December 20, 1984

''Before the people of Deaf Smith County will glow in the dark, sparks will fly.'' - Gov. Mark White of Texas, on possibility the state might be chosen for a nuclear waste dump. (A24:1.)

Abolishing Federal income-tax deductions for local and state taxes would cost New Yorkers $6 billion a year by 1986, the state's top officials said yesterday in bipartisan denunciation of the proposal by the Treasury. ''New York's efforts to rationalize its own taxes would be devastated,'' said Governor Cuomo, a Democrat. ''It would have a terrible anticompetitive effect,'' said Comptroller Edward V. Regan, a Republican. ''It violates the first principle of government to put a tax on taxes,'' said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat.

Ministers of the 13 OPEC countries adjourned a first round of formal talks on pricing today that has thus far yielded only a stern admonition to North Sea oil producers not to undermine OPEC prices. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' formal winter talks began with the conference president, Indonesia's oil minister, Subroto, warning North Sea oil producers that any attempt to link the price of their crude to spot, or non-contract, prices would ''destabilize the market'' and upset the ''delicately balanced world oil price structure.'' Subroto told reporters after the meeting that the ministers would take up discussion of a shift in price differentials, the only concrete proposal put forth thus far to support flagging crude oil prices, when the talks resume on Thursday. Seek to Halt Decline The foremost goal of the oil ministers is to halt the continued decline of crude oil prices that has resulted from slack demand brought on by usually mild weather in the Northern Hemisphere, increased oil conservation and slow economic activity in many parts of the world. The 13 members of the organization last met in emergency session in late October, agreeing then to slow the flow of OPEC oil and stabilize prices in a market softened by oversupply.

The Reagan Administration's effort to impose tight secrecy on the next mission of the space shuttle reflects both an urge to protect national security and what some intelligence specialists see as a broader, long-term drive to curb the flow of information on such issues to the public. Former Government officials support the Administration's assertions that this country has a legitimate need to keep Moscow in the dark about its satellite technology. But they quickly add that by making such a highly publicized shift to secrecy in the civilian space program, the Administration has provoked a foreseeable reaction and may have undermined its stated goal of denying Moscow information about a new generation of American intelligence satellites. The Administration has drawn attention to the shuttle flight for Jan. 23, they say, thus alerting Moscow to its importance and, in effect, inviting closer scrutiny from the press. Beyond that, the episode has touched off a political controversy over how far the Government should go in putting pressure on the press to protect security information without crimping the policy debate on arms in space. This echoes earlier controversies over the Administration's efforts to tighten up on policies and practices it inherited.

WASHINGTON IRVING, serving as the American Minister to Spain, wrote in 1843 to his niece Sara Irving in Tarrytown, N.Y.: ''I thought of you all at dear little Sunnyside on Christmas Day, and heartily wished myself there to eat my Christmas dinner among you. I hope you kept up Christmas in the usual style, and that the cottage was decked with evergreens. You must not let my absence cause any relaxations in the old rules and customs of the cottage: everything must go on the same as it did when I was there.'' Even today, Washington Irving could step into Sunnyside - his picturesque, Dutch-style cottage on the banks of the Hudson - and find it dressed for the season much as it was when he lived there. At Sunnyside and other historic houses open to the public in the New York area, Christmas decorations are today as in Christmases past: many historic preservation societies trim the interiors with period decorations corresponding to the time of the house.