January 20, 1982

Joseph M. Margiotta plans to have party rules amended tomorrow so that he can remain the Nassau County Republican chairman despite his conviction on extortion and mail fraud charges. Mr. Margiotta has called a meeting of the county's Republican executive committee for tomorrow afternoon, just hours after his scheduled sentencing in Federal Court in Uniondale, L.I. A spokesman for Mr. Margiotta, Robert McDonald, who is also a member of the 66-member executive committee, said the chairman ''would like to retain his post during the appeals process.'' ''There should be a total adjudication of the case,'' said Assemblyman Dean G. Skelos of Rockville Centre, who is close to Mr. Margiotta and also a committee member. ''If it means changing the rules to get justice, we will.''

A Supreme Court ruling today left political action committees and other ''independent'' political groups free to continue spending unlimited amounts in support of Presidential candidates, at least for the time being. Such groups spent $13.7 million in the 1980 campaign, almost all in behalf of Ronald Reagan. The Court split, 4 to 4, in a case that raised the question whether the free speech right of would-be donors was violated by the $1,000 limit on ''independent expenditures,'' set by Congress when it established public financing of Presidential campaigns.

The Consolidated Edison Company signed an agreement today for the purchase of electricity from a $180 million garbage recycling plant being built in Peekskill. The pact could be a factor in the replacement of 600,000 barrels of oil and produce savings for Westchester County taxpayers. Arthur Hauspurg, Con Edison's president and chief executive officer, said it was the company's ''first garbage-to-energy contract'' and indicated that it could serve as a prototype agreement for any solid waste plant built by New York City. The ''energy purchase agreement'' was signed with Michael D. Dingman, chairman and chief executive officer of Wheelabrator-Frye Inc. of Hampton, N.H., which is building the Peekskill facility. Mr. Dingman said his company had operated a similar facility in Saugus, Mass., since 1975 and was selling its power to a nearby General Electric plant manufacturing jet engines.

Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski appears to be firmly in control of th e military council, the Government and the demoralized Communist Par ty, Western diplomats and knowledgeable Poles believe. Although his style is less than dictatorial and he has not fashioned the image of an activist leader in the public consciousness, the 58-year-old general has achieved a position of power unparalleled in postwar Poland. The only comparable figure over the last 36 years is Wladyslaw Gomulka, the party leader who rose to power as a reformer in 1956 and who was dismissed, an embittered conservative, after workers' riots in 1970. Mr. Gomulka, who is now terminally ill, was praised as ''a great son of the Polish nation, an ardent internationalist and a Communist'' in an editorial today in Trybuna Ludu, the main Communist Party newspaper. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Polish Workers' Party, the predecessor of today's Polish United Workers' (Communist) Party.

Governor Carey proposed a new state budget today that includes more than $200 million in increased state fees, a rise in taxes on gasoline and alcohol and major cuts in a variety of state programs. But the Governor also urged increased spending for prisons, roads and bridges and for new programs to com- Excerpts from message, page B6. bat youth unemployment and to help communities pay for health and welfare programs. State officials said that while the proposed budget would not raise income taxes or general sales taxes, the array of tax and licensing increases would amount to more than $400 million. These changes would raise the cost of registering a car, renting a room in state university dormitories or getting a license to hunt, fish or practice a profession.