And Time Off for Bad Behavior?

--John A. Zaccaro Jr.’s $1,500-a-month luxury apartment in Vermont wouldn’t be so unusual were it not for the fact that that is where he’s serving his four-month prison term for selling cocaine. His apartment, which is sanctioned by the state Corrections Department under its house arrest program, also comes with maid service, cable television and use of a nearby YMCA. Zaccaro, 24, is the son of Geraldine A. Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, and he was convicted last April of the drug charge while a student at Middlebury College in 1986. “We like to think of it as a cross between an apartment and a hotel, with the advantages of both,” a spokeswoman for the building’s owners was quoted as saying Sunday in the New York Daily News. John Perry of the Corrections Department said: “The department doesn’t provide the apartment. The prisoner does that. We are only concerned that it meets minimum standards--no drugs, no guns, no college kids hanging around.”

--Rep. Kenneth J. Gray (D-Ill.) is known for his fancy clothes and fancy cars. He’s also known for performing magic--as in amateur magician. And, at the end of this year, he will accomplish his ultimate trick: He will disappear. Which is to say that he will retire after 34 years in the House. He says he wants to be remembered as the Prince of Pork because of the billions of dollars worth of federal projects that he had brought to his constituents. But Gray, 63, is concerned about another sort of reputation. He is the man who brought Elizabeth Ray, the “I-can’t-type” secretary, to Washington. Her claim that she was on a House committee payroll only to provide sex led to the resignation in 1976 of the panel’s chairman, Rep. Wayne L. Hays (D-Ohio). “It’s a bum rap,” Gray says of allegations that he had a personal relationship with Ray. “I hired her in 1972, fired her in ’73 and she didn’t even meet Wayne Hays until 1976. . . . I’m no angel and don’t profess to be. People can say lots of things about me, and they do, but that’s one thing I was not guilty of.”

--Their quest to scale Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, may have ended in failure but former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, nevertheless were given top honors for a major achievement. They received certificates from Tanzanian officials for climbing one of Kilimanjaro’s major peaks, Gilman’s Point, which, at 18,647 feet high, is just short of Kilimanjaro’s 19,340-foot summit. The Carter family is on a private visit to East Africa.