March 14, 1995

Essex County Executive James W. Treffinger was to introduce his 1995 budget tomorrow but county and state officials gave him an extension until next week. The county faces a $161 million deficit, and Mr. Treffinger hopes this year's budget can be $50 million less than last year's package, which started with a $508 million budget and was augmented by another $110 million in expenses and liabilities. (Maybe there is no danger in the delay; budget or no, the county has not shut down. Last year it operated on a temporary budget until August.)

Californians recovering from a January flood now find themselves battling a larger one. On Oliver Street in Carmel, volunteers built a sandbag barrier and thought they had the upper hand but turned to see the waters sweep into their houses. Article, page A9.

Home buyers do not have to have a lawyer assist in the closing of a sale, the State Supreme Court ruled yesterday. But the court said brokers who help close deals must disclose potential conflicts of interest, such as representing the seller, too. And it said that buyers and sellers must be warned of the pitfalls of proceeding without a lawyer. What people do now often depends on where they are buying a home. In South Jersey, 60 percent of home buyers and 65 percent of the sellers do not use lawyers. In North Jersey, more than 99 percent of the buyers and 86 percent of the sellers have lawyers at closings.

INCREASINGLY, the world is awash in plutonium, the deadly gold of the nuclear era, the man-made element that is produced in all nuclear reactors and prized for making atom bombs. And increasingly, no one knows what to do with it, as big nuclear arsenals become passe and as alternative plans for the perilously radioactive stuff lose their luster. The simplest option is to bury it. But that is now under fire as scientists debate, and Federal agencies study, whether a proposed underground dump in Nevada might eventually blow up in a nuclear explosion fed by waste plutonium. For years the dump has been seen as a crucial solution to the plutonium problem, and its rejection would be an enormous blow to nuclear planning.

A lawyer for O. J. Simpson set out to show today that a police detective was so incurably racist that he picked up one of two bloody gloves at the crime scene, rubbed it inside Mr. Simpson's Bronco and then placed it behind Mr. Simpson's house. Court adjourned before the lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, could question Detective Mark Fuhrman about finding the glove, and Mr. Bailey did not explicitly tell the jury that the detective planted it on Mr. Simpson's estate. But earlier, in a hearing before Judge Lance A. Ito, he said that Mr. Fuhrman "is very definitely a suspect" in such misconduct. "And that's what we intend to show with circumstantial evidence far stronger than the people will ever offer against O. J. Simpson for the murders," Mr. Bailey stated.