Staffs

This weekend will be a moving experience for the New Jersey Legislature. With their quarters nearly completed, lawmakers and their partisan staffs are starting to set up shop in the new legislative wing of the Statehouse, renovated to the tune of $90 million, including an addition for the staffs. For the last five years they have been working out of the Statehouse Annex.

Remember the city budget deficit? It could be as high as $80 million this year. Remember the job freeze and the early retirement programs that were supposed to help reduce the red ink? Well, the freeze and early retirement programs are lowering employment levels in the Police, Fire and Streets departments, health centers, the parks and recreation programs. Elsewhere in city government - the mayor's office, anti-graffiti office, city solicitor's office, City Council - it's business as usual.

Knight Ridder, the company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, yesterday announced plans to cut staff at most of its 32 daily newspapers. Tony Ridder, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, said he felt "we have no choice" because advertising revenue was falling while the cost of newsprint was increasing. "There will be reductions at most newspapers," Ridder said in a statement. "The number will vary according to local market conditions.

Doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel throughout the country are becoming increasingly concerned that they might get AIDS from the blood of their patients. The signs of this concern are subtle, but they can be seen everywhere - especially on the maternity floors of inner-city hospitals. There, many of the patients are intravenous-drug users, and delivering babies is a bloody business. Consider a recent visit to the obstetrics service at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hospital, one of the busiest units in the city.

A worldwide effort to wring the fat out of U.S. military headquarters' staffs by eliminating several thousand troops and dozens of generals and admirals actually produced a few more members of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Two years ago, then-Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci ordered that 3,000 positions be cut, but when the military carried out that directive, three of the branches ended up with nine more positions than when they started, according to Pentagon documents recently released by Congress.

Last week, while members of Congress were spending the Independence Day holiday break taking soundings back home, there was no vacation for some of their staff employees. Those on the committees that had voted last month to send different versions of health legislation to the full House and Senate were working with leadership staff aides to prepare for the floor debate beginning later in July. It was - and is - a huge task. Four committees, two in the House and two in the Senate, cleared five different health-care measures - one of them preferring to approve two, rather than one. No two are identical and many have provisions that are flatly incompatible.

Dinner and drinks at Lorenzo's, a pricey Trenton watering hole that caters to lobbyists and government officials. Tickets to the Baltimore Orioles, the Mets and the Yankees. An expense-paid trip to a luxury Florida resort last October. Special interests, including hospitals, liquor companies, casinos and utilities, shelled out more than $117,000 last year to wine and dine lawmakers, their staffs and officials in the governor's office, according to a report released yesterday by New Jersey Common Cause.

Nurse manager Pat Fetterman was asked to do two jobs for the salary of one after Mercy Haverford Hospital scaled back its workforce this spring. She now supervises a staff of 65 instead of 15. Randall Williams was relieved when he recently landed work as an emergency-room medical clerk after having been laid off twice in the last nine months from two other hospital jobs. He celebrated by filling up his refrigerator. And Sucorea VanBrunt searched for a job for six months before realizing she probably would not find another one in a hospital.

WE DEFINITELY need term limits. Politicians get stale and feel like Tiger Woods - entitled to everything! And during a financial crisis like we are in now, we should be able to lay off City Council and their staffs. Council and their staffs should get minimum wage - they'll be working for the people, and with all the perks they get, they'll be just fine. Politicians argue that the salaries are needed to keep out corruption, but they get high salaries and are still corrupt. We need to stop voting for incumbents until they start serving us and not the special interests.

Dr. William F. Saponaro, 74, of Southampton in Bucks County, who recently retired as medical director from a senior care center and from the staffs of two area hospitals, died on Saturday at Temple University Hospital after an illness. Four weeks ago, Dr. Saponaro retired as the medical director of the Richboro Care Center in Bucks County. He also ended his private medical practice in Southampton after 43 years. A native of Dunmore, Lackawanna County, Dr. Saponaro was a 1942 graduate of Dunmore High School.

If the doomsday budget being floated by the nearly broke Philadelphia School District comes to pass, this is what school will look like in September: "No books, no paper, no clubs, no counselors, no librarian," Masterman teacher Elizabeth Taylor grimly told City Council last week. There would be bigger classes, but no aides to help manage them. Schools would lack sports, support staff to monitor lunchrooms and playgrounds, and secretaries. Some would lose security officers. Thousands of musical instruments would sit unplayed because there would be no music teachers to give lessons.

The state's best pitching staff has lots of live arms. There are a senior and a freshman. There are sophomores and juniors. There are lefties and righties. There are introverts and extroverts. There are crazed competitors and guys who are a little more laid-back. "They're all different," said Gloucester Catholic senior catcher Jon Theckston, the rock on which the Rams' remarkable pitching staff rests. Theckston said he always has been a catcher. He's a tough Gloucester kid whose defensive prowess and ability to work with a variety of pitchers have been a key to the Rams' success over the last two seasons.

State flags will fly at half-staff Thursday at all New Jersey government buildings after Gov. Christie issued an order to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings. The order was among Twitter messages regarding the marathon that the governor sent out this week. "Please pray for Boston," he wrote in a tweet on Monday. "Our thoughts are with the runners, their families and those affected by this horrific tragedy. " President Obama has ordered U.S. Flags to fly at half staff until Saturday.

Anthony Midget barely had gotten comfortable in his new assistant coach's office at Marshall when Penn State coach Bill O'Brien called him, invited him for an interview and then offered him a job on his staff.   So long, Marshall. Hello, Happy Valley.   "A week and a half later, I was at Penn State," Midget said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. "It was an opportunity to come to one of the storied college programs in the country and to be part of the staff here.

The Kansas City Chiefs hired former Vikings coach Brad Childress, reuniting him with Andy Reid. Childress, who spent last season as the offensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns, will be the Chiefs' spread game analyst and work on special projects. He spent five years as the Minnesota head coach (2006-10), a stint that included two division titles (2008-09). The team was 12-4 in 2009. Childress previously spent seven seasons, from 1999 to 2005, with the Eagles, where he worked with Reid.

The Washington Township Board of Education rejected a proposal to eliminate 2.5 teaching positions Wednesday as part of the broader introduction of its $143 million budget for the 2013-14 academic year. The board had proposed to cut physical education teaching positions and reduce gym class from five days a week to four to save $130,000. But it reversed course after a throng of teachers protested the measure at a budget meeting last week, arguing that reducing phys ed would adversely affect at-risk and struggling students who benefit from the close attention of teachers on that fifth day. To offset the costs of keeping the gym teachers on staff, the board eliminated proposed renovations for a performing arts center, among other things.

The Phillies went into the season two years ago with four aces and a sense that something special was about to happen. And they were right. The special wasn't quite as special as they had hoped, and they had no idea that Vance Worley, not Roy Oswalt, would be the fourth ace. Worley didn't even get to pose as one of the five aces when it was inexplicably decided that Joe Blanton should be the ace of something, too. Two years later, the...

SACRAMENTO - There were plenty of Sixers players and staff with long faces roaming around the locker room, and many NCAA Tournament brackets were in pieces on the floor, torn up in frustration by those who now have little shot of winning their pools. It was more personal than that, though, for some. Lavoy Allen and assistant coach Aaron McKie were both suffering through Temple's close loss to Indiana on Sunday, as was Temple alum and equipment manager Scott Rego. Usually boisterous Jeremy Pargo was silenced by the fact that his top-seeded Gonzaga Bulldogs were ousted on Saturday by Wichita State.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - The Phillies lately have employed a few pitchers who are master craftsmen, even artists. Aaron Cook isn't one of those. The veteran righthander is more of a handyman concerned with getting the job done rather than looking good doing it. "I pitch to contact," Cook said after throwing four workmanlike innings at Bright House Field on Sunday afternoon in his first start of spring training. "I work quick. I'm not going to be a high-strikeout guy. I'm going to work quick, throw [few]