Banner Graphic, Volume 17, Number 163, Greencastle, Putnam County, 13 March 1987 — Page 2
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THE BANNERGRAPHIC, March 13,1987
County tax for economic local development passes
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A proposal to allow local governments to contract with private companies to build, maintain and operate public facilities has died on the floor of the Indiana House. The House voted 51-47 Thursday night against House Bill 1881, the socalled “privitization” proposal that was part of the economic development package of Gov. Robert D. Orr and Lt. Gov. John M. Mutz. Mutz has argued that the bill would help local governments improve roads, sewers, jails and other public facilities. Rep. Brian C. Bosma, RIndianapolis, argued that the measure would allow a local government to provide cheaper services or hire private companies to undertake projects the governmental unit couldn’t afford to complete by itself. “Government should be mean, it should be lean, and it should save the taxpayers as much money as possible and still provide public service,” said Bosma. The bill “encourages local government to use the creativity of the private sector.” House Minority Leader Michael K. Phillips, D-Boonville, attacked the
Vanity plate bill effort all in vain
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - ndiana’s two major political parties should continue to split money from the sale of personalized license plates, the state House of Representatives has decided. Lawmakers voted 59-40 to kill House Bill 1618, which "'ould have devoted the vanity p e revenue to the state Department of Commerce for use in promoting tourism. Currently, S3O from the sale of each personalized plate is split evenly between the state Republican and Democratic parties. Each party receives more than $300,000 annually in vanity plate funds. The parties also distribute some of the money to county political organizations. “I believe this is the last step in license branch reform, so no one can say any political party will receive any money from license branches,” said Rep. James L. Davis, R-Frankfort, sponsor of the bill. The Legislature voted last year to phase out political control and
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measure, saying it e would circumvent the current public works bidding and prevailing wage processes. Current laws require public bids to be taken on projects that cost more than specified levels and also dictate that workers on projects using any public money must be paid the prevailing wage in the area. Bosma said the prevailing wage law would still apply if public money were used in construction of a project. “This involves more of a philosophical change in public policy than any bill we will debate in this session,” said Phillips. He also claimed the proposal would allow local government officials to award valuable contracts to their cronies without going through current public channels. In other votes Thursday, the House approved two bills designed to generate revenue for local development projects. Lawmakers voted 94-4 for H.B. 1776, which would allow counties to impose a income tax of up to one-half of 1 percent to pay for local economic development projects.
profits from the license branch system. The branches, operated for more than 50 years by the political party of the governor, will be taken over by a bipartisan state commission in mid-1988. Rep. Jerry F. Bales, RBloomington, argued that legislators should show their independence from political party leaders by voting for the bill. He noted that party officials had lobbied heavily to defeat the proposal, which Bales inserted in a bill on special license plates. “Don’t let the political bosses control the General Assembly,” said Bales. “This is not Chicago. This is Indiana.” In other action, the House 59-38 against a bill that would have eliminated the requirement that county names be displayed on Indiana license plates. Rep. Gregory E. Mishler, RBremen, the sponsor of the bill, said stickers bearing county names cost the state more than $600,000. He added that the introductory digits on automobile license plates already indicate the issuing counties of plates.
2,000 may have died in Ecuador quakes
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) A senior provincial official estimates that the death toll in last week’s earthquakes could climb as high as 2,000, based on an aerial inspection which he said showed whole villages wiped out by torrents of mud and water. Prefect Jorge Gonzalez, chief administrator of Napo Province, said at a news conference Thursday that 2,000 people were killed, 5,000 disappeared and another 50,000 were left homeless by the series of very strong earthquakes that hit this Andean nation a week ago. The International Red Cross has said 300 people were killed and 4,000 are missing. The national government has not released an official
The House also voted 70-28 for the so-called “Indianapolis mall tax” contained in H.B. 1742. That bill would permit an economic development area to use some one-half of new state sales tax revenues from the area to pay for new developments. New revenues would be compared to those in the development area two years before a new project started. A single development area could take up to $4 million annually in sales tax revenues. Statewide no more than $8 million in sales tax revenues could be diverted annually for development projects. In other action, the House approved H.B. 1764, which would allow Howard and Henry counties to impose 1 percent food and beverage taxes to finance local projects. The Howard County tax would be used to finance a regional meeting and exhibition center in Kokomo, said Rep. Brad Bayliff, R-Kokomo. In Henry County, the money would go toward paying about $700,000 of the cost of constructing a new Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, said Rep. Thomas D. Coleman, R-New Castle.
Benefit level raise proposed
House welfare bill one of 100 pondered
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) The Indiana House has approved a pair of bills to increase welfare payments and expand the number of people who can receive them. The bills were among one of 100 the House considered Thursday during a nine-hour session on the final day for each legislative chamber to approve its own measures. After Thursday, the 38th day of the 61-day 1987 session, the House and Senate exchange bills. The House voted 96-0 for House Bill 1346, which would boost benefit payments to recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. A single recipient could receive up to $155 per month, compared with a S9B maximum now. A family with two recipients could receive up to $255 per month, up from $196. Rep. George E. Schmid, RIndianapolis, the bill’s sponsor, said the benefit levels have not been raised since the 19705. H.B. 1346 would cost the state an additional $5.9 million per year and county governments about $3.9 million annually. The House also voted 97-2 for a bill that would allow AFDC benefits to go in some cases to families in which both unemployed parents are living at home. Currently, most benefits
death toll. It says 75,000 people have been driven from their homes. Gonzalez said the hardest hit region was a 640-square-mile zone surrounding the volcano El Reventador, 40 miles northeast of Quito. The region is home to about 100,000 people. “There are homes buried or submerged in water, there are bodies in the mud and the rivers are contaminated with oil,” said Gonzalez, a member of the opposition Social Democrat party. He said officials may never know the final death toll from the earthquakes, the worst catastrophe to strike this small Andean nation this century.
On Euromissile elimination
Soviets offered new plan
WASHINGTON (AP) The Reagan administration is offering the Soviets a new inspection plan as part of the effort to eliminate medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe, while also appealing to U.S. critics for more time to negotiate arms reductions. The U S. plan was presented Thursday to the Soviet Union in Geneva, where the two sides are trying to work out a treaty. The Soviets already have accepted the principal of on-site inspection to help verify compliance, which is the major stumbling block to an agreement. The proposed pact would require dismantling, over the next five years, of 268 U.S. weapons based in West Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, along with the 243 Soviet weapons targeted on Western Europe. The latest U.S. verification proposal has three parts. First would be confirmation by on-site inspectors of missiles deployed, followed by in-
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The three sons of Mr. and Mrs. Donald H. Brown of Greencaslle -- (from left) Michael, 14, Bert, 17, and S. David, 16 - served as recent legislative pages for State Sen. Ed Pease (FlBrazil) during a session of the Indiana General
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are paid to single-parent families. H.B. 1347 calls for establishment of a demonstration project, modeled after a program in Utah, that would pay benefits to two-parent families if the parents each performed 32 hours weekly of community service work and looked for permanent jobs for eight hours each week. Under the bill, the family would be eligible for benefits only six out of every 12 months. The bill also calls for the state Department of Public Welfare to set up a workfare and job-search program for all recipients of AFDC and food stamps. The total cost of the bill is expected to be about $9 million for the next two years. In other action, lawmakers ap-
The 10 earthquakes struck March 5-6 along the nation’s 2-mile-high Andean spine, affecting an area from the Colombian border to Riobamba, 95 miles south of Quito. The temblors spawned avalanches of mud and rocks that destroyed homes and villages, swallowed up entire villages in remote Amazon forest regions. The mudslides also destroyed a 30mile stretch of the nation’s main oil pipeline, forcing Ecuador to stop payment® for this year on its $8.2 billion foreign debt. The government said it would take about five months to repair the pipeline and that oil exports would be halted for that period.
spectors watching the missiles being destroyed. The final stage would be stationing U.S. inspectors in Asia where they would watch the 100 mid-range Soviet missiles as they are moved there, with the Soviets given the same right to check on U.S. weapons, which would possibly be put in Alaska. State Department spokesman Charles Redman said he was making the details public because there is “a great deal of interest in this question” and because the Soviets already had the information. Normally, the two sides don’t reveal details of their positions. On Capitol Hill, Richard Perle, a major administration figure on nuclear policy, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee the next “six to eight months are critical” in the effort to work out arms reduction treaties. Perle, who announced his resignation later Thursday as an
Assembly. The Browns are ninth-, 12th- and 11thgrade students, respectively, at Greencastle High School. Sen. Pease serves District 37, which includes a portion of Putnam County.
proved a bill that would expand interstate banking. H.B. 1409, approved 54-44, would phase in the expansion over two years. Currently, banks from Indiana’s four bordering states can buy Hoosier institutions if Indiana banks can buy banks in those states. Beginning June 1 this year, the socalled “reciprocity provision” of the banking law would be extended to seven states that border on Indiana’s neighbors. The states are lowa, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Beginning July 1,1990 a bank from any state in the country could buy an Indiana bank if a Hoosier institution could go into that state. In other action, the House ap-
On Thursday, Venezuela said it had tentatively agreed to supply E. lador’s customers with oil until the pipeline is repaired. Officials said details of the plan were still being negotiated. Ecuador had proposed that it continue receiving export payments, and repay the donor country later with oil. The shattered pipeline also caused environmental damage, spilling oil into rivers near Baeza, 40 miles southeast of Quito. Some of the worst quake damage was in Quijo and Gonzalo Pizarro where all 400 residents disappearec after a muddy wall of water slam med into the towns, Gonzales said.
assistant secretary of defense, urged Democrats who control both the House and Senate not to force administration actions, such as continued compliance to the SALT II arms treaty, which he argued would tie the hands of U.S. negotiators at Geneva. The same plea came from Kenneth Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, as he testified at the hearing. “It is ironic that those in the House and Senate who talk most about arms control and who are most critical of us for not doing more are those who, in my mind, are the biggest threat to getting a good agreement,” said Adelman, challenging those who would legislate cuts in U.S. programs that the Soviets hadn’t even won at the bargaining table. Adelman and Perle restated the administration’s complaint that the Soviets have violated past arms control treaties, a view which has been disputed by some Democrats.
proved bills that would: —Establish a statewide home health care system to provide the elderly and disabled an alternative to institutional care. The bill does not carry an appropriation to pay for the system, which legislators have estimated would cost at least $7.1 million per year. —Allow victims of drunken drivers and domestic violence to get benefits from the state’s Violent Crimes Victims Compensation Fund. —Permit a county to enact a boat excise tax to replace the personal property tax on boats. —lncrease by 10 percent the salaries of judges of the state Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, circuit, superior, municipal and probate courts. The pay raise would also apply to prosecutors, whose salaries are tied to judges’ pay. The bill would give county court judges a 15 percent pay raise. Some measures died because they were not handed down for a vote by House Speaker Paul S. Mannweiler, R-Indianapolis. Those measures included a bill to increase the state superintendent of public instruction’s salary by $25,000 per year to $75,000 and a proposed constitutional amendment to enlarge the House from 100 to 101 members.
Buckle up that beagle, pet lovers SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Buckle up your beagle and strap in your Siamese cat, says a man who started making seat belts for pets after his Yorkshire terrier was killed in a car accident. “This is not a pet rock kind of thing,” according to Gary D. Murray. “It’s not a yuppie thing. It’s to save animals’ lives. I had one lady who was complaining she didn’t like the color. I said, ‘Listen lady, it’s not for you. It’s for the dog.’” Murray, 38, recently received a patent for his red “Pet Luv” harnesses and is planning to massmarket the devices, which attach to regular car seat belts and sell for $16.95. The Reno, Nev., resident was in San Francisco this week to show his invention to the the local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The belt is a harness that fits around the pet’s chest and around its legs. Loops on the harness are attached to the vehicle’s seat belts. In 1982, Murray was driving a friend’s car in Nevada when a tire blew and the car crashed into a tree. Murray, who only a short time before had himself started wearing a seat belt, suffered a cut on the head that required a few stitches. His dog, however, was thrown into the windshield. “About two months later, when we got another dog, I tried to get something to make sure that if we took the dog anywhere it wouldn’t get hurt,” Murray recalled Thursday. “Regular leashes don’t work. They’ve got cages you can carry them in, but they bounce around inside them like pingpongballs.”