Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 25

TIMES SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1996 9 A Security Tornado from 1A from 1A (J I 4 S' ft- back and forth from the family room to the front door," Gray said. "Then, just as quick as it came up, it was over." The tornado was the most violent manifestation of a day of severe weather that swept through Tampa Bay ahead of a cold front that will bring near-freezing temperatures to the area by Monday morning. The chill will come late tonight, when the mercury dips into the mid-303 in Citrus County and upper 40s along the Pinellas coast. Inland areas of Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties could see temperatures in the 30s. Monday's highs are forecast to remain in the 50s.

"It's going to be much colder than what we've been feeling," said John McMichael, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Rus-kin. "It'll feel more like Christmas." Saturday's severe weather kept police, firefighters and power workers rushing around, tending to fender-benders, snapped power poles and power outages blamed on rain, wind and lightning. A spokeswoman with Tampa Electric Co. said no more than 800 people lost power. A Florida Power spokeswoman reported scattered outages in southern Pinellas County but few or no problems elsewhere in the Tampa Bay area.

The Suwannee County Sheriffs Office reported that a tornado passed by a mobile home park on the Santa Fe River, downing branches that destroyed two homes and damaged others. No one was injured. The Hillsborough tornado was far more destructive. Gary Lee Davis of 10005 Cowley Cove Drive, was home with his five dogs when the tornado hit. His wife returned home Photo by DAN MCDUFFIE Jenny and Clinton Carpenter search through the rubble of their home at Cowley Cove.

They were at the store when the tornado hit. was the most incredible force of wind I have ever experienced. TINA GRAY Cowley Cove resident two of the Davis' dogs. He retrieved a cocker spaniel from beneath the rubble across the street and put another dog, a mixed breed named Champ, into the Davis' bent and twisted red Camaro. As residents walked amid the rubble in awe over a van wrapped around a tree, kitchen stoves jumbled with stuffed teddy bears, wrist watches and clothing, they repeatedly expressed their disbelief.

"It's like a war zone," Gray said. "It's shocking. It's just unbelievable." Timet staff writer Kelly Ryan and the Associated Press contributed to this report soon after to find her husband dead, their home destroyed and three of their dogs dead. "It looks like his trailer was in the direct path of where the tornado came through," said Debbie Carter, Hillsborough Sheriffs Office spokeswoman. "It picked up his trailer, carried it across the street into another trailer." There were no other injuries.

Six mobile homes were leveled, and four others were damaged, Carter said. Power to the mobile home park was shut off because of downed power lines, but authorities were unable to say how many residents were displaced. Red Cross officials were on the scene to provide assistance late Saturday. Jenny and Clinton Carpenter, who lived across the street from the Davis home, had gone to the drug store to buy medicine when the twister hit. They returned home to what looked like a war zone.

"I've got to go look for my pills," a dazed Clinton Carpenter told rescue workers as his wife, Jenny, broke down in tears over ruined photographs of the couple's son. After the tornado passed, Rolison said, he ran to the Davis home but was unable to help anyone except members of the panel are divided into groups of six, five and two. Each faction has its own plan for guaranteeing the solvency of Social Security over the next 75 years. Several members said they had hoped that the panel would move toward a consensus that would emphasize the advantages of investing Social Security money in the stock market. Instead, the members' disagreements have become starker and sharper in recent months, said the chairman of the panel, Edward Gramlich, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan.

A confidential draft of the final report, to be issued this month, says, "The council has not only been unable to agree on a plan, we have been unable to agree on the proper criteria to use in assessing the plans." In June, the Clinton administration said the money in the Social Security trust fund would increase for two decades, then start to decline. The administration said that the trust fund would be depleted in 2029, just as the last of the baby boomers reached 65, and that revenues would then cover only three-fourths of benefit costs. Although the advisory council has been unable to agree on major changes in Social Security or its investment policies, a majority of members will endorse smaller steps that could extend the life of the trust fund to 2050 or beyond, a substantial achievement. In an interview, Gramlich said: "These short-term fixes are nice, and we can agree on them. But it's important for us to do something more to raise national savings for retirement and to do it fairly soon." In the draft of the final report, Ball's faction says, "Social Security is not facing a crisis but does face a long-term deficit, beginning about 30 years from now." Members of the council agree that workers could get much higher rates of return if some of their retirement savings were invested in stocks rather than government securities, the only investment allowed for the Social Security trust fund under current law.

The average annual return, adjusted for inflation, is estimated at 7 percent for stocks and 2.3 percent for long-term government bonds. Five members of the council want to replace the Social Security program with a two-tier system of "personal security accounts." The government would pay a modest flat benefit, about half the average benefit now paid to retirees. Forty percent of payroll taxes would be diverted to the new accounts, and workers would decide how to invest the money. Under that plan, retirement benefits would no longer be defined by law, with a standard formula, but would vary from worker to worker, depending on the success of each investment. Sylvester J.

Schieber, a panel member who favors that approach, said it would allow people to "participate fully in this economic miracle that we call America." But Ball's group spurned the proposal, saying it would substitute "an extraordinarily high degree of alone individualism" for the "community solidarity" of Social Security. "We do not believe that the nation's basic retirement system should require everyone the knowledgeable and the inexperienced, the lucky and the unlucky, the rich and the poor to bear investment risk as isolated individuals," Ball's group said. The third faction, composed of Gramlich and another panel member, also wants to establish mandatory individual savings accounts. Under this proposal, the government would i WJ i i rr i so T4 (A 1- vfff sit 1 i i r- -A fT 1 I I 'i ifi mv it i i i i -j -fit i II (5- if Holidays Around the World Candlelight Processional at Epcot toolbar 2A require each worker to make contributions, starting in 1998. The accounts would be owned by workers but managed by the government.

The investment options, perhaps five to 10 mutual funds, would be much more limited than under Schieber's proposal. Ball's group said both of those proposals were "inherently and fundamentally flawed." Social Security, created in 1935, "is based on the premise that we're all in this together, with everyone sharing responsibility for the security of everyone else, present and future," Ball's faction said. Members of this group see personal savings as an important supplement to Social Security, but a poor substitute for any part of it. Under current law, the Social Security trust fund is accumulating a surplus because payroll taxes exceed the amounts immediately needed to pay benefits. Members of Ball's group said the government should consider investing some of the surplus in the stock market, to get higher returns.

The idea, they said, would need more study. Under Ball's proposal, payroll tax revenues would still be pooled in the Social Security trust fund. The government, acting through an independent board, could put some of the money in a portfolio of stocks chosen to match a broad gauge of market performance. 1 Advance tickets: $54.95 adult, $24.95 child. If you already have an Epcot admission pass, Candlelight Dinner Packages may be purchased in advance for $37.95 adult, $8.95 child.

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