Rhode Island Budget Hinges on Health Care

A TOP aide to Rhode Island Gov. Bruce Sundlun (D) said the governor may veto the entire state budget for fiscal 1994 if lawmakers scrap his health-care initiative called RIght Track.

The program, which would pay medical bills of pregnant women and children under age 6 in uninsured families over the poverty line who do not qualify for Medicaid, carries a estimated price tag of $3.2 million if begun Jan. 3, as Mr. Sundlun wants.

House and Senate leaders have proposed delaying RIght Track's start until July 1, 1995, the beginning of the next financial year, and diverting the $3.2 million to other programs. But Director of Administration Harry Baird said a delay could cost the state a chance to qualify for up to $2 million annually in private grants that hinge on the state improving delivery of children's services. It's official - the Times buys the Globe

The Boston Globe is shifting hands. And in the days following, scions of the family that owned the newspaper for 121 years - and another that edited the Globe for decades - are confessing to mixed feelings about its sale to the New York Times.

"I've always felt terribly seeing the independent voice being snuffed out," said Tom Winship, who, like his father before him, was the Globe's top editor. "But, sadly, we all lost that voice about 25 years ago, not just in the newspaper business, but in all of industry."

Officials of both the Times and the Globe said that readers would see little change as a result of the $1.1 billion sale that was announced officially on Friday. Three members of the Taylor family will remain in control of day-to-day operations for at least the next five years.

Publisher William Taylor, grandson of founder Charles Taylor, speculated that his grandfather would have approved.

But Mr. Winship, who was editor of the Globe from 1965 until 1985 and is now director of the Center for Foreign Journalists, said his father, L. L. Winship, would have had a mixed reaction.

"When it's locally owned, the community relates to real live faces who happen to be inhabitants, and vice versa," he said. "It's a very personal relationship. The Globe never was a national newspaper, and I hope it never becomes one." Commencement commentary

American businesses must welcome women and minorities into leadership roles to better reflect the growing diversity of the work force, former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole told Radcliffe College graduates Friday.

"Too often, we women allow ourselves to be intimidated into denying our instincts, whether it's a judgment of people, situations or the heart of a policy question," said Mrs. Dole, now president of the American Red Cross.

About 500 Radcliffe alumnae gave Dole a standing ovation. She received the Alumnae Association Medal as part of Harvard commencement week activities. She graduated from Radcliffe in 1960 and Harvard Law School in 1965.

Nearby in Amherst, Mass., former independent presidential candidate Ross Perot Saturday told University of Massachusetts at Amherst students that lobbyists should be given a bus ticket to Mexico and forced to work for 58 an hour.

"Your vote is more important than the lobbyists' money," Mr. Perot said. He opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement, which would all but eliminate trade barriers with Mexico. Perot has said the treaty will lead to more United States manufacturing jobs moving south of the border because of lower wages and looser government regulations.

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