Elders’ Confirmation Hearing Delayed : Senate: Panel members want to review documents regarding a lawsuit filed against the surgeon general nominee.

Signaling potential trouble for yet another Clinton Administration nominee, a Senate committee postponed today’s scheduled confirmation hearing for Surgeon General-designate Dr. Joycelyn Elders so that it can review documents stemming from a lawsuit filed against her and other directors of an Arkansas bank.

The decision came at the end of a day in which the controversial Elders was questioned about accepting payment from her state job while earning a $550-a-day federal consulting fee, and in which her husband was forced to explain his failure to pay Social Security and other taxes for a nurse he employed to care for his ailing 97-year-old mother.

Earlier Thursday, White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers acknowledged that the White House counsel’s office was looking into the dual payments and the failure to pay Social Security taxes. But neither issue appeared to figure in the Labor Committee’s decision to delay the hearings until next Friday.

The White House and the Health and Human Services Department expressed optimism that the questions surrounding the lawsuit would be resolved and Elders would be confirmed by the Senate.

The delay, sought by Republicans on the Labor Committee, followed a week in which supporters and opponents clashed over her views on a variety of public health issues, most notably her stance favoring abortion rights and her advocacy of school-based health education for teen-agers, including the availability of condoms and other contraceptives.

The lawsuit in question was filed in 1992 by new owners of the National Bank of Little Rock, who had assumed control in a hostile takeover.

The suit alleged negligent mismanagement, lending and investment practices against Elders and other former directors and sought to recover $1.5 million in losses and bad loans that the plaintiffs said were made in violation of the National Banking Act.

It was settled out of court under terms that both sides agreed would remain confidential.

Curtis Bowman, an attorney for the former directors, said that he agreed to the out-of-court settlement--even though he believed that he could have mounted a strong defense--because a trial would have been expensive and time-consuming.

Several sources said such suits are common in the case of a hostile takeover, but the committee members needed time to review the documents to satisfy themselves that Elders’ actions were proper.

A senior White House official expressed optimism that the questions surrounding the nominee would quickly be resolved.

“We don’t see this as potentially serious. . . . This is not ‘another Lani Guinier case,’ the official said, referring to President Clinton’s eleventh-hour decision to withdraw Guinier’s nomination as head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division because of her controversial views on racial issues.

It was unclear precisely what effect the disclosures would have. Elders, a 59-year-old black pediatric endocrinologist who served as Arkansas health chief under Clinton, has the support of a wide array of health organizations. But she has inflamed conservative passions by favoring abortion rights and school-based health education.

Her opponents, who only scant days ago were conceding little likelihood of blocking her nomination, Thursday called the situation “less predictable.”

On the question of Elders’ pay, Myers said the White House counsel’s office is investigating her receipt of a $550-a-day consulting fee plus expenses from the federal government at the same time that she remained on Arkansas’ payroll as state health director.

Health and Human Services spokeswoman Avis LaVelle said that Elders began working as a consultant on a per diem basis two days a week in April, while she was on vacation from her state job. The job--and the vacation--became full-time a week ago.

“She had 60 days of vacation,” LaVelle said. “She hadn’t taken vacation in five years.”

State officials said there apparently was no prohibition barring Elders from working the second job as long as she was doing it on vacation time.

Another HHS official said that the practice was common.

As for the issue of Social Security and income taxes, Elders’ husband “is not up for the job and his 97-year-old mother is not up for confirmation,” HHS spokesman Victor Zonana said.

Elders’ husband said that “if they construe it any other way, that would be wrong.”