Tuesday, November 1,1988
The Battalion
Page 7
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Brooks County will tally
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FALFURRIAS (AP) — Texas’ small
est county is following the trend of other
small counties nationwide with the intro
duction of an electronic voting system.
For the first time ever, Brooks County
will tally votes from the Nov. 8 general
election with an optical scanning system,
one of the latest electronic tabulation
systems available.
Demelza Rodriguez, a vote counter
from Falfurrias, the county seat, said,
"It’s about time. It was the stone age
down here.”
Brooks County is an impoverished
South Texas farm county with 6,000 reg
istered voters. As recently as the Super
Tuesday primaries in March, voters had
to wait until Friday to see which candi
dates they supported.
The county used precinct “callers,”
who unfold paper ballots one by one and
call out names to be recorded in ledgers
by “talliers.”
Instead, there will be a central count
ing station at the courthouse.
Four assistant tabulators will feed pa
per ballots into the tabulating machines
and push a button to get a printout of the
tallies.
It will all cost a little more than $4,000
to lease the four digital vote tabulators
from Dallas-based Business Records
Corp. County officials say they may try
to raise funds to buy the machines — for
slightly more than $21,000 — after the
election, if the system proves faster.
Business Records Corp., the largest
national distributor of electronic voting
equipment, has recorded increases of 10
percent to 15 percent annually in its cus
tomer base for the past decade.
Penelope Bonsall, director of the Na
tional Clearinghouse on Election Admin
istration, which is part of the Federal
Election Commission, said “There’s
been a fairly r^pid conversion of small
Legislator calls
for resignation
DALLAS (AP) — A state legislator
has called for the resignation of Insur
ance Commissioner Doyce Lee in the
wake of a report that National County
Mutual Fire Insurance Co. was sinking
for years but was placed under supervi
sion only two weeks ago.
State Rep. Eddie Cavazos, D-Corpus
Christi, who heads the budget and over
sight panel of the Flouse Committee on
Insurance, said, “The insurance com
missioner is hurting not only the con
sumer but the industry by letting all these
things happen.”
National County Mutual collapsed un
der a deficit of more than $50 million
and on Oct. 24 was declared insolvent,
making it one of the biggest insurance
failures in Texas history. National
County Mutual has 125,000 policyhold
ers, and the cost of their claims is likely
to be passed on to taxpayers and other in
surance companies in Texas.
Memorandums written by senior staff
ers at the State Board of Insurance and
obtained by the Dallas Morning News in
dicate the company had been flounder
ing, the newspaper reported in its Mon
day editions. Some of the memos urged
top officials of the insurance department
to take control of the company.
Cavazos said the problems within the
agency are so severe that it could be dan
gerous if it is not addressed immediately,
He added that he intends to hold a hear
ing on National County Mutual’s de
mise.
"We’re going to find out what the hell
happened,” Cavazos said.
Lee has defended the insurance de
partment’s action’s regarding National
County Mutual. He has said that the de
partment tried but failed to find another
company to pump cash into the firm.
One memo, written last month by
Deputy Commissioner Lee Powell and
addressed to his superiors, stated that
National County Mutual’s “financial
and operational deficiencies have been
documented for several years.” Powell
declined to comment, saying such
memos are private by law.
Dire warnings on National County
Mutual’s condition were outlined in a
confidential report prepared in Septem
ber 1987 by senior attorneys within the
department’s legal services.
The report said “there is sufficient
reason to believe that the company is
threatened with insolvency” and that an
appropriate remedy would be to place the
company under supervision.
Other concerns were mentioned in the
report:
• National County Mutual had en
gaged in “fraudulent business prac
tices,” had unfairly handled policyhold
ers’ claims and was “a threat to the
public interest,” the report said. Among
the offenses alleged in the report was the
company failed to issue refunds to cus
tomers who canceled their policies.
• The company had removed from
the state “books, papers, accounts or re
cords necessary” for a financial exami
nation.
The report was requested by Bogdan
Rentea, who was director of the depart
ment’s legal services division.
Rentea, now a lawyer in private prac
tice, said that he became particularly
concerned about National County Mu
tual in late 1986 and early 1987.
He said he held a meeting during that
period with other senior managers in the
insurance department, and “Everybody
was in agreement that this company was
out of control and something had to be
done.”
Rentea said he could not confirm
whether he had ever formally recom
mended action against National County
Mutual because it is privileged informa
tion.
Frustration within the insurance com
pany continued to grow this year while
top officials delayed taking control of the
company, according to memos.
“I continue to be gravely concerned
about the bad precedent we are setting by
taking ‘no action’ regarding the financial
condition of National County,” began a
memo written in July by Ron Sheaffer,
the department’s supervising fire and
casualty analyst. Sheaffer’s memo rec
ommended that the company be placed
in receivership.
Sheaffer said he could not comment
on the memo.
A three-member board of gubernato
rial appointees oversees the insurance
department. Edwin J. Smith, the chair
man of the board, said Sunday that the
board “wants to know, more than any
one, what happened in the case of Na
tional County Mutual and the manner in
which it was handled. ”
Experts try pitting bug
against bug to end pests
SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) — A
Mexican mite is being tested against the
Colorado potato beetle that also dev
astates tomatoes and eggplants. A
Chinese wasp may stop a butterfly that
eats broccoli, cabbage and Brussels
sprouts.
Humans increasingly have allies in the
enemy camp in the war on insects.
Biological controls like these and oth
ers using insects against problem plants
have been used commercially for more
than 100 years, racking up hundreds of
successes. In the last 10 years, though,
interest has grown.
Last year, for example, the federal
government spent more than $85 million
on nearly 800 biological control projects,
four times the number in existence a de
cade ago, said Jim Cate of the U.S. Agri
culture Department.
“We are now just getting back into an
era where entomologists are realizing
you can’t solve the problem with pesti
cides alone,” said Robert Metcalf, who
has worked more than 50 years on pest
controls. “For a long time there were ad
vocates of the sole use of each one. Now
I think you’ll find almost everybody
agrees you need a little of each.”
“There are many different crop pests
that have been serious and are not serious
because they have been able to find bi
ological controls,” said Patrick Logan, a
University of Rhode Island entomologist
working on potato beetles.
The mites live on adult beetles and
suck fluid from them. Up to 2,000 can
infest each beetle. They can shorten the
beetles’ lifespans up to 50 percent, re
ducing the number of eggs laid, and they
hinder the beetles’ flying ability, reduc
ing migration, Logan said.
University of Massachusetts research
ers are studying a wasp from northwest
China, Apanteles rubecula, which inserts
its tiny needle into a cabbage butterfly
larva and lays eggs. The wasp larvae eat
the pest.
Most insects became pests after their
natural environments were upset, letting
them run rampant. Others were acciden
tally imported on vegetables and plants
to areas where they had no natural preda-.
tors.
Biological controls seek to restore na-~
ture’s balance.
“It’s a totally natural way to regulate
(pest) populations,” said Metcalf, 72, a
professor at the University of Illinois in
Urbana and a member of the National
Academy of Science. “It doesn’t pol
lute, it doesn’t cost anything if it works,
it’s self-regulating and self-correcting.”
Still, biological controls aren’t always
successful, and can be virtually ineffec
tive, as with the gypsy moth, which es
caped in 1882. From 1905 to 1911, re
searchers brought 2 million species of its
natural enemies from Europe. But the ef
fort failed because in Europe there are a
large number of natural enemies, each of
which controls a small number of the
moths, Logan said.
counties to optical scan in the last three
or four years.”
During that time, it merged with seve
ral other companies, said Tom Esch-
berger, a regional vice president.
This year, revenues of $45 million are
expected.
Generally, experts say, the moderate
price of many optical scan systems has
made them attractive to smaller voting
jurisdictions.
Besides the optical scan, other electro
nic tallying methods include punchcard
and direct recording electronic, in which
votes are recorded directly into a com
puter.
In Texas, approximately 80 of the
state’s 254 counties now use electronic
voting systems, according to Sharon
Hanko of the secretary of state’s office.
In Brooks County, no one is sure how
long the counting will take this time
since write-ins and incorrectly marked
ballots will have to be hand-counted.
Evelyn Solomon, who said she has
been a precinct judge for at least 10
years, worried that the new ballots would
be difficult for voters to use.
“This ballot’s going to confuse every
one,” she said. “At first my husband
just said, ‘I’m not going to vote,’ when
he saw it.”
Sears sells
tallest facility
to up earnings
CHICAGO (AP) — Sears, Roebuck
and Co. said Monday it is selling the
world’s tallest building and revamping
its merchandising approach in a sweep
ing bid to strengthen the lackluster earn
ings record of the nation’s largest re
tailer.
Sears also said it would buy back up to
10 percent of its stock, divest its Cold-
well Banker commercial real estate sub
sidiary and take $425 million in after-tax
fourth-quarter charges.
Edward Brennan, chairman and chief
executive officer of the 102-year-old
Chicago-based company, stressed the re
structuring plan is designed to enhance
Sears’ value to shareholders immediately
and at the same time concentrate its re
sources over the longer term on con
sumer-oriented businesses — retailing,
insurance, real estate and financial serv
ices.
He conceded, however, that the tim
ing of the announcement may have been
affected by the recent wave of takeover
activity,
Brennan declined to say how much
Sears hoped to get for its landmark Sears
Tower, which rises 110 stories — 1,450
feet — in the downtown Loop business
district. It was built in 1974 and has been
valued at $1.8 billion.
Sears’ share of the retail market has
eroded steadily despite attempts to up
date the company’s image.
The company has test-marketed stores
devoted to a single product area, such as
apparel or appliances, and offering a
wide range of national brands. It also is
scrapping frequent sales in favor of “ev
eryday low pricing. ’ ’
Sears had been expected to take some
action to improve the value of its stock
after announcing last week that third-
quarter profits fell 16 percent — the third
consecutive period Sears’ income has de
clined.
HOW DOES THE .
WORLD PERCEIVE THE
STATES? ^Oyy
TUESDAY
NOVEMBER 1
FEATURING
RICHARD CARLSON
THE DIRECTOR OF
VOICE OF fiMERICA
7:30 p.m.
MSC
RM 224
of
MSC
Political
Forum
Election '88 Series:
presents
ELECTION AWARENESS DAY
19»«
Come get information about the candidates and
vote in our mock election.
Wednesday, November 2
10-4 p.m.
MSC Hallway
This program is presented for educational purposes, and does not constitute an
endorsement for any candidate.
Carc/fovascu/ar Hea/tfj
Profi/es
Electrocardiogram: resting and exercise
Graded Exercise Test: treadmill or bike
Body Composition: hydrostatic and skinfolds i
Strength and Flexibility measures —
Pulmonary Function measures
Fitness Profile and Exercise Prescriptions FIT
Private Consultations m—m
S'—j
//7/zz November
REDUCED PR ZCES FOR
TAMU FACULTY. STAFF. AND STUDENTS C
App//edExerc/se Sc/ence Laboratory
Dept, of Health andPhys/caf Education
Texas A <S M Un/i/ers/ty
CALL 845 - 3997
FOR MORE INFORMATION
AND AN APPOINTMENT
~p7us:
exercise classes in:
aerobics — all levels
water aerobics
circuit training
s/on up now//
Of the 127 species introduced against
the moth, only eight have survived.
“It’s not like some of the other pests
where we’ve been able to to find a single
natural enemy that regulates it,” Logan
said.
One of 225 successful uses of biologi
cal controls was against the Cottony
Cushiony Scale, which almost wiped out
the California citrus industry after it was
inadvertently brought to the United
States in the 1880s, said Cate.
An Agriculture Department entomo
logist brought the Vendalia beetle, a type
of ladybug and a natural enemy of the
scale, from Australia, said Metcalf. That
worked until after World War II, when
DDT killed off the beetle.
In fact, many pests became a problem
when pesticides killed their natural ene
mies, Logan said. But pesticides can
also be ineffective because the harmful
insects develop a tolerance to the chemi
cals, and development can’t keep up.
The introduction of biological controls
also is slow. Despite the growth in the
number of projects over the past decade,
the level of federal funding has stayed
relatively stable when adjusted for infla
tion, Cates said.
Also, scientists face delays while they
work to show the government that their
controls are harmless to all but the pest.
VOTE
BY
ABSENTEE
BALLOT
Avoid the lines on Nov. 8. It’s
quick and it’s easy so absentee
vote now at the following loca
tions:
• The College Station Community Center
1300 Jersey St.
across from TAMU campus
• The Brazos County Courthouse
on Texas Avenue in Bryan
between 26th and 25th streets
Open Sam to 5pm
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