January 17, 2003

Ben Brantley reviews Charles Busch's play Shanghai Moon, with Busch in female impersonation role as Lady Sylvia Allington; photo; Drama Dept production is directed by Carl Andress (M)

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he does not expect it will be necessary to lay off police officers in current round of budget cuts, but leaves it open as future possibility if police union does not agree to money-saving changes in work rules; says 3 percent cuts in department will probably be achieved through attrition and good management; leaves open possibility that more employees of Department of Education could be laid off as city moves toward centralization; city faces deficit of roughly $3 billion in fiscal year that begins July 1; mayor will update his plan for closing that gap early next month (M)

Floyd Norris comment on some of consequences that arise from Bush administration's proposal to end taxation of dividends that are paid from profits on which taxes were already paid by company; says dividends will remain taxable if company has not paid federal taxes previous year, and will be partly taxable if it has not paid enough federal taxes to offset all its dividends; says since companies will not file tax returns until many months after paying dividends, some companies could declare in good faith that dividend will be tax free, only to figure out months later that they were wrong; graph (M)

Bush administration rules that states may place limits on coverage that health maintenance organizations provide for emergency services for poor people on Medicaid; 1997 law allowed states to require Medicaid recipients to enroll in HMO's, but provided certain safeguards for patients, including stipulation that HMO's had to provide coverage for Medicaid patients in any situation that 'prudent layperson' would regard as emergency; Sen Bob Graham, principal author of law, says removing this safeguard will undermine access to essential emergency services for low-income Americans and questions how administration can, by a letter, make such profound changes in policy established by statute; state officials, looking for ways to cut Medicaid costs, have discussed such restrictions as limiting number of emergency room visits that will be covered or requiring emergency rooms to get authorization from primary care doctor before treating Medicaid patient enrolled in state's managed care plan (M)

Richard D Parsons, chief executive of AOL Time Warner, will succeed Stephen M Case as chairman, culminating surprising consolidation of Parson's power in two years since AOL acquired Time Warner; some major shareholders say they still plan to take wait-and-see attitude toward Parsons; some institutional investors urged board to keep duties of chairman and chief executive separated, given current climate of corporate scandals and federal investigations into accounting at AOL division of AOL Time Warner; photo (M)