September 12, 1981

The Justice Department last night gave New York City clearance to hold its primary elections Sept. 22 for all municipal and judicial offices except the City Council. Governor Carey said he would call a special session of the Legislature next Wednesday to approve the date. The decision was reached after a day of telephone conferences among officials in Washington, City Hall and Albany. The city agreed to abandon plans to make what it had thought would be routine changes in 221 election district lines. But it did change the location of 37 polling places, an action that had already received preliminary approval from Washington. Mayor Koch announced the decision at 6 P.M., at a news conference that had been delayed several times. He released a letter from William Bradford Reynolds, an assistant United States Attorney General, saying that ''the Attorney General does not interpose any objections to the changes in question.''

Church and community groups are renovating thousands of apartments and newcomers are buying scores of private town houses in Harlem. City officials, housing experts and community leaders hope the activity is the beginning of a revitalization that could change the neighborhood's makeup. Harlem, the black Manhattan community whose name has long stood for urban decline, still faces problems beyond those that affect housing everywhere, such as high interest rates. The neighborhood suffers a high crime rate, poor public schools, a housing stock still beset by serious decay and abandonment, and poverty among many of its residents. But Anthony B. Gliedman, the city's housing preservation commissioner, and other officials and real estate experts said in interviews that there had been a ''surge'' of housing activity in Harlem recently. And they said they believed that over the next decade the increased demand for privately owned town houses in Harlem's better areas would spread, spurring the restoration of many of its abandoned and dilapidated multi-family dwellings.

The Administration is considering two le gislative measures that would bypass the normal appropriations pr ocess. This would force Congress to take a single vote on the sp ending cuts necessary to hold the budget deficit for the fiscal ye ar 1982 to the level favored by President Reagan. The President reportedly plans to announce his decision on adopting an alternative legislative method at the same time that he discloses his decision on additional cuts in the military budget, an aide said today. However, that announcement may not come until the week after next, an aide added. White House spokesmen had originally said that Mr. Reagan could have an announcement as early as next Tuesday.

A Federal judge refused today to dismiss the Justice Department's historic antitrust case against the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. He said the evidence he had heard so far showed that the ''Bell System has violated the antitrust laws in a number of ways over a lengthy period of time.'' A.T.&T. had moved for a dismissal after the Justice Department had rested its case, and it was this motion that Judge Harold H. Greene of the United States District Court rejected in a strongly worded 75-page opinion. ''The evidence sustains the Government's basic contentions, and the burden is on the defendants to refute the factual showings,'' the judge wrote.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced plans yesterday to sell 620 buses and 12 commuter rail cars to private corporations and then lease them back in a novel move that would provide tax benefits to the corporations and savings to the authority. The offer was made possible by the new tax legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan last month. It allows public transit agencies to enter into leasing arrangements similar to those enjoyed for years by private corporations. ''This represents an enormous opportunity for private corporations in New York to demonstrate their support for the city and to make money at the same time,'' said Steven Polan, special counsel to the M.T.A. A Pilot Program Later, a spokesman for the M.T.A. noted that the plan was based on a number of assumptions never before tested. ''It's never been done befo re by the public sector, so there are a lot of questions to be resolved,'' said Rand Burgner, the spokesman. ''That's why this is a pilot program, to see if it works for us as ithas for private industry.''