February 7, 1992

PREYING ON THE DESPERATE Fueled by a lingering recession that has made credit tight and people desperate, consumer-protection agencies throughout the New York metropolitan area say they have been inundated with complaints about schemes that target individuals stretched to the financial limit. A1. NEW YORK CITY HOMELESS DISPUTE AT AIRPORT HOTEL As New York City struggles toward a better way of sheltering the homeless, a failed tourist hotel hard by the runways of Kennedy International Airport is at the center of a dispute that symbolizes at once the failures of past policy and how difficult it is to overcome them. A1. DIVISION, NOT CONSENSUS The commission that Mayor Dinkins appointed to help relieve pressure on his administration and build political consensus for dealing with the daunting problem of the homeless has instead wound up putting highly public pressure on the Mayor and dividing his own advisers. News analysis, B2. T.A. MONITORING CRITICIZED The Transit Authority routinely failed to administer drug and alcohol tests to employees after they were involved in subway collisions, derailments or other questionable incidents in the 20 months before last August's fatal subway crash, according to a new report. B3. GOTTI AND JUDGE BOTH ANGRY Angry at a newspaper headline, Judge I. Leo Glasser threatened to move the trial of John Gotti out of New York City. Mr. Gotti responded by calling the judge and prosecutor names. B3. SUBWAY ARTIST TRIUMPHANT It took a long letter from her lawyer, an appeal to the First Amendment, countless conversations among countless lawyers and a three-page agreement with 10 detailed conditions, but Jenny Marketou came out on top. She finally got her seven large photographs of Greek-Americans reinstalled on the walls of a subway station in Jamaica, Queens. B3. THAT MYSTERIOUS $50,000 New York City election officials said that they would consider $50,000 wired to Mayor Dinkins's re-election campaign to be an illegal contribution unless the campaign identifies its source and prove that the money was meant specifically to pay back funds taken by the campaign's former treasurer. B4. REGION POINT, COUNTERPOINT A captain in the Teaneck Police Department contradicted a significant detail in an officer's testimony about the fatal shooting of a black teen-ager as two white officers chased him on April 10, 1990. B5. SHUFFLING THE CARDS IN HARTFORD Governor Weicker succeeded last year in overhauling Connecticut's revenue system and imposing an income tax by forging a coalition of liberal Democrats and Republicans. This year, in seeking to overhaul the spending system, Mr. Weicker has shuffled the political cards: new issue, new allies, new coalition. B5. POLICE COMMISSIONER RESIGNS Three days after a bitter confrontation with county legislators, the Suffolk County Police Commissioner submitted his resignation in a letter that advised the County Executive, "Don't lose your sense of humor." B5. Neediest Cases B4 Our Towns B5

Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady today all but abandoned the Bush Administration's sweeping recommendations to overhaul the nation's banking system by throwing his support behind the more modest approach taken by several measures now before Congress. At a news conference on Capitol Hill, Mr. Brady urged lawmakers to adopt any of the competing proposals that would ease restrictions on interstate banking. He thus acknowledged that there was little chance for passage of the Administration's broader package, which was reintroduced this week. That measure would also permit commercial banks to affiliate more easily with investment banks and be owned by industrial enterprises, like General Motors and I.B.M.

Salomon Inc. yesterday reported a $29 million loss for the fourth quarter, capping a tumultuous year that began with solid profits and ended with a shift toward more conservative management following a Treasury auction scandal. While competing Wall Street firms harnessed 1991's active stock market to achieve record-breaking profits, Salomon was bogged down by the lingering effects of the scandal and by losses in its Phibro Energy oil trading and refining subsidiary.

President Bush moved today to plug a gap in his election-year domestic plans by proposing several tax incentives and other changes in the law that he said would make quality medical care affordable for every American. In making his plans public, Mr. Bush joined the Democratic Presidential candidates in proposing ways to improve the nation's health-care system, a debate from which he had been conspicuously absent.

As New York City struggles toward a better way of sheltering the homeless, a failed tourist hotel hard by the runways of Kennedy International Airport is at the center of a dispute that symbolizes at once the failures of past policy and how difficult it is to overcome them. Sometime in the coming weeks, with the arrival of 150 homeless families, the Kennedy Inn will become the largest for-profit welfare hotel in a city that not long ago had pledged it would stop using welfare hotels. That prospect has ignited a furious uproar among advocates for the homeless, as well as elected officials and residents of neighborhoods near the Queens airports, where an isolated hotel world of the homeless has grown quietly in the last few years.