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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 12, 1986)
TH1_ TexasA&M m m M * The Battalion emit: presui] ■Vol. 82 No. 192 USPS 045360 8 pages College Station, Texas Tuesday, August 12, 1986 1.1 billion cut from PSF, PDF to aid budget fundj iter, [J lalif. T to m ict to lenttol ithtel like it lias lid AUSTIN (AP) — The House Ap propriations Committee found $1.1 [illion to spackle into the state’s ail- ig budget Monday by voting to cut Inoney out of education funds long Viewed as inviolate. The money would come out of the Permanent School Fund and Perma- lent University Fund, which can be Invested but not spent, and would go |nto funds that can be spent on state migrants. Gov. Mark White quickly issued a eaver uestions probe release saying he does not like the plan. “Taking monies from the perma nent trust funds set aside for our children and their education would set a terrible precedent,” White said. “The plan represents a major depar ture from the far-sighted policies es tablished more than 100 years ago for the financing of public schools and universities in this state.” The governor urged lawmakers to look instead at his call for a tempo rary hike in the sales tax. The $1.1 billion represents the profit made on the funds’ securities transactions for the past five years. That money could replace an equal amount of general state revenue that is spent on education. Speaker Gib Lewis, who proposed the plan, said it all adds up to solving the state’s cash flow problem without raising taxes. Opponents, including university officials, say the permanent funds should not be touched, even in a budget crisis such as the current one. But Lewis said it’s ridiculous to talk about tax hikes when the two funds have more than enough money. “You let that money sit there be cause maybe 15 or 20 people are zealously guarding it,” he said, add ing that it reminded him of the fable about “the old king counting his coins and everyone was starving.” The $1.1 billion move, added to $600 million in cuts proposed by the appropriations committee, would eliminate the need for a tax bill dur ing the current special session, said Lewis, who opposed the tax hikes called for by White and Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby. The funds transfer drew some op position in the 29-member appro priations committee, but got 16 “aye” votes. Rep. Tom Uher, D-Bay City, was among the dissenters. “It concerns me that future legis latures faced with budget crises as we have here will perhaps want to dip further into these funds,” Uher said. “I believe these funds were es tablished by our forefathers for some very beneficial reasons and they’ve served our state well.” The funds are the backbone of the state’s higher education and public education systems. The prin cipal can’t be spent, but interest in- See PUF, page 6 WASHINGTON (AP) — Attor- Ineys for lobbyist Michael K. Deaver said Monday that a House panel Ishould refer any evidence of possi- ible perjury by him to a court-ap pointed independent counsel “for full and impartial investigation.” The lawyers made the request a [day before the House Energy and iCommerce investigations subcom- Imittee was expected to approve such | a referral on its own. In a letter to subcommittee chair- Iman John D. Dingell, D-Mich., Deaver’s attorneys said they sought the expanded investigation because I information from a subcommittee I staff report on possible perjury has I been leaked to the news media. Deaver, a close friend of President Reagan, left the White House in May 1985 to form a lobbying firm that j represents foreign and domestic cli ents before the U.S. government. Dingell’s subcommittee and Whit ney North Seymour Jr., the court- appointed independent counsel, are separately investigating whether Deaver violated conflict-of-interest laws. The statutes restrict, and in some cases ban, government officials from dealing with their former agencies on matters they handled while in office. “Because of the publicity which you have generated, we request that you refer your possible perjury charges to the Office of the Inde pendent Counsel for full and impar tial investigation,” attorneys Herbert J. Miller Jr. and Randall J. Turk said in a letter to Dingell. (5 Senate asked to avoid higher education cuts AUSTIN (AP) — College regent nominees and a faculty member pre sented a special budget plea Monday to a Senate committee, which also followed Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby’s rec ommendation in approving two new appointments to the Texas Water Development Board. A. Lavoy Moore, of Conroe, a re- f ent nominee at Stephen F. Austin late University at Nacogdoches, said SFA “is kind of under seige . . . we’re down to the muscle.” The nominations committee was told a proposed budget cut of 16 percent would slash 38-40 faculty positions at SFA, and regent nomi nee Richard Hile, Jasper, said, “I don’t think people want to make those kinds of cuts.” Shelby Carter, a retired business man who is now a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, told the committee, “I don’t think you should back off an inch on edu cation. Anybody who does that is making the most critical mistake that can be made.” Although the committee consid ers gubernatorial appointments and not appropriations, it often is a fo rum for suggestions on various pro posals before the Legislature. Carter, for example, is an appoin tee to the Texas World Trade Coun cil, but he promoted quality educa tion — with the help of the See Cuts, page 6 S. African court voids emergency detention policy That’s Dancin’ Photo by Tom Ownbey Tania Aizpuru of Mexico’s Ballet Folklorico dances outside the Blocker Building to raise funds for the Texas A&M Mexican Stu dents’ Association. The fundraiser will bring 20 dancers from Ballet Folklorico to A&M on September 16, Mexican Independence Day. Bush, White House staffers take drug-screening tests i WASHINGTON (AP) — Drug screening began in earnest at the White House on Monday, with Vice President George Bush and an un disclosed number of presidential aides taking part in the testing. “It is, and should be, confiden tial,” Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes told reporters. He refused to say how many aides volunteered or to speculate on the test results. “ . . . The objective is, if anybody has a problem, they should Man ordered to stand trial for murder BEVERLY HILLS, Calif (AP) —A gunman who took hostages in a Ro deo Drive jewelry store stabbed to death a security guard who had taunted him, one of the ex-captives testified Monday in tearfully re counting the bloody IS'/a-hour siege. Steven Livaditis was ordered to stand trial on three counts of mur der and 12 other felony charges af ter a preliminary hearing that in cluded the testimony of Carol I Lambert, one of two surviving hos tages. | Municipal Court Judge Charles D. Boags set arraignment for Friday in | Superior Court in Santa Monica. Livaditis, who has pleaded inno cent, is being held without bail. If convicted, he could be sentenced to | death. Lambert, 41, said Livaditis I seemed calm after he killed two peo ple inside the Van Cleef & Arpels I store June 23. straighten out the problem, give them help and put them back in the workplace drug-free. “Confidentiality, I think, is an im portant part of that.” President Reagan took the test on Saturday, before traveling to Be- thesda Naval Hospital for a urologi cal examination, and Bush took the test on Monday morning, said the vice president’s spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater. Last week, the White House, to dramatize Reagan’s new anti-drug abuse program, said all 78 of the president’s senior staff members would be asked to give urine samples on a voluntary basis. Speakes said Monday that he had taken the test, but refused to be drawn into questions about whether any of Reagan’s aides demurred. “Nobody’s come to me about civil liberties,” he said when asked whether anyone raised invasion-of- privacy questions. JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — A provincial court on Mon day struck down two provisions that permit detentions under the state of emergency imposed June 12, raising the possibility that thousands of peo ple could be freed. President P.W. Botha’s govern ment reserved the right to appeal the ruling, issued in Durban by a three-judge panel of the Natal prov ince supreme court. Anti-apartheid leaders said they feared the govern ment would try to negate the deci sion through executive action. The court challenge was filed on behalf of Solomon Tsenoli, publicity secretary in the Durban area for the United Democratic Front, the larg est coalition against the apartheid policy of race discrimination. Tsenoli, who was released after the court decision, was among thou sands of activists detained without charge under the emergency. Although the court order techni cally applies only to Tsenoli, his law yers said they would demand the re lease of all the estimated 500 detainees in Natal. Separate chal lenges must be filed in the other three pergency. The opposition Progressive Fed eral Party said Monday the total is at least 5,900 and could be as high as 12,000. Max Coleman, a leader of a monitoring group called Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, said its latest estimate was 8,000. Judges in the Natal court accepted arguments by Tsenoli’s lawyers that Botha exceeded his powers in two subsections of the emergency regu lations. One empowers any member of the security forces to detain anyone under the regulations if the deten tion is deemed “necessary to the maintenance of public order.” The other permits the law and order minister to extend the detention for the duration of the emergency. According to the court, the provi sions could be construed as meaning “every common criminal might be considered a threat to the safety of the public and liable as such to be de tained summarily for the duration of the state of emergency.” Coleman said he saw no reason why another panel of the Natal court would reverse the decision on ap peal, but added that the government might try to “neutralize” it through administrative action. Botha did so recently in amending emergency regulations that courts declared in valid. Dr. Nthatho Motlana, a commu nity leader in the Soweto black town ship outside Johannesburg, said the Natal case “illustrates how power- drunk the government is in thinking it can detain as it pleases without even observing the laws that it makes.” Brig. Chris Swart, Cape Town’s regional police commissioner, banned a United Democratic Front meeting scheduled for Wednesday, which anti-apartheid leaders Winnie Mandela and the Rev. Allan Boesak were to have spoken on the theme “The Right to Speak.” U.S. soldier may have defected WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Army private who went ab sent without leave from his post in West Germany last month may have defected to Cuba, the De fense Department said Monday. Responding to a report on Ra dio Havana, the Pentagon said it was investigating the possibility that the missing soldier, Pfc. Hugo Romeu, 31, of Glenview, Ill., “may indeed be the individ ual alluded to in the Cuban radio report.” Radio Havana, monitored in Miami, claimed Monday that a man it identified as Army Capt. Hugo Romeu Almeida had de fected to Cuba because of his ob jections to U.S. foreign policy to ward Central America. The Army subsequently said it had no record of an officer or en listed man of that name. “Further checking, however, has indicated the possibility that an individual with a similar name may indeed be the individual al luded to in the Cuban radio re port,” a Pentagon statement said. The statement stressed that the Pentagon was not prepared to say definitely that Romeu was the man cited by the Cuban reports. “Capt. Hugo Romeu Almeida, of Cuban origin, expressed his desire to abandon the United States Army because he disagrees with Washington’s policy toward Central America,” Prensa Latina quoted the official government newspaper Granma as saying. Soviets seek new summit Moscow arms talks start MOSCOW (AP) — U.S. and Soviet delegations opened a spe cial round of arms talks Monday with eight hours of discussions in a secluded mansion near Moscow. The Kremlin’s chief negotia tor, Viktor Karpov, said just be fore the talks began that the Sovi ets “would do anything” for a new summit, and he complained that the United States does not seem interested in arms control. Moscow has said it wants some assurance of progress toward an arms control accord before it schedules another summit. The U.S. Embassy spokesman in Moscow, Jaroslav Verner, later reported: “Mr. (Paul) Nitze (the chief U.S. delegate and President Reagan's arms control adviser) said that he and his team had eight hours of serious explora tory talks with Soviet experts to day and will continue the talks to morrow.” The special talks were sched uled to run two days and were getting low-key treatment from the Soviets. The English-language channel of Radio Moscow’s world service reported the Sunday arrival of the U.S. delegation for the talks, which were being held in a gov ernment guest house south of Moscow. But no mention of the meet ings was made in the Communist Party daily Pravda or the evening government paper Izvestia, the only national newspapers issued on Mondays. The Kremlin sent no one to the airport to meet the U.S. officials. Karpov, chief of the Soviet del egation to the Geneva arms talks 02and head of the new Foreign Ministry arms control desk, told an American TV reporter he would not provide any details on the confidential meeting. But he stressed the issue of nu clear testing, which has become a centerpiece of Soviet arms con- trol policy and a focus of Kremlin pronouncements on the possibil ity of holding a second summit this year between Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Rea gan. “We would do anything for that (an agreement on a sum mit),” Karpov insisted. “So it de pends on our partners.” Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to hold the meeting in the United States after their first summit in Geneva last November. But no date has been set. Karpov stressed the impor tance of negotiating a treaty ban on nuclear testing. The Soviet Union’s yearlong unilateral mor atorium on tests was due to ex pire last Wednesday, but the Kremlin hasn’t said whether it will continue. “A nuclear test ban is a prob lem that I think is very important to be solved,” Karpov said. “We are for that, so we are asking the Americans to join in non-testing.” Burger gives farewell, advice in ‘final report’ NEW YORK (AP) — Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said Monday that hostility toward the legal profession has grown in the last decade and if attorneys don’t regulate themselves, the government will. Delivering his farewell address be fore the American Bar Association, Burger said he wanted to focus on the future of the profession. “We acknowledge that the prac tice of law is a monopoly in the sense that only those licensed may lawfully practice,” he said. “But regulation of the practice of law, like that of medicine, and of some other professions, has been left largely to the professions — up to now,” Burger said. “Regulation from the outside has come about only when there was overstepping of the bounds, and the public interest required action which the profes sions themselves failed to take.” Burger, who is retiring from the Supreme Court after 17 years, called this his final report to the ABA, but said it was “by no means my final meeting of the association.” Burger did not address any of the controversial issues that have re cently come before the court in the text of his address, but instead fo cused on subjects he has discussed publicly before, such as his opposi tion to certain kinds of advertising by lawyers and contingency fees. Burger said that he was shocked by people who argue that because the U.S. Constitution permits adver tising by lawyers, it is ethically accep table. “Few things have done more se rious damage to the standing of the legal profession than the unseemly — indeed shocking — spectacle of open solicitation by a handful of law yers who dashed off to India to so licit clients after the tragic multiple disaster in Bhopal,” he said, refer ring to the chemical leak in the In dian city that killed 2,000 people. Burger also said that some attor neys had gone too far in their adver tising tactics. “Every member of this house and every person in this room knows the kind of advertising I am addressing,” he said.