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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 1988)
Thursday, November 10,1988 The Battalion Page? redit ic passenger door i® jrd, which was pr-Continued from page 1) 1ENT: ient reported that she I length of time bad credit affects oral annoying tciiireditfiles. “A lot of students cannot afford to pay .•r student reportec-heir debts, and they don’t,” she said, cone and annoyiE ; ‘And that is so unfortunate because ■’re starting their lives as adults, and WHILE INTOXlOheir credit rating is going to stay with icer stopped a ver hen> for the next seven years, an “erratic mai®: Bt’s going to cause them to not be ill Street anddecifcible to buy a home. It’s going to cause >oked intoxicated. fy||i not to be able to buy a car. It will ITOXICATION: :ause them so many problems once they responding toaejrajuate from college. They’ll feel like t the Flying Tomaich®’re responsible and have good jobs, hat a Bryan manaiyutjthat won’t make any difference, be rated. sausc their past refiects irresponsibility.” ■onsumers have several options when ent reported that sktjUj®g to improve or dispute information the Cain Hall stud; jn their credit records, Morgan said. If ^^^^^^^^^■rror is reported on a credit history, ^ne Icredit bureau must reinvestigate the H within 30 days, Morgan said. robb ■ stort 8 inches tall and ids. She was wi na on her head, a rt and dirty bluejss: >e Station PoliceDs ime Stoppers nee; ify the person(sirt>: robbery. If you tot; it could be helpfii rrs at 775-TIPS, i call. Crime St® ju a special coded-; t your identity. If an arrest and gran; fter 30 days, if the company in ques tion has not responded, the information is ;'. tomatically deleted from that per son s file. However, if the company does respond after the 30 days, the infonna- tior is immediately re-entered into the credit report, Morgan said. ■Consumers also have the option to en ter into their files a 100-word statement explaining their side of the story if the creditor does not agree with the chal lenge. They also can confront the credit grantor with the allegation, Morgan said. “A consumer can go to the credit insti tution and say, ‘Hey, you’re causing me to not be able to get credit anywhere. What can I do to get you to take this off of my file,’ ” she said. “A credit grantor can then request payment in turn for hav ing the information deleted from the credit bureau file. That way, the bad debt will never show.” Morgan said that one of the most inef fective ways of trying to improve a credit record is to participate in a credit clinic plan. Credit clinics are companies that advertise that they will improve a per son’s credit for a fee. “They can’t do anything for you that you as a consumer can do free of char ge,” she said. “They cannot provide any service to you that is not already your right by federal law to do free of charge. “What they do is make you send them a copy of your credit report. Once you get the report, the credit clinic person is going to tell you to dispute everything on that report. Then they hold yours until they get hundreds of disputes from dif ferent consumers, and they package those disputes, and overload the credit bureau with them all at one time. “They overload us with disputes so there will be some that we cannot possi bly respond to within the 30 days re quired. So some of the disputes end up being deleted from the consumer’s file. What they fail to tell you is that when we do get to your report — and we will — it goes right back on your file.” Another option for people having problems with paying bills or improving credit is a credit counseling service. Al though A&M does not have a credit serv ice, the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Brazos County is a free serv ice that will help people with their bud get and debt problems, Neil Barnhill, fi nancial counselor for the service, said. Clients complete a worksheet that lists living expenses, income and debt, Barn hill said. The service then makes a bud get for that client by analyzing his debt and income. “We try to minimize their monthly payments and make a budget for them that will equal their monthly income,” he said. No “typical” person is predestined for credit trouble, Barnhill said. “There are lots of people who are over-extended due to no fault of their own,” he said. “Marital separation or di vorce, major medical expenses, loss of income and loss of job are all circum stances where people continue having living expenses and debt, but they don’t have enough money to cover it.” To help its clients, the service works with merchants and credit bureaus so they understand that the client is seeking help to repay debts. “Because we’re funded by the mer chants, we’re able to stop consumer har- rassment in some cases,” he said. “We’re able to reduce most monthly pay ments from anywhere from 15 to 25 per cent. That doesn’t mean they don’t have to repay debts, but that they have a longer period of time in which to pay.” Although the service cannot reduce payments on student loans, auto loans or home loans, it can reduce payments on other loans, and help clients budget the remainder of their income, Barnhill said. After a budget is made for a client, the counseling service sends payments to all of the client’s creditors. Benefits of completing the counseling service’s program are numerous, Barn hill said. Because the service reports only a 3 percent failure rate, most cred itors are willing to extend credit to peo ple after completion of the program, he said. “We can help consumers re-establish credit,” he said. “If someone comes on our program and has us make the monthly payments to the creditor, then after the program is over, we’ll get a copy of their credit file and go over it with them. “We’ll make sure that the creditors show that all their accounts are paid in full. We’ll put a notice in their file say ing that they completed our program sat isfactorily. When creditors see that nota tion in their file, the client will automatically become a good credit risk, because only about 3 percent of the peo ple in our program ever have a financial problem again. “We will also write letters to two of the creditors of their choice and ask if they will reopen the client’s account. We become a second credit history for these clients — we actually become a credit reference for them.” Although it has been in operation for less than four months, the service has 380 clients in Brazos County, Barnhill said. The average client is 31 years old, married and has two dependents, he said. Many A&M students, faculty and staff members also have participated in the program. “One thing all clients have in common is a sincere desire to repay their debts,” Barnhill said. “They do not want to de clare bankruptcy to get out of debt trou ble. They simply don’t have enough in come to pay off debts, and so they come in to see if we can help them. “In school, there are very few courses available to teach financial planning. And unless that person is fortunate enough to have that taught at home, usually they don’t know how to do it. So what we try to do is educate them so that they can balance their budget and know that what money is coming in is going to equal what money is going out.” Several problems indicate impending financial trouble, Barnhill said. “When people are having problems meeting their monthly payments each month, and they can’t even make the minimum payment, that’s when they’re starting to have problems,” he said. “When they start considering taking out consolidation loans, we need to talk to them. They should certainly come to see us before they consider bankruptcy. “Almost one-half of the people who declare bankruptcy could have paid off their bills in three years if they would’ve come to us. There is a stigma associated with bankruptcies so that creditors don’t really want to have anything to do with you if you’ve declared bankruptcy. And you don’t really learn anything from doing it that way either. “When you go through our program, you learn how to budget your money and how to plan. They don’t ever want to get in a bad financial situation again, so they’ve learned a good lesson.” Announcement to be made today on ‘supercollider’ WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas will learn Thursday whether a $1.1 billion bond package approved by Lone Star voters will pay off and bring the “super collider” and its thousands of scientific jobs to a site in Waxahachie. The Energy Department said late Wednesday that Secretary John Her rington would announce the decision at a Thursday morning news confer ence on where the giant nuclear parti cle accelerator will tentatively be built. Texas and six other states are in the final running for the $4.4 billion atom smasher. Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, made a final pitch for Texas’ proposal in a phone call to the department Wednes day afternoon. Rock or Rockelle Ac r/jT7 Z: COLLEGE STATION. TEXAS 77S4C Time Stoppers wi ; 1 .(XX). Crime Sira i for information o:; or the location ol| ve. exans split tickets; vote for Bush, Bentsen ALLAS (AP) — More Texans voted etum Lloyd Bentsen to the U.S. Sen- ’ ■ than voted to send George Bush to White House, but voters didn’t limit ^ JjBir ticket splitting to the top of the bal- 'I he GOP gained two seats in the • Texas Supreme Court and two in the •m 4"|* State Senate. Democrats picked up two | seats in the Texas congressional dele- gation and held three on the Supreme Court. the Comptrollero!i “ The P 60 ^ have s P oken >” Bush told Supporters Tuesday night. e comptroller wilt But tke chorus heard in Texas DepartmentthitB inds a sIi 8 ht shift awa y from the pped state’s Democratic history. Internal Revenue bi transactions resu]it;.tJF orn Phillips, the Republican elected „ Bief justice of the Texas Supreme ds said if the bankt: P° lirt ’ said the court may not have ential liability ei;.^ cked (wo-party status, but, “If it was delayed taking one and a half, now it’s at least one and pBe-quarters. ’ ’ judge had notedfe;P ut Bush ’s convincing win over Dem- as not before the K 0crat M ' c 'hael Dukakis was tempered by id merely inherits: Be " lsen s even rnore resounding defeat the merger °^‘ s Senate race opponent, U.S. Rep. |pau Boulter, R-Amarillo. BfWith 99 percent of the Texas vote itfixiiited Wednesday, Bush had 56 per- 1 |cent to 44 percent for Dukakis. Bentsen |1 f \ I (ills beating U.S. Rep. Beau Boulter, R- 'J^'^^'Ahiarillo, by a 20 percent margin. fYlOl A Bentsen aide described the Election UX llldlDay outcome as bittersweet for the 67- ™ar-old senator, who Dukakis tapped as his running mate in hopes he’d help cap- llizabeth Cantu tor ^ Tex as’ 29 electoral votes. was found shot to §“0° the one hand, there’s gratitude to hd he had beensk the people of Texas. On the other hand, ;h only one wotthere’s not,” Jack DeVore, Bentsen’s tal. Ptog-time press aide, said. ^Democrats increased their presence in the 29-member Texas congressional del egation from 17 to 19, with Democrat Greg Laughlin ousting incumbent Mac Sweeney in a District 14 rematch. Swee ney beat Laughlin, a West Columbia at torney, in 1984. Laughlin said his unsuccessful run at Sweeney taught him to be better orga nized, and aid from the national Demo cratic organization also helped. “People knew me better and I worked at getting better known in the district and listening and meeting people,” Laughlin said. The Democrats also picked up the seat vacated by Boulter. Former state Sen. Bill Sarpalius defeated Larry Milner for the District 13 seat, a primarily rural dis trict in the Panhandle. House Speaker Jim Wright, a Demo crat, was not opposed. Republicans will have eight represen tatives, after losing Sweeney’s and Boulter’s seats. The GOP also lost a seat in the state House, but gained two in the Senate. “I think we made enormous progress in the Texas Senate,” said Gov. Bill Clements. “I think you’ll be surprised what will happen in the Texas Senate. I can see the winds blowing a change in that direction.” Races for the state’s high court were marked by a battle over how much cam paign money judicial candidates should accept. Phillips set a $5,000 limit on campaign contributions and criticized his Democratic opponent, Ted Robertson, for not doing the same. The composition of the Texas Rail road Commission was not changed by the election. Republican Kent Hance, appointed by Clements to fill a vacancy created by Mack Wallace’s resignation, was elected to serve the remaining two years of that term. In the process, Hance became the first GOP candidate this century to be elected to the commission, his first statewide race. Voters also re-elected Democrat Jim Nugent to a six-year term on the com mission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. The state board of education retained the Democratic edge given it four years ago by then-Gov. Mark White. As part of the 1984 education reform measure, the 15-member board became an ap pointed body until voters decided last year they wanted to resume the election system. On Tuesday Texans re-elected four board members, including three Demo crats. The only incumbent to lose, Paul Dunn of District 15, was unseated by the GOP’s Monte Hasie, who charged dur ing the campaign that Dunn failed to keep residents of their Panhandle district informed of the board’s work. Texans also overwhelmingly approved three constitutional amendments, one to ensure that federal highway fund re imbursements to Texas are spent on highway projects, another to establish a “rainy day fund” and the third to en courage greater investment flexibility in the state’s pension and education funds. Bentsen’s coattails help state Democrats AUSTIN (AP) — Republicans said Wednesday they should have done better on state legislative races, but were happy to gain some ground on Democrats. Meanwhile, Democrats said the GOP’s failure to take significant strides in the state House and Senate races will hurt Republicans in the crucial 1990 leg islative races. In the Legislature, Republicans cap tured two more Senate seats by defeating an incumbent Democrat in East Texas, and winning an open seat in the Panhan dle that was previously held by a Demo crat. The wins reduced the Democrats edge in the Senate from 25 to 6 to 23 to 8. In the 150-member House, Republi cans made a net gain of one. Democrats now hold 93 House seats to 57 for the GOP. Fred Meyer, chairman of the state Re publican Party, said he wasn’t satisfied with the outcome in the House. “That’s only a fair performance,” he said. Earlier, Meyer predicted the GOP would gain five to 15 House seats and possibly three Senate seats to put the party in position to mount an attack in 1990 for control of one of the chambers. Lawmakers elected in 1990 will re-draw legislative district maps in the once-a-de- cade struggle. Meyer said six races in East Texas were within reach of Republicans, but Lloyd Bentsen’s coattails were longer than those of President-elect George Bush. Bentsen was on the ballot twice, both for re-election to the Senate and as Dem ocratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis’ running mate. Both Dukakis and Bentsen spent a lot of time cam paigning in East Texas. “I don’t think there’s any question that Bentsen was good for the six House seats (in East Texas)”, Meyer said. But Gov. Bill Clements, a Republi can, disagreed. He said Bentsen was not a factor in East Texas. “I think we made enormous progress in the Texas Senate. I think you’ll be surprised what will hap pen in the Texas Senate. I can see the winds blowing a change in that direc tion.” Clements said the GOP was in good shapefor 1990, saying next year’s legis lative session “will separate the men from the boys. ’ ’ Republican Bill Ratliff defeated in cumbent Democrat Richard Anderson in state Senate District 1 in East Texas, 51 percent to 49 percent. Another GOP Senate gain came in the seat that had been held by Democrat Bill Sarpalius, who stepped down for a suc cessful run for Congress. Republican Teel Bivins defeated Mel Phillips 61.2 percent to 38.8 percent in the Panhandle state Senate campaign. One of the biggest surprises was the narrow defeat of eight-term state Rep. Ed Watson, D-Deer Park. Watson lost his southeast Harris County district to Republican Mike Jack- son, president of a La Porte construction company, by just 17 votes out of nearly 26,000 cast. Although 15 Senate seats were up for grabs. Republicans and Democrats squared off in only seven races. Incum bents dominated the remaining contests. Sens. Ted Lyon, D-Mesquite; Gon- zalo Barrientos, D-Austin; Robert “Bob” Glasgow, D-Stephenville; and Cyndi Taylor Krier, R-San Antonio, all won re-election. Steve Carriker, D- Roby, also won re-election to a seat he won earlier this year in a special election when Sen. Ray Farabee, D-Wichita Falls, resigned to work for the University of Texas. Bill Haley, D-Center, will also be a newcomer to the senate. The former House member easily defeated a Liberta rian. In the House, 59 races were contested between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats defeated two Republican incumbents and won one open seat that had been in Republican hands, for a gain of three. But Republicans unseated one Demo crat and took three open seats previously held by Democrats, for a gain of four. After counting their losses, the GOP gained one seat in the House. iths later, Webb >«; ic fled the scene d' jn said. nbbcry, Webbdisplt | .357-caliber k\ ;sts proved to be in inded Cantu, tbett antu’s testimony! der weapon in (M >cfore the shoot®! | also said, “Moreoi les a motive forifA ke an interest in dib i (because he tW! ’; ntify Webb), between 1 ebb) was giving ' V t* A. At New breed of Eagle found in Texas. .v.V: ' ••’•V .■ .. ; C-. r.'Y "o' VV . iifelu M i u >re the election / a Potter Count) sdemeanor chargs icceptance of caH vful expenditure i' : tch charge is 0 fine and a yean- ney Bill Bauman: te case, said thei‘ s from accusatie: igned the name )y Anderson Kirb the dispute is ally, , t has been escabj g his stepmothet- Cliver elected b of his deceasedi: you a view of America's ever-changing scenery like Amtrak. call your travel agent or call Amtrak at 1-800-USA-RAIL Eagle service. It's the best way to spot an Eagle between Chicago and Houston. *$1 Return Fare, introductory offer valid for travel through February 28, 1989. **Seats are limited. Children 2-11 travel half fare Fares good for travel prior to 5/26/89. Some restrictions may apply Starting November 15, Amtrak's Texas Eagle service can take you from Chicago straight through to Houston without changing trains. f’^J And we can take you there for a great fare. On board you'll find wide reclining seats so you can stretch out and relax. Spacious aisles so you'll have lots of room to walk around. A wide assortment of snacks, beverages and full-course meals. Even private sleeping accom CSS modations are available. And, of course, no one can show For more information Amtrak's new Texas ALU&= ABOARD AMTRAK The Battalion 845-2611 "alFEEs"
