Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 75, Greencastle, Putnam County, 4 December 1981 — Page 3
Legislator angered over phone rate hearings
Gov. Orr rejects demand that PSC chief be fired
INDIANAPOLIS - Despite the urgings of a Democratic legislator. Gov. Robert D. Orr says he has no plaps to fire the head of Indiana’s utility regulatory commission for conducting hearings on a controversial telephone rate proposal. Rep. Richard C. Bodine of Mishawaka wrote elected officials and citizens in the state, urging them to call Orr and ask him to dismiss Larry J. Wallace as chairman of the Public Ser-
Bell asking new round of long-distance rate hikes
WASHINGTON IAP) - Six months after the biggest telephone rate increase in history, the Bell System is seeking a new rate structure that would raise the cost of most interstate long-distance calls. The rate request, filed Thursday with the Federal Communications Commission by American Telephone & Telegraph Co., calls for a total annual increase in revenues of
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Farm bill: Senate conferees accept package, but House members may not
c. 1981 N.Y. Times WASHINGTON - Senate members of the farm bill conference committee accepted an administration-backed compromise Thursday but there was no certainty that House conlerees would do so when they consider the new proposal Monday. In an effort to break a monthlong deadlock over commodity support and subsidy legislation, House and Senate farm leaders met with Agriculture Secretary
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vice Commission. Bodine included the governor’s office telephone number in the letter. Bodine was angered because Wallace has scheduled hearings in January on whether to allow Indiana telephone companies to charge mini long-distance rates for local calls. This type of arrangement is known as “measured service.” “Larry Wallace should leave the task of justifying this rate increase system to the phone companies,” Bodine wrote.
$181.4 million most of it from business customers. Consumers would be assessed $34.1 million of the total, but the effect on individuals would vary widely. Depending on when and where the calls are places, consumers actually could reduce their interstate long-distance bills. AT&T’s request, which will not affect consumer rates for local or intrastate long-distance
$4 billion in new budget cuts may get nod
WASHINGTON (AP - Republican congressional leaders and Reagan administration officials are in tentative agreement on an additional $4 billion in domestic spending cuts to meet “the major challenges of the president” and avert another budget crisis. “I am very optimistic that we can fly this thing,” said House Republican leader Robert H. Michel of Illinois. President Reagan’s “final signoff” on the plan, to be included in a new emergency money bill to replace one that expires Dec. 15, was expected
John R. Block until late Wednesday night. The compromise proposals they worked out would retain many of the conference’s earlier agreements on support levels, but would trim $253 million off the minimum $11.3 billion the earlier conference suggestions would cost during the next four fiscal years. f Despite the backing of the compromise by their committee chairman, several House conferees said they
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“Their dollars, not public dollars, should be spent studying this system.” Asked his response, the governor said, “I have no intention of seeking the resignation of anybody from the Public Service Commission for engaging in a perfectly legitimate study,” Orr, who said he has measured service at his home in Evansville, said the proposal “sounds as if it’s another way of gouging the public, but it seems
calls, follows implementation of the largest telephone rate increase in history last summer. AT&T was allowed in June to raise regular interstate and private line rates by 16 percent and WATS rates by 10.5 percent. The phone company’s proposal stems from an FCC order that it equalize profit margins for each of its major services: regular interstate
today, said a congressional source who asked to remain anonymous. The source quoted White House budget director David A. Stockman as telling participants in a private Capitol Hill meeting Thursday night that the proposal “meets the major challenges of the president.” On Sept. 24, Reagan asked Congress for an additional $8.4 billion in domestic spending cuts board. He later indicated he was willing to accept half that amount, and White House spokesman David Gergen
would not accept it in its current form. The three sections of House and Senate farm bills that have caused the greatest disputes in the conference are the dairy, grain, and sugar price support programs. The latest compromise, which Deputy Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng said Thursday would be recommended to President Reagan, would remove the parity adjustment formula and continue
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to me that conducting research to find out how it will really affect the public is appropriate.” In 1980, Indiana Bell Telephone Co. asked the PSC to impose measured service rates for local calls. The charge for local calls would be based on the time of day they were placed, how long they lasted, the distance called and the number of local calls in a month. The PSC refused to allow Bell to switch to measured ser-
calling, business private lines and WATS service. The FCC has 90 days to either delay, reject or approve the rate changes. AT&T asked permission to implement the new rates March 3. Under the proposal, companies would pay 1.6 percent more for private long-distance services. Customers with tollfree WATS, or Wide Area Telecommunications Service,
repeated Thursday that “what the president has asked for is something that meets him approximately halfway.” Sources said the new proposal generally calls for across-the-board cuts of 4 percent in most domestic programs, including those singled out in Reagan’s September request. Government benefit programs such as food stamps and Medicare would be exempt, as would defense, the judiciary, law enforcement operations and veterans’ medical benefits. The issue of how much to spend on foreign aid is unresolved pending action next
milk price supports at the current $13.10 per hundred pounds through October first. Then they would rise to $13.25 in fiscal 1983, and on up to $14.00 and $14.60 in the following two fiscal years. The conferees had earlier agreed on a formula to continue them at $13.10 and then increase them to about $14.07 (70 percent of parity) in fiscal 1983. But the administration had warned this would have the potential of costing too much late next year.
vice at that time. Bodine said he participated in the South Bend hearing on Bell’s rate case and “at that hearing, Mr. Wallace displayed a clear bias in favor of the Bell rate increase and now, a year later, on Mr. Wallace’s initiative, the PSC has decided to do Bell’s research for it to justify creation of long distance rates for local telephone service.” At first, Wallace’s response
would face an across-the-board increase of 4.1 percent. AT&T said that as a result of the changes, the cost of a directdial interstate phone call would rise an average of 1.8 percent. Consumers would be offered a larger evening discount for direct-dial calls between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. stead of 35 percent and the cost of credit-card calls would fall.
week in the House on related legislation, the sources said. There was optimism that the plan would be adopted by the full House and Senate. The president’s acceptance would avert a confrontation like the one that occurred last month when Reagan vetoed a compromise spending measure, forcing a temporary shutdown of non-essential government services. Rep. Silvio O. Conte of Massachusetts, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Commiteee, was reported to be generally pleased with the proposal, in
Parity is the 1914-based index that attempts to equate farmers’ prices with their costs of operation. The grain sections of the new compromise would retain 1982 wheat price support loans at $3.55 per bushel and continue
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was, “I have no reaction to it.” But after reflecting on Bodine’s criticism, Wallace said, “The issue is whether the public wants us to be reactionary and just respond to things when they come before us in a rate case or whether we should take the initiative and try to investigate and learn as many facts as possible and develop some broad guidelines. Usually we get criticised for being reactive and not being sufficiently expert.”
Interstate phone calls of less than 55 miles in distance, however, would cost 11 percent to 21 percent more because of the change in mileage bands. AT&T spokesman Pic Wagner said the proposed changes would have little effect or would actually reduce the bills of consumers who use the phone network at night and dial their own calls.
part because it included $1.7 billion for low-income energy assistance and S4OO million more for social programs than the Senate approved in the stopgap bill that Reagan vetoed last month. That money presumably would make the plan attractive to some moderate or liberal Republicans, as well as some Democrats whose support will be needed. Sources said several Republicans already have had informal discussions with key House and Senate Democrats in an attempt to smooth the way for the plan.
the subsidy target price at $4.05. The target price would be raised about 5 percent in the following four fiscal years. The corn section would reduce the corn loan rate, which has the effect of placing a floor under free market prices.
December 4,1981, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic
CB signal skips 1,700 miles, saves four in mountains (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times CHICAGO Jake Schmoll, an auto repairman and avid CB operator from Freeport, 111., is accustomed to using his radio skills to provide emergency help to truck drivers traveling through the Midwest. But he never expected to use his citizen band radio to save the lives of four people stranded about 1,700 miles away in a mountain blizzard in California. Schmoll did just that on Monday, when he received a faint signal from Rick Van Fleet, a Californian who was trapped with his friends in a remote valley near Cerro Gordo Peak in the western part of the state. The group became stranded on Sunday while attempting to drive down the mountain in two four-wheel drive vehicles. They were slowed to a snail’s pace by 3-foot drifts, and after traveling only 15 miles in eight hours, they gave up. Van Fleet, 30, signaled for help Sunday evening but there was no response. The next morning, however, a freak radio signal permitted him to reach Schmoll, who spends five or six hours a day talking on his CB. “I and another neighbor were having a friendly chat and we heard a signal come in and it sounded important,” Schmoll said. At first, he thought it might be just another “crank call,” a common occurrence on CB channels, he said. “But then he said he was in desperate need of some help, that he was stranded in three feet of snow, out of gas, out of water and had no other source of help,” Schmoll said. The freak radio signal is known in CB lingo as a “skip,” Schmoll said, and refers to a signal that travels an exceptionally long distance after bouncing off the upper layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. After piecing together the location of the stranded campers, Schmoll phoned Van Fleet’s home in Sylmar, Calif., near Los Angeles, and spoke to his wife, who is expecting a baby within the next two weeks. With the help of the Civil Air Patrol, which sent out a plane to locate the group, and a U.S. Navy helicopter, Van Fleet and his friends were lifted out of the valley within a few hours. All four were in good health. Van Fleet’s companions; were longtime friend Greg Foster, 34, of Newhall, Calif., Jasmine Fitzpatrick, 28, of Santa Monica, Calif., and Michael Murphy, 38, of Venice, Calif.
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