The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 21

REGIONAL BRIEFS From Journal-News wires Sljc cfcmnuil-jN'ctus METRO B7 ROCKLAND COUNTY, N.Y., THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1986 elbauM Klew Ymh3 planus trace ffiinisiiriicisiD roadlbDocks Ultimately, Bestgen said, some projects that could have been started and finished next year may spill over into 1988, further inconveniencing motorists. The highway measure stalled in Congress just before adjournment when negotiators locked horns on 100 pork-barrel projects pressed by the House, a Senate proposal to raise the speed limit to 65 mph on rural stretches of the interstate system and different recommendations for removing billboards. Said one New York state employee based in Washington: "I don't see how they can do it before spring. They're so far apart." Because the 100th Congress will not consider measures that made it through committees in the 99th, said a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staffer, "We start over from page one." because $140 million of the $180 million in federal funds remaining from past years is earmarked for interstate highways that won't be bid until summer. That leaves about $40 million for all the remaining work, and those funds will be used this winter.

Until Congress approves a new highway bill, some 300 projects scheduled for construction in New York next year will remain on the drawing board, state Department of Transportation spokesman Timothy Hulbert said. "There's no getting around it. The question is how to minimize the impact," Hulbert said. "We are at the height of a five-year initiative, the 'Rebuild New York' initiative. It's a $7 billion program, and when you're talking about a rolling inventory of projects, scheduling is im portant." Projects under construction will not be affected by the federal funding freeze because sufficient monies are set aside at the outset of a project to guarantee completion.

Others being financed with only state and local funds also can proceed. "We're not going to be in a situation where we have half a bridge," said a senior state transportation official. "The situation is, we're not going to be able to have any new starts." John Bestgen, regional administrator for the Federal Highway Administration, said no new projects can be authorized until a spending bill is approved. That will set back such pre-construction tasks as design work and right-of-way acquisition, he said. By RICHARD WOLF Gannett News Service WASHINGTON Gov.

Mario Cuomo's "Rebuild New York" transportation program will run into a major roadblock early next year because of a congressional deadlock on highway spending. While projects under way will not be jeopardized, design and construction of new roads "will come to a screeching halt," according to a state official based in Washington. Without an agreement between House and Senate negotiators on a new highway bill a pact not expected until spring the state cannot put 1987 projects up for bid, thereby setting back the construction timetable. The problem is particularly acute in New York, officials said, Spanish TV station WNJU sold NEWARK, N.J. (AP) The sale of WNJU-TV to a unit of Reliance Group guarantees the New York area's top Spanish-language station will continue to serve its Hispanic audience, station and company officials said Wednesday.

WNJU was sold to Reliance Capital Group despite two recent, higher offers from companies without a major interest in Spanish programming, said Station Manager and President Carlos Barba. The company announced Tuesday that Reliance Capital has agreed to acquire WNJU-TV (Channel 47) for $70 million. The station joins three other Spanish stations in what is shaping up as the nation second Spanish network. WNJU, with 4.8 million viewers and the oldest Spanish-language station in the country, is owned by a group headed by producer Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin and A. Gerald Perenchio.

Judge refuses to remove Goetz prosecutor NEW YORK (AP) The judge in Bernhard Goetz's upcoming subway shooting trial refused on Wednesday to remove the prosecutor. Goetz's lawyer, Mark Baker, had argued that Assistant District Attorney Gregory Waples should be removed because Baker wants to call him as a witness. "There is a potential for grave abuse" in motions to dismiss adversary lawyers on the ground that they may be called to testify at trial, Justice Stephen G. Crane wrote in his decision. Crane said there must a substantial showing that Goetz would be unable to get a fair trial if Waples were not dismissed.

Otherwise, the judge said, granting such a motion would invite similar applications in every case where the prosecutor interviewed potential witnesses before trial or questioned them in a grand jury. D'Amato welcomes Navy to Staten Island NEW YORK (AP) Sen. Alfonse D'Amato welcomed the U.S. Navy to Staten Island on Wednesday in a ceremony marking the formal transfer of a port site at Stapleton to become the new home of the battleship Iowa. "We want them here in New York," D'Amato said.

"It's very unusual for the mayor and Congressman (Guy) Molinari to agree on something. They agree on Stapleton, so it must be right," he said. The Democratic mayor, Edward I. Koch, one of the strongest advocates of establishing a Navy base at Stapleton, has said the site would create 3,000 jobs and $600 million worth of economic activity for the city. Molinari, the island's Republican representative, led the effort in Congress to establish the port.

Opponents have fought the base in the name of keeping nuclear weapons and an inviting military target out of New York Harbor. Witness: Orange County family sold bombs NEW YORK (AP) Members of an Orange County family made pipe and time bombs and sold them to an undercover federal informant in 1985, the informant testified Wednesday. Salvatore Polisi, 41, working undercover for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn that he paid $1,200 for two homemade time bombs. On trial on charges of illegal possession and sale of explosives are Julius Leonard, 53; his wife, Doris, 47; their son, Danny, 28; and their daughter, Cindy Ney, 24.

All were living in Cuttybackville when they were arrested in May 1985. Polisi, an admitted professional thief and convicted drug dealer, testified in federal court in Brooklyn earlier this month in the racketeering trial of reputed Mafia boss John Gotti. New Alliance founder worked for state Gerena-Valentin "left for personal reasons" last month, Northcutt said. Newman said Gerena-Valentin is 72 years old and quit his state job to retire to Puerto Rico. Gerena-Valentin could not be located for comment.

The New Alliance Party is sharply critical of both Democrats and Republicans, accusing them of not doing enough to aid blacks, Hispanics and women. The little-known party has attracted heavy news coverage during the past week because Cuomo wanted Fulani included in a Public Television debate among candidates for governor. The debate was called off after Republican gubernatorial candidate Andrew O'Rourke and Right To Life candidate Denis Dillon refused to appear with Fulani because of her party's alleged anti-Semitism. ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) The first chairman of the New Alliance Party, a group accused of anti-Semitism, held an important post in the state Labor Department from 1983 to Oct.

15 and was recommended for the job by Gov. Mario Cuomo's office, an official said Wednesday. Labor Department spokesman Jack North-cutt said that Gilberto Gerena-Valentin was paid $41,049 a year to serve as the special assistant for migrant labor at the department and was based in Brooklyn. "He was a referral from the governor's appointments office," Northcutt said, explaining how Gerena-Valentin was hired in August 1983. Northcutt added that Gerena-Valentin was interviewed by the Labor Department and found qualified before going on the payroll.

Martin Steadman, a spokesman for Cuomo, said the governor didn't know about Gerena-Valentin's association with the New Alliance Party when the Labor Department official was hired. New Alliance Party officials have denied accusations of anti-Semitism made against the party by Jewish groups. The party's candidate for governor, Lenora Fulani, said that although she is a supporter of Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan she disagreees with "unquestionalbly anti-Semitic" statements by Farrakhan. Gerena-Valentin took the state job when his term as a New York City councilman from the Bronx ended after he was defeated for re-election in the Democratic primary, said Fred Newman, the New Alliance Party's U.S. Senate candidate in Tuesday's election.

Newman said that Gerena-Valentin was one of the founders of the New Alliance Party in 1979 but left the party in 1982 after his defeat in the Democratic City Council primary. "I think he was looking for an appointed job (in government) and he thought he would have a better chance of getting one if he wasn't in the New Alliance Party," Newman said. "When he was working for the state he had no ties to our party." Jury selection slows in trooper killings case their capture. They have already been convicted of roles in several New York-area bombings. One key question asks potential jurors if they would be able to consider a defense argument that the officer unlawfully provoked the confrontation that led to his death.

Cronin told Imbriani that the questions would severely limit the prospective juror pool. "We're not going to do anything but exclude everybody," he said. Defense attorney Ronald L. Kuby said it was "completely unfair to say these questions are designed to only elicit a negative response." "They reveal latent prejudices prospective jurors may have," he added. The judge assured the prosecution that he would ask sufficient follow-up questions during the interviews, while Kuby noted that 10 prospective jurors were selected Tuesday.

On Wednesday, another 12 pros-ects were added to the pool, which Imbriani says will total 52 before both sides are permitted to use peremptory challenges to pare it down to 12 panelists and four alternates. Attorneys for both sides said jury selection, which began Monday, could take up to two weeks. The trial is expected to last another six to eight weeks. SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) -Prosecutors on Wednesday objected to a lengthy questionnaire, which they called unfair to their case, given to potential jurors by attorneys representing two self-styled revolutionaries charged with killing a state trooper.

"What the defense questions are doing is getting the jurors to say, 'I don't care what the state proves, it's not going to have any effect on my Deputy Attorney General Mark Cronin said in court. He was complaining about some among the 126 questions that prospective jurors have answered at the request of defense attorneys for Richard C. Williams, 39, of Beverly, and Thomas W. Manning, 40, of Boston. Superior Court Judge Michael R.

Imbriani has used the questionnaire as a resource in his quizzing of potential jurors at the rate of about five per hour. The questions ask, for example, how the respondents feel about revolutionaries and communists and if they are prejudiced against people who live clandestinely and have aliases. Williams and Manning, who are charged with gunning down Trooper Philip Lamonaco after the officer stopped their car Dec. 21, 1981, on Interstate 80 in rural Warren County, oppose the capitalist system and lived underground until Nanuet National's New Car Loans at New Low I I Variable rate up to 60 months to pay for all checking account customers. HAVING PROBLEMS? Checking with a Free Visa Transaction Card To qualify for this low rate Auto loan, you must be a Nanuet National checking account customer.

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