ustxtxb_obs_1957_10_25_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

Sen. Crawford Martin, Hillsboro, explains the Governor’s lobby bill at a Senate hearing. He granted there were loopholes “all the way through here” but said it was difficult to write a lobby UP Photo \\NI LABOR VS. TMA ON LOBBY The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau Orxa,6 Ohnrrurr We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. An Independent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper Vol. 49 TEXAS, OCTOBER 25, 1957 10c per copy No. 29 Lobby Plan in Danger 10 AUSTIN The number one Austin lobbyist for labor and the number one Austin lobbyist for manufacturers have taken radically different stands on lobbyist control. Jerry Holleman, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, appeared before the Senate committee hearing on the Daniel bill last week. Burris notified TMA members of his and TMA’s position in a special “manager’s confidential letter,” “not for publication,” which has reached the Observer. It is dated Oct. 14. Holleman appeared “I guess, on behalf of” Governor Price Daniel’s bill, but he vigorously criticized . it. Not to delude the people, he said, a bill must provide for “full disclosure” of what lobbyists spend. He said definitions of a “natural person” and “direct communication” in the Daniel bill create “a great weakness” on this point. He said: “I as a lobbyist could rent a penthOuse and entertain but never mention legislation; meanwhile my cohorts could lobby up a storm on a great number of issues, but I would never report” the penthouse expenses. He said he doubted very much that he, as a lobbyist, would be sent tq. 4,jail under the terms of the bill for failing to report, “and I think it should be corrected to where I would.” “Unless we have such full disclosure of the whole, the total expenditures down here, then we’re deluding the people,” he said. Burris, in his letter, says that of the four proposals by the Governor for the session, only the lobby bill “could in all probability prove damaging to business.” “The great danger of a lobby control bill,” Burris said, “is the fact that those who represent business in a legitimate way might be placed at a disadvantage when compting for the legislative ear AUSTIN Governor D a n i e l’s proposed lobby control bill has condensed hot clouds of dissent among some senators who charge it has serious loopholes. Daniel, surprised by gathering opposition from both conservative and liberal sources, is struggling to persuade liberals in the legislature to support amendments to his bill rather than shift to another one, and as the special session entered its second week Monday they had restively agreed. This suddenly baleful prospect for Daniel’s lobby program materialized shortly after his bill was introduced in the Senate by Crawford Martin of Hillsboro and in the House by Zeke Zbranek of Daisetta, R. H. Cory of Victoria, and others. Martin said the bill had been written by Sen. Dorsey Hardeman, San Angelo, Daniel, and himself. On the House side it was said that Rep. Cory helped write it. Both Zbranek and Kennard were consulted. Hardeman was blamed for the defeat of lobby control last session in speeches by Reps. Zbranek and Charles Hughes, Sherman. The bill limits registration to persons who engage in “direct communication,” which is defined, fore a committee or any personal contact or communication with “any member of the legislature for the purpose of explaining, discussing, or arguing for or against pending it proposed legislation or any action thereon by the legisla Wilson Blasts Usury ‘Loophole’ DALLAS Five assistant attorneys general traveled more than 8,000 miles in July, August and September looking into the credit insurance operations of the loan industry. They visited ten cities, Fort Worth, Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi, Dallas, San Antonio, Amarillo, Temple, Killeen and Waco. They examined 44 loan companies, ten credit life insurance companies, and two banks which use credit insurance; these were large, middle-sized and small. The information these state lawyers have gathered, supplemented by investigations in the same field by probers from other state agencies, will be presented to the state Board of Insurance at a public hearing probably to be called early in November. The substance of the report will be released to the press at the time of the hearing. These things Atty. Gen. Will Wilson told the Dallas chapter of Credit Unions in a speech here last Thursday night. Wilson said he was not “at liberty to discuss much of the factual material to be presented at the public hearing.” He did say: Bracewell: “A person w h o might do some entertaining at which he would expend a lot if money but would not explain, discuss, or argue legislation, even if he spent $500 he would not have to reportcorrect?” Martin: “Yes sir.” Bracewell: “The next day he might come by and report $1.50?” Martin: “Senator, that’s just common practice of people being put under obligation, and AUSTIN The race question, ubiquitous as air, blew about in the public affairs of Texas last week, intruding , in the mind, will to think about it or no. Simplyit was just there ; it was not possible to escape taking notice of it, and notice anything in public view. This was insured by these developments : 1. At Houston, the state’s largest city and equally the home of Texas’s best-organized, heaviestfinanced, most articulate liberals and conservatives, federal district judge Ben Connally finished five months of thinking about Delores Ross and Beneva Williams, Negro children seeking admission to hitherto all-white elementary schools, and told trus Lyman Jones tees of the Houston Independent School District, who had turned them back to all-Negro schools: “It is ordered, adjudged and decreed that the defendants \(the are hereby restrained and enjoined from requiring segregation of the races in any school under their supervision …” 2.At Austin a special session of the legislature had convened. It had been called by Gov. Price Daniel to talk of other things, but race was what it talked mostly about. Resolutions on race had been dropped in the House and Senate hoppers at week’s end. A belief spread among legislators that Gov. Daniel will call a second special session , to deal solely with race matters or will amend his call for the current session to include such questions. 3.Also at Austin, Gov. Daniel dictated letters to the governors of several Southern states asking for copies of the laws of those states concerning the use of fed eral troops inside their borders and related matters. It was said by a Daniel aide that there was no significance to be attached to these letters. 4. East Texas legislators held a caucus-breakfast, the day after the le,;islature met. Gov . Daniel was invited, and he attended. He was challenged to say at once that he will either summon a second called session or will amend the call for the current session. Daniell said submitting segregation questions to the legislature now would confuse other issues up for consideration, adding: “Intentional delay on other bills to stop consideration of segregation propoals is already evident in the legislature. As we go along in the next two or three weeks, maybe we can see more clearly.” Thel Governor said, and drew applause for saying, that neither state ,tor federal troops would be called’ into school integration cases ,”as long as I am Governor.” At the end of the caucus, Daniel had not said he would or would not submit segregation matters to the legislature, either in the current session or in a specially-summoned one. This satisfied Rep. Jerry Sadler of Percilla, a caustic Daniel critic in the last regular session. Said Sadler, in a comment on the caucus challenge to Daniel:: “You’re acting like people up at Little Rockthrowing brickbats and kicking somebody.’ This resolution \(embodyernor to get on or get off. I believe the Governor will help us out of this situation if we let him alone for a few days. Anything you do now is fixing to mess up lobby control and water legislation.” \(The Observer is well advised that a split has developed among East Texas House members over whether to invite Arkansas Gov. we’re not undertaking to control that …. As far as my friends entertaining, me, as long as they don’t d4cuss legislation, for or against it, as I see it, they wouldn’t have to report itthat’s my interpretation of it.” Fuller: “Wouldn’t that be a way of getting around it, senator?” Martin: “Senator, there are loopholes all the way through here.” Phillips: “If an individual would v,rant to have a party, invite all the legislature, and just spend $5,000, for food, champagne, and all expenses, he could do that, wouldn’t be any question about who was giving the party, and he under this bill wouldn’t have to report?” “That’s right,” said Martin. A moment later he added: “There would probably be circumstaritial evidence against him.” Phillips: “Suppose a man comes down here, he owns all kinds of things, suppose he rents all the hotels in Austin and holds forth all session, under this bill he wouldn’t have to register unless you could prove he said he was for a bill.” Martin: “That’s right.” with those who represent the socalled ‘mass’ groups. By ‘mass’ groups is meant simply those organizations and groups composed of vast numbers of individuals who work individually and collectively for a common objective, which quite frequently may prove detrimental to the interest of business. These advocates of spending and regulatory legislation may escape regulation by the act, unless it is carefully and fairly drawn to cover all.” Burris enclosed an editorial of his in Texas Industry which he said contained the TMA board’s acton and “the reaction of the members of T M A throughout Texas with whom I have had the pleasure of discussing this proposal.” The TMA board is on record for legislation “conducive to ethical practices” in lobbying which “would be applicable to all without exception,” he said. Burris said a lobbyist is “any person” except a legislator who influences or tries to influence legislation. “If an individual contacts members of the legislature in support of, or in opposition to, any proposed legislation, that person is lobbying,” he said. Burris argued that filling station operators, coming to Austin in “hundreds,” ought to have to register. “These people, all of them, are engaged in the act of lobbying,” he said. \(Emphasis teachers in Austin “are lobbying in the purest sense” and should have to register, as should “water district supervisors, the Farm Bureau, the Farmers’ Union, the League of Women Voters.” County judges and employees of state agencies should, too, he argues. “Business groups, being small in number, must depend upon facts and logic. Their methods of necessity must differ from those of the larger, so-called ‘mass’ groups. Business groups therefore lean more heavily upon employed assistance,” Burris said. Daniel Bill Is Attacked ture, the governor, or the lieutenant governor.” Lobbyists would have to report “all expenditures for the purpose of direct communication.” In the Senate hearing Sens. Searcy Bracewell, Houston, and Jimmy Phillips, Angleton, both of whom have lobby bills of their own, and Jep Fuller, Port Arthur, asked Martin questions about this. The crucial colloquies: Ronnie Dugger A Decision, a Caucus…