March 29, 1986

State investigators said yesterday that they have evidence that the former head of the City Taxi and Limousine Commission, Jay L. Turoff, was a secret investor in a Yonkers taxi company with partners whose New York City holdings were regulated by Mr. Turoff's agency. The officials, in the State Commission of Investigation, said another person with business interests in the city's taxi industry arranged free lodging and meals for Mr. Turoff at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City. Public Hearing Planned Both matters and other purported irregularities at the Taxi and Limousine Commission during Mr. Turoff's eight-year administration are to be examined April 10 at a public hearing by the commission. Mr. Turoff, who resigned as chairman of the taxi agency March 10, has been subpoenaed to testify. Mr. Turoff did not return messages left yesterday on the answering machine at his home in Staten Island. The office of Mr. Turoff's lawyer, Edward M. Rappaport, was closed, and Mr. Rappaport did not return messages left with an answering service.

The Government said yesterday that its index of future economic activity rose a sharp seven-tenths of 1 percent in February. The increase, along with an upward revision of January's figure, gave economists renewed confidence that 1986 would be a year of healthy growth. Many analysts, while seeing long-term gains from lower interest rates and oil prices, have worried that the course of the economy has been spotty. Some signs of weakness, they say, have been a jump in unemployment in February and slow auto sales.

The decision by the Air Force to cancel its contract for the T-46 jet trainer, built on Long Island by the Fairchild Republic Company, has set off a struggle that is likely to pit New Yorkers in the House and the Senate against the powerful Senate Republican majority leader, Bob Dole of Kansas. Mr. Dole has made no secret of his effort to kill the T-46 contract and to get the Air Force to agree to upgrade the T-37 trainer, which is built by Cessna Corporation of Wichita, Kan. But even before this possible battle, the New Yorkers face a tough fight in the House to overturn the Air Force's cancellation of production, which was fomally announced today. Last year the House Armed Services Committee nearly killed the authorization for the trainer, when the Air Force still supported it.

President Daniel Ortega Saavedra warned today that the use of American helicopters and possible deployment of American military advisers at rebel camps near the Honduran border could draw the United States more directly into Nicaragua's battle against the insurgents. The Nicaraguan leader said American personnel and aircraft in the area would run ''the same risks as the counterrevolutionaries,'' a reference to the United States-backed rebels known as contras. Self-Defense Is Claimed At the same time, Mr. Ortega said Nicaraguan forces are justified in attacking rebel bases even if they are in Honduras. Mr. Ortega said, ''The mercenary forces in Honduran territory, which are financed and advised by the United States Government, are the ones who crossed the border to kill our people and to destroy. Our forces are only defending themselves in the border area.'' [ In Washington, a State Department official involved in legal matters said the Administration viewed Nicaragua as an ''aggressor state'' that had no right to claim self-defense as the basis for its attacks this week against the rebels in Honduras. Page 4. ] Mr. Ortega, who spoke at a news conference, refused to say whether Nicaraguan troops had crossed into Honduras in recent days, as has been charged by the Reagan Administration and the Honduran Government.

The Justice Department today released numerous documents that it said were evidence that Federal contractors had been required to meet illegal quotas in hiring women and members of minority groups. The documents were, in most cases, agreements and correspondence between construction companies and the Labor Department, which enforces the obligation of Government contractors to take affirmative action to hire and promote women and members of minorities. Based on 1965 Order The obligations stem, in part, from a 1965 executive order that the Justice Department says should be amended to prohibit the use of quotas, a change opposed by the Labor Department. The Justice Department maintains that hiring quotas are illegal because they discriminate on the basis of race or sex.