Nation in brief: Civil rights chief leaving Justice

The head of the Justice Department’s embattled Civil Rights Division is to resign at the end of August, officials said Thursday, making him the latest in a series of senior political appointees to leave the agency amid continued controversy over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Wan J. Kim, the assistant attorney general for civil rights since November 2005, has been closely questioned by congressional Democrats about the administration’s policy decisions and allegations by former career officials of improper hiring within the division, mostly under his predecessor.

Kim is set to join nearly a dozen other senior Justice Department officials and aides who have resigned this year. The departures come as Gonzales fends off calls from lawmakers for his resignation over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year and congressional testimony that lawmakers have called misleading.

Washington

Deficit will be lower than last year’s

The federal deficit for 2007 will be lower than it was last year, but the budget outlook over the long term remains “daunting” because of growing health care costs, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.

The deficit for the budget year that ends Sept. 30 will be about $158 billion, or $90 billion less than the deficit recorded for 2006, the nonpartisan agency reported. The revised figure is about $19 billion below the deficit that the office projected on March 1 for the current budget year.

Higher-than-expected tax revenues are the main reason for the improved numbers, the office said.

“The long-term fiscal outlook continues to depend primarily on the future course of health care costs,” according to the update.

Peter Orszag, the office’s director, said the nation continues to put itself at financial risk by allowing government health care costs to outstrip people’s income, year after year.

“We are on an unsustainable fiscal path,” Orszag told reporters, mainly because of steady rises in the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. The two programs now consume 4.6 percent of the economy, he said, and that will rise to 5.9 percent by 2017 under current projections.

Las Vegas

City can’t prevent feeding of homeless

A federal judge permanently barred the city from preventing people from feeding the homeless in parks, but he upheld some other park restrictions that critics targeted as equally unfair.

The ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Jones allows the city to continue to enforce other laws, including trespassing laws, permit requirements for park gatherings of more than 25 people and the right to designate certain park areas for children’s use only.

The ruling is the latest development in a 14-month-old federal court battle between the city and civil liberties and homeless advocates.

Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said he plans to appeal.

Homeless advocate Gail Sacco, a plaintiff in the case who frequently hands out food and water in parks, said she is glad the ordinance prohibiting that was permanently blocked. But she is concerned about the law requiring permits for large gatherings because it’s hard to predict how many people will show up when she is at a park.

“We aren’t doing this to be arrogant,” Sacco said. “We go where people are hungry. The food is a way to build a sense of community.”