburdened judicial system or as wards of the state.

WASHINGTON -- As part of its plan to revamp the welfare system, the Clinton administration is considering giving new federal subsidies to companies that hire or find jobs for welfare recipients.One option is to have the government pay employers directly to subsidize the wages of welfare recipients. Another is for the government to hire personnel firms that would receive a fee for each person placed in a job.Previous efforts to use corporate subsidies have generally failed, and the discussion remains in a preliminary stage.

Setting up a committee or a working group is a common method of avoiding responsibility and delaying hard decisions. Group dynamics often perversely work against the achievement of what should be common goals.In the absence of an alternative forum, however, it can promote dialogue among parties who haven't communicated well with each other or even understood the common problem. That's why we support the creation of a working group in Harford County of state and county officials and private citizens to address thorny environmental problems.

WASHINGTON -- A presidential working group issued a broad set of proposals yesterday to correct weaknesses in the way homes are financed so that the problems now crippling the nation's housing sector won't recur. The President's Working Group on Financial Markets recommended changes in virtually every area of mortgage finance. It called for tougher state and federal regulation of mortgage lending and mortgage brokers. It also supported creating a national licensing standard for anyone who originates mortgages.

WASHINGTON - The CIA is refusing to provide hundreds of thousands of pages of documents sought by a government working group under a 1998 law that requires full disclosure of classified records related to Nazi war criminals, say congressional officials from both parties. Under the law, the CIA has already provided more than 1.2 million pages of documents, the bulk of them from the archives of its World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services. Many documents have been declassified, and some made public last year showed a closer relationship between the U.S. government and Nazi war criminals than had previously been understood, including the CIA's recruitment of war criminal suspects or Nazi collaborators.

Baltimore-Washington International Airport should be given more autonomy to operate like an entrepreneurial business but should remain under state control rather than be turned over to an independent authority, a government working group has concluded. After conducting a three-month study, state officials and private business leaders have proposed changing the law to give airport commissioners authority to approve larger business contracts and hire staff members without seeking approval from state oversight agencies or being restricted by state salary limits.

Neighborhood leaders agreed yesterday to set up a "community working group" with representatives of the Brandon Shores power plant operator in hopes of resolving the controversy over its plans to transport a potentially hazardous material through Solley-area neighborhoods. "We're going to give it a shot," said Lester A. Ettlinger, who has led much of the community protest against the proposal to use anhydrous ammonia - a chemical that can cause severe lung damage and death in extreme exposure - in its new anti-pollution system.

The NCAA yesterday announced dozens of proposed reforms designed to clean up college basketball. Linking scholarship allotments to graduation rates and lessening the importance of AAU tournaments in the recruiting process were among the recommendations of a 27-person committee, which spent 10 months studying the game and its ills.Some of the committee's recommendations could become NCAA rules as early as the 2000-2001 school year."We asked these folks to be `practical idealists,' " said Kenneth Shaw, the Syracuse chancellor who chaired the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues.

COLLEGE PARK -- The group studying alternatives to a much-debated intercounty connector between Montgomery and Prince George's counties says it could support an east-west toll road.The 8-4 straw vote by the Transportation Solutions Group is the first indication of what will be recommended to Gov. Parris N. Glendening in July.Glendening created the working group last year after backing off from 15 years of solid support for an intercounty connector.The road, which would ease east-west travel, is also considered by officials at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to be essential to keeping BWI competitive with Dulles and Reagan National airports.

UNITED NATIONS -- Reflecting the changes that democratically elected governments have brought to Latin America and the Caribbean, political "disappearances" have almost ended in the Western Hemisphere, a U.N. group of experts has concluded.Asia is now the region with the largest number of people who have vanished, apparently at the hands of armies or police forces.It is also the region with the most new cases of disappearances, say members of the panel, known as the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which met recently at U.N. headquarters.

They feed the hungry and teach the three R's. They bathe the sick and spread the Good Word.Maryland's nonprofit organizations -- churches, hospitals, museums, soup kitchens -- benefit from this do-good image, but they also do more, a new study says.They not only feed the hungry; they also feed the economy."The importance of the sector goes far beyond the good work of these organizations. Maryland's nonprofit sector is also a major economic force," said Peter V. Berns, executive director of the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations, which is scheduled to release the study today on the state's nonprofit sector.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's task force on welfare reform has translated his pledge to "end welfare as we know it" into a plan to spend significant new sums on child care, work and training programs. But the group says its ambitious goals can be entirely financed by cuts or savings in welfare or other programs for the needy.The draft plan was completed 12 days ago and is subject to revisions before it is presented to Clinton. The confidential plan reiterates his pledge to impose a two-year limit on welfare benefits, after which recipients would have to enroll in a work program or face financial penalties.

WASHINGTON -- As part of its plan to revamp the welfare system, the Clinton administration is considering giving new federal subsidies to companies that hire or find jobs for welfare recipients.One option is to have the government pay employers directly to subsidize the wages of welfare recipients. Another is for the government to hire personnel firms that would receive a fee for each person placed in a job.Previous efforts to use corporate subsidies have generally failed, and the discussion remains in a preliminary stage.