ustxtxb_obs_1956_11_28_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

IF YOU BUY A CAR, A HOUSE; If any of your policies expireCALL `Bow’ Williams Automobile and General Insurance 624 Lamar GR 2-0545 AUSTIN, TEXAS Represents ICT Insurance Co. and other standard stock companies SET’S ABOLISH THE POLL TAX’ WILCO’S SICK LEAVE PLAN Protects You On AND Off the Job! Available to small groups of employees from five to fifty To large groupsup to thousands And to individuals! WESTERN INDEMNITY LIFE INSURANCE CO. Affiliated with Home Office: 5011 Fannin, Houston, Texas AGENCIES THROUGHOUT TEXAS hristmas Gift With a Hangover The Texas Observer now has subscribers in all of the 254 counties of Texas. SPECIAL RATE: $4 for first gift subscription $3.50 for second gift subscription $3 for each additional Do you subscribe? If notfill out the blank below. If soget a friend to fill it out ! P. S. ShOuld you get more than one new subscriber, list them on separate sheet of paper; careful to give name and correct address. GIVE THE OBSERVER TO A FRIEND THE TEXAS OBSERVER Subscription Blank Please enter the following name for one year’s subscription : Name Address Mail the subscriptin to Texas Observer, 504 West Z4th Street, Austin, Texas. Printing Purchases Hit Post, Six Senators Challenge . Johnson that one of the three printers who bid selectively submitted his bid some time after the hour set for closing bids. As a result, the blanket bidder fell heir to 54 contracts which had produced over $20,000 worth of printing business during the previous year. The blanket bidder’s prices were at least ten percent higher than those of the late bidder. If it may be assumed that the two contractors operate at approximately the same cost level, the blanket contractor could expect to realize at least ten percent more profit from the contracts in question than the late bidder. Yet the research staff was told that the blanket bidder voluntarily and without compensation assigned all 54 of the contracts to the late bidder. “It would seem fairly obvious,” the report states, “that no competition was intended in the original bids. It also seems certain that more than $156,000 worth of Class I printing . per year was contracted for a two-year period without any real competition.” THE REPORT charged in summary that ”the system under which public printing is purchased or produced for government agencies is obsolete, cumdirectly violates the principal purpose of central purchasing because it allows no grouping of orders for volume buying at volume discounts…” “The functions of the division are technical and complex in nature, but they are discharged speedily and with a minimum of friction under the direction of the present chief, Sam Cook …. Handicapped by a lack of facilities for developing adequate records or analyzing purchasing experience of the various agencies of the state government, the printing division has allowed the price scales on which contract’s are based to become outdated and unbalanced. Information provided prospective bidders is inadequate and often misleading. “The catch-all nature of contracts established for individual agencies prohibits specialists in the printing trade from bidding on state business, because successful bidders must be able bo fill a wide variety of printing orders ….” A major factor in the state’s paying high prices for printing, according to the league report, is the fact that various agencies are allowed to enter into individual contracts. It was shown that “the two agencies with the largest volume of purchases \(the Comptroller and the Highway Departmuch as 20 to 30 percent more for Class II printing \(forms, letterheads, envelopes, than are many agencies with less than a tenth of this dollar volume of purchase …” “These inverse-ratio contract prices can be explained in part by the fact that only one printer bid on Class II work for the two major purchasing agencies in either 1954 or 1955,” it was reported. “There is no apparent reason why the Banking Department should have to pay ten percent more for adding machine tape than the Railroad Commission pays, when purchases for both are made through a single state purchasing _authority.” A comparison of prices paid for envelopes and letterheads by Texas agencies and the City of New York showed that prices in Texas averaged 31 percent higher although the volume of purchase was near the same. OUT OF DATE price scales cited on bid invitations were blamed for discouraging many printers from competing for state business. It was pointed out that “the present contractor has held the Highway Department contract every term since 1930 …. That portion of the study drew the conclusion: “The operational price scales presently used as a basis for establishing printing contracts are obsolete, unbalanced, and deceptive. They tend to discourage new bidders and to establish a monopolistic situation based on contract experience …” Another matter which came up for considerable study was the controversial question of whether the state should do its own printing on various duplicating machines. After checking both the departmental authority for such operations and the work turned out for the some $200,000 annually spent in this manner, the league reached these conclusions: The operations were of doubtful constitutional validity; many duplicating machines were not being used to capacity; much of the printing being clone on them could be done more economically and efficiently by commercial printers; and such operations could be justified only on the basis of convenience and should be utilized for short run, confidential, or emergency work. Church Group Plans Integration Support An interfaith group to oppose all efforts, legislative and otherwise, to nullify the Supreme Court decision against segregation has been formed in Austin. Its leaders are a Baptist, a Catholic, a Presbyterian, and a leader of the Texas Council of Churches. Among the twenty churchmen attending the consultation here at which the step was taken were either top officials or representatives of such officials of the Jewish, Christian, Methodist, Lutheran, Augustana Lutheran, and the Evangelical and Reformed churches. Chairman is Rev. Foy Valentine of Dallas, director of the Christian. Life Commission for the Baptist General Convealtion of Texas. J. P. Darrouzet, Austin attorney representing the Most Rev. L. J. Reihcer, bishop of the Austin diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, was named vicechairman. Secretary is the Rev. Prentice Barnett of Denton, director of Christian education for the Synod of Texas of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and the treasurer is Harold Kilpatrick, executive secretary of the Texas Council of Churches. WASHINGTON One more voice was added last week to a rather plaintive protest among eastern liberals against Lyndon Johnson’s Senate leadership. Editorialized the New York Post: “The issue at stake is whether the Democrats will pursue the disastrous course of concession and conservation. that has marked Johnson’s Senate leadership or whether they will re-establish their identity as a party of creative liberalism …. “The Johnson program of action or inactionis as plain as it is discredited. Fully unveiled in the last Congress, it was a big help to the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. “…. It provides simultaneously for a policy of craven subservience to the White House disguised as lofty bipartisanship … Johnson will present anew the remarkable phenomenon of an alleged Democratic leader clutch ing frantically at the coattails of a Republican President.” The Post recommends that libe eral senators oppose Johnson’s policies but acknowledge they probably could not stop Johnson from returning to his Senate majority leadership. Six Democratic senators proposed a 16-point liberal program, including a curb on filibusters, federal aid to education, tax help for low income people, public park and power developments, increased public housing, lower home loan interest, higher social security benefits, Taft-Hartley repeal, and decreasing the influence of money in elections. Signing the declarationa rebuff to Johnson, who wants no formal Democratic programwere Sens. Humphrey, Douglas, Morse, Murray, McNamara, and Neuberger. Johnson immediately issued a statement that he is opposed to Curbing the filibuster.