The News and Observer from Raleigh, North Carolina • A3

3A Saturday, December 2, 2000 DANNYHOOLEY STATE edition HE EWS BSERVER ATURDAY ECEMBER 2, 2000 NorthCarolina 3 A Helms takes aim at court Sen. Jesse Helms is preparing to wage war on the proposed International Criminal Court. As envisioned, the new court would be the first permanent panel set up to try international war-crimes suspects, such as Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone. Existing panels that try war criminals are set up by the U.N.Security Council to deal with specific violations. Nearly all of the United allies, with the notable exception of Israel, like the broader concept.

But the Clinton administration thus far has refused to get on board. largely because U.S. military officials fear the new court could compromise U.S. sovereignty and allow other countries to bring politically trumped-up charges against U.S. soldiers and government officials abroad.

Early next year, Helms is planning to push a bill that would effectively the fledgling court, according to Marc Thiessen, spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Helms chairs. will be one of Senator top legislative Thiessen said. For starters, the Raleigh bill would ban military aid to countries that ratify a treaty needed to establish the court. giving countries a Thiessen said. can ratify this treaty or you have a military relationship with the United The bill would also require U.S.

personnel to be from the jurisdiction before the United States would participate in United peacekeeping operations. in case the court starts operating despite U.S. objections. The Clinton administration has reservations about legislation, which he initially unveiled last summer. But the bill has gained widespread backing among Republican congressional leaders.

And this week, committee released a supportive letter signed by a dozen former top- level administration officials from both parties. Look for Helms to start talking up the bill soon after the new Congress convenes in January. The international court an irreparably flawed Thiessen said. has to be Moving on U.S. Sen.

John Edwards is losing some key staffers as he completes his second year in office. Friday was the last day on the payroll for Josh Stein, deputy chief of staff. Stein, a Chapel Hill native who managed 1998 general-election campaign, is returning to North Carolina with his family. He is exploring several job options. At the end of the year, Edwards will also lose his legislative director, Victoria Bassetti.

She will stay on the Hill as a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer. Bassetti joined staff in early 1999 after working in a less prominent job with the same committee. Aides to Edwards say the departures are unrelated and typical of the turnover in Senate offices. Washington correspondent John Wagner can be reached at (202) 662-4380 or RIEFLY UNDER THE DOME WASHINGTON Helms wants to international court. Smart-growth panel to push for state guidelines Exactly how the state would go about implementing a growth policy at the local level remains to be decided.

ICHARD TRADLING STAFFWRITER After 10 months of meetings, members of the General smart-growth commission agreed on broad goals Friday but still must work out the difficult details. The commission will recommend that the state draft smart-growth guidelines and then establish some sort of agency or committee to ensure the state lives by them. The state would also require local governments to develop growth-management plans consistent with the guidelines and would provide some help in implementing the plans. But how all of this would work remains unsettled. Commission members have yet to determine the state guidelines or what would be required of the local plans.

And they seem even further from agreeing on what kinds of new tools local governments should have to carry out their growth plans. plan implementation strate- gies are where the whole thing breaks said Sara Robertson of the Wake County Landowners and Farmers Association. The 37-member commission has begun drafting some of those strategies. Working in committees, the commission has generated dozens of ideas for how the state can help local governments better manage growth. They include giving local governments broader powers to regulate development, something that home builders and developers have opposed in the past.

Commission members acknowl- edged that some of their proposals will be controversial but agreed that the commission should be specific when it makes recommendations to governor-elect Mike Easley and the legislature early next year. would be unfortunate if we passed on this simply because hard said Wes Wallace, an emergency room physician from Chapel Hill. The committees are expected to hone their ideas further before bringing them to the entire commission during two days of meetings in January. Some of the acrimony ahead was evident Friday. Mike Carpenter, who represents the state home builders association on the commission, refused to support even the notion of smart- growth guidelines or local growth management plans without knowing the details.

not prepared to sign off on a specific mandate until we know in that Carpenter said. Staff writer Richard Stradling can be reached at 829-4739 or ATTHEW ISLEY STAFFWRITER The federal court battle over racial desegregation in public schools may not have ended Thursday when a divided panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals told the school system it can keep assigning students by race. The 4th Circuit panel ruled 2-1 that public schools have not reached the racial balance required in a landmark federal court busing order 30 years ago. But the outcome of the case could easily go the other way next year.

The white school parents who opposed the race-based assignments of magnet-school students could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case on appeal. More likely, ask the full 10-member court in Richmond, to reconsider the case overrule the split panel. be surprised if this Duke law professor Tom Rowe said. I would expect it would come out the other way if the full court heard it.

But no sure The odds of the full court hearing the case all over again early next year look fairly good for several reasons: the kind of wide-consequence ruling the whole court sometimes likes to decide, even though it usually handles cases in panels of three judges. The rulings become law in the five Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. hard to argue that this one present a decision of exceptional said. is a big case, both in terms of its local importance and the precedents it might The panel that heard and decided the case, two Democrats and one Republican, did not reflect the overall composition. Among the 10 full-time judges, seven are Republicans and three are Democrats.

Only the luck of the random judge-assignment system put two of the three Democrats on the panel handling the school desegregation case. In recent years the 4th Circuit has gained a reputation as the boldest conservative federal appeals court in the country. In recent cases, it has said public schools assign students based on race unless courts order it as a remedy for racial discrimination. The panel was split on a landmark case that establishes precedent throughout the circuit. The whole court sometimes reconsiders cases when its majority disagrees with a panel ruling.

That happened last year when the full court overruled the decision of one of its panels two years earlier in concluding that rape victims have a federal right to sue their attackers, overturning part of a law Congress had passed. Coincidentally, the same 4th Circuit judge, Democrat Diana Gribbon Motz of Maryland, wrote the panel opinions in the rape case and this desegregation ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court this year ruled that the full 4th Circuit, unlike its panel, was right that the rape suit law was unconstitutional. Perhaps most important, in May, at the suing request, three 4th Circuit judges endorsed letting the whole court hear the desegregation case in the first place; eight (the court then had 11 full-time judges) voted to let a panel of three hear it as usual.

The parents are expected in the next two weeks to ask the full court to reconsider the ruling, and most of its judges might agree this time. Tom Ashcraft, a lawyer for the parents who sued, declined Friday to say whether file such a request. Law professor Jack Boger of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said hard to say whether the full court would rehear it. Weighing against the possibility, he said, is the fact that the panel majority based its ruling on recent federal case law, rather than deciding a new legal issue as happened in the rape lawsuit case making it harder to justify rehearing by the full court. On the other hand, Boger said, significant that several judges wanted to hear it en banc initially.

banc reconsideration would- surprise he said, I predict The internal debate over whether to hear the case as a whole from the outset sparked an unusually bitter, public dispute between two Republicans, Chief Judge Harvie Wilkinson and Judge Michael Luttig. Wilkinson argued that the court should take care with such major, sensitive cases to bolster public confidence in the outcome by not deviating from its normal practices. Luttig argued that the importance of the matter, the predictability of the ruling, the likelihood of rehearing by the full court, and the harm of delaying the decision called for the full court to decide it up front. Wilkinson said then it was impossible to predict how long the case might take to play out. Now the timing, like its result, may depend on whether the battle will begin anew in Richmond.

Staff writer Matthew Eisley can be reached at 829-4538 or Schools ruling not final word The Executive Mansion needs a new heating and cooling system, as well as rewiring. PHOTOBYBRADZWEERINKFORTHENEWS OBSERVER Mansion in need of repairs Major renovation could delay move into home A MY ARDNER STAFFWRITER The Executive Mansion is in need of a major renovation that could require Mike Easley and his family to delay their move into the 109-year- old Victorian home on North Blount Street, according to Gov. Jim office. The mansion, plagued with poor air quality and infused in some parts with mold, is in need of a new heating and cooling system, according to Hunt spokesman Tad Boggs. Electrical wiring also needs to be replaced, and the building must be wired for computer use as well, Boggs said.

a 109-year-old building and historic treasure for the state, and it has to be kept Boggs said. Renovation plans are still being drawn up, Boggs said, and are not likely to be completed before March. But the mansion staff, in preparing materials for the new administration, has recommended that the Easleys delay moving in, and has estimated that the work might take six months. air quality on second floor is very the transition book reads. is due to heating and air conditioning equipment that is over 30 years old.

Because of the dampness, mildew and the deterioration of plaster walls, it is recommended that the mansion be closed for repairs before the new First Family actually takes That may not be bad news for either Mike or Mary Easley, both of whom have demurred when asked about their desire to move into the Executive Mansion. Mike Easley, the attorney general until his inauguration as governor on Jan. 6, was at a conference of attorneys general in Florida this week and could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for the transition, Cari Hepp, said Easley has been told of the need for renovations at the mansion, but has not received enough detail to set a move-in date. sure that the detailed information get on the renovation will factor into any decision that Easley and his family will make regarding their immediate living Hepp said.

Very little detail is available yet, Boggs said. The state Construction Office, in conjunction with private architects and engineers, is drawing up a timetable and budget for the renovation now, he said. Roughly $1 million already has been set aside for the project, but Boggs know whether that would cover the planned work. The mansion has not undergone major renovations since the days of Gov. Jim Holshouser a quarter-century ago.

not as though the building is falling down or anything like Boggs said. the last major repairs were in the early Boggs said the air-quality problems, most notable in the first living quarters, were documented in a study requested by Hunt and completed by the Department of Health and Human Services six months ago. forced-air ventilation system in the building had mold and mildew nastiness in said. Engineers were scheduled to take another walk through the mansion Friday to come up with a final to-do list. Among other tasks, they are looking at the possibility of getting the fireplace working again.

Staff writer Amy Gardner can be reached at 829-8902 or WILMINGTON County acts to speed dredging of inlet New Hanover County officials have voted to exempt the Mason Inlet dredging contract from a state law requiring at least three bidders for county contracts. The action taken this week means county taxpayers could end up paying more for dredging than they would under normal bidding, but county officials say the project wait. The county plans to relocate the inlet 3,000 feet north to help protect private property along the northern tip of Wrightsville Beach. Project estimates range from $4 million to $6 million. The inlet, which separates Figure Eight Island from Wrightsville Beach, has migrated to within 100 feet of the Shell Island resort.

The inlet was more than a half- mile from the resort when it opened in 1986. A ridge of sandbags and sand tubes is keeping the Atlantic Ocean from further eroding the northern end of the barrier island. The project been approved by the Army Corps of Engineers, but the county is hoping the corps can finish its review process and issue a permit for the project by mid-January. RALEIGH Woman is appointed chief district judge Joyce Hamilton, the first woman elected a district court judge in Wake County, has been named chief district court judge. Chief Justice Henry Frye of the state Supreme Court appointed Hamilton to her new post effective Friday.

Frye also appointed Mark Galloway as chief district court judge for District 9A, which includes Caswell and Person counties. Hamilton, who grew up in Duplin County and graduated from the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975, was the first female assistant district attorney in Wake County. She was appointed district court judge in 1986 and elected to the post later that year. Hamilton said she plans to look at family court pilot projects in other districts for ideas to initiate in Wake County. She also is involved in domestic-violence issues and hopes to strengthen support programs.

Galloway, a graduate of Wake Forest University law school, practiced law in Gastonia and Roxboro before being elected a district court judge in 1994. Galloway said he wants to work particularly with juvenile justice issues. CHARLOTTE Legislator sentenced for drunken driving State Rep. Pete Cunningham received a 60-day suspended sentence after pleading guilty to drunken driving. Cunningham paid $290 in fines and court fees and was ordered to perform 24 hours of community service.

Cunningham, 71, a Mecklenburg Democrat, was stopped by police just before midnight Jan. 25 near the Excelsior Club, a private club he owns. Police said he had run a traffic light and had a blood-alcohol content of 0.13. The legal limit is 0.08. FROMWIREREPORTS.