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Huebner 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. The 0 server e b 1\(P.’ 059 The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. THOREAU me ekly Newspaper Vol. 51 , JULY 11, 1959 10c per copy No. 14 19 TEXAS TOWNS ON A BLACKLIST House Favors Free Beaches AUSTIN Twenty Texas cities are blacklisted by the Mexican government for acts of discrimination against Mexican nationals or U.S. LatinAmericans. These cities or towns, the Observer has learned, are Alpine, Edna, Gonzales, Haskell, Imperial, Lubbock, Marfa, Marshall, Monahans, Moulton, Pecos, Port Lavaca, Robstown, Seguin, Sonora, Stanford, Sterling City, Three Rivers, Victoria, and Winters. Rafael Linares, the Mexican consul in Austin, says this is the latest list for Texas, dated June 24. \(Late bulletin: Pecos has just “At first we had quite an extensive list of countries and individuals who were ineligible,” about one-third of all the counties in Texas, Linares said. “There are now very few cities that are on the ineligible list.” Before the U.S.-Mexico migrant labor agreement of 1951, the entire state was under a ban for Mexican workers. Then, says Linares, Jay C. Steilley of the ginners’ association in Dallas devised a plan, “the Steilley Plan,” that Mexican nationals working in Texas gins would be in sort of a union whose members Steilley guaranteed would not be discriniinated against. The 1951 agreement, as amended, in section eight, “Prohibition Against Discrimination,” provides that no Mexican nationals work in localities in which Mexicans are discriminated against. The Mexican Minister of Foreign Relations furnishes the U.S. Secretary of Labor with a list of the communities in which discrimina tion has occurred. If the Secretary concurs, the U.S. Department of Justice will not issue authorizations to send Mexican workers into such areas. If he does not concur, \(and sometimes he asks the chief law enforcement will be no discriminatory acts plains of any such acts \(against they will be promptly investigated and “community and individual action” will be taken as necessary “to fulfill the community pledge.” If discrimination persists, or if the U.S. and Mexico fail to concur, there is a joint investigation; if necessary the case is referred to the Mexican embassy and the Department of Labor in Washington for a decision. In 1954 there was a joint interpretation and amendments: the Mexican government agreed not to include whole counties. Says Linares: “The position taken by my government is that no worker should go to an employer who has his mailing address in any of the cities that are considered ineligible.” In effect, this blacklists the farmers in the locality of an ineligible city or town. Blacklist Reasons Wetbacks were entering the country in great numbers through 1954, and most Texas farmers did not need braceros. With the clampdown and the expansion of the legalized bracero program. many counties took the necessary steps to get off the blacklist. In Linares’ district, he said, he went from county to county obtaining three-Fourths Sales Taxes Conferees Agree; Pipelines Escape AUSTIN “Same song, third verse,” Sen. Henry Gonzalez was saying, for this week in the legislature the House-Senate conferees reported a tax bill ’74 percent sales taxes. Representatives conservative and liberal freely predicted Friday night the bill would be defeated by a close vote if it came to the test Saturday. An alternative considered by the liberals: returning the tax issue to new conferees. Speaker Waggoner /Carr was on the phone all day Thursday trying to drum up pressure for the reported bill, but evidently his efforts had fallen short as of Friday night. The conferees were delayed once when the Comptroller refused to certify their bill would raise what they had decided it would. Rep. Joe Ed Winfree, Houston, the only House conferee not a conservative, held out for what he called “the Winfree formula,” which he said was “not one dime more than 66 percent sales taxes,” but he signed the final report. It was not good enough for the House liberals, and Gov. Daniel would not openly remark on whether it should be passed, though an aide, J. T. Ellis, said there was not much ground for hope the situation would improve. The bill contained neither of the two “out-of-state” taxes recommended by Daniel, the interstate allocation formula for franchise taxes and the severance beneficiary levy on interstate pipeline companies. Instead it AUSTIN Landowners pitted against the public, the Eckhardt open beaches bill narrowly eluded gutting in the House of Representatives this week and passed in a form the sponsor said would preserve the beaches for the public. The resolution of the issue which seems to have excited more public interest than the tax conflict depends, as the session rounds its last weekend, on the attitude of senators toward the House bill. They can concur or ask for a conference committee. Reps. Ben Glusing of Kingsville, John Huebner of Bay City, and Harold Parish of Taft added amendments which limited the public’s right to use the beaches all along the Texas coast from the edge of the open Gulf to the vegetation line. But on the Glusing amendment which the bill’s sponsor, Bob Eckhardt of Houston, and his colleague at the mike, Zeke Zbranek of Liberty, said would have let landowners build all the fences they wanted, the House divided 68-68, and the amendment, lacking a majority by one, was defeated. Glusing represents the King Ranch as an attorney; some of that ranch’s proprietors own land on Mustang Island. Huebner, whose amendment limited the public’s right to the beaches to a strip 300 feet wide, is a co-owner of 15 miles of Gulf beach on Matagorda Peninsula. The Observer also learned that another opponent of the bill, Rep. Bill Woolsey of Corpus Christi, who added several limiting amend ments in committee this week and who sponsored the exemption of Padre Island from the bill last session, has a brother in a law firm which represents the owners of more than one-third of Padre Tor Miles’ Under the bill as passed, landowners who build fences across the beaches, barring the public, are held to be committing a public nuisance unless they show that their title includes the right to prevent the public from using the beach. This means that a landowner who fences off the public from the beach faces a lawsuit by a public attorney, and unless he can prove that the public has not been using the beach for some time, he has committed a public nuisance and the fence comes down. “Actually, if the people are to save the beaches for public use,” Eckhardt said, “they are engaged in what amounts to a sort of battle.” His bill provides, he said, “three defenses in depth.” First it declares that the beach from the water’s edge to the line of vegetation is a safety area that must be kept open for vehicles. Second, the fact that ‘an area “.s a sandy beach Eckhardt and has been used by the public for many years Solon Who Co-Owns 15 Beach Miles Limits Public Rights AUSTIN Rep. John A. Huebner of Bay City proposed and voted for an amendment to the House “open beaches” bill which limits the public’s rights to 15 miles of open-sea beach of which he is a coowner. The Texas Constitution requires that when a legislator has a financia interest in legislation, he shall so declare and abstain from voting. Huebner did not declare such an interest; he voted for his own amendment and for other amendments House sponsors said would gut the open beaches bill. The Huebner land starts at Deckro Point on the West end of Matagorda Pen insula and ex tends 15 miles along the open coast, and all the way across the peninsula, an average width of a mile. The land is owned by Hueb ner, his two sisters, and his brother as a partnership, named Huebner Brothers. They use it for grazing 1500 to 2000 head of cattle in the winter. Huebner’s amendment, adopted 72-52 over the opposition of Sponsor Bob Eckhardt, provides that where the line of vegetation on the beach is more than 300 feet from the seaward boundary, the public’s right to the beach extends back no more than the 300 feet until the issue is “adjudicated.” The Observer asked Huebner if his amendment did not limit the public’s prescriptive right “on your land.” “Not my land,” he replied. In the law affecting all the beaches? “Well, the law … I don’t know,” he replied Did he not have a financial interest in the amendment? the Observer asked him. “Well, yes, I would say I do,” he replied. He agreed he voted for his amendment. What then about the constitutional prohibition against a legislator voting on an issue in which he has a financial interest? “I was not representing myself only,” he replied. He said he has tried to stay out of the controversy, but “I think I have a duty to vote for the people who live next door to me.” His experience in the subject is “of value to the House,” he said. Subsequently Huebner approached the Observer reporter to add: “I have no financial interest in that beach. The land belongs to us down to the waterline. We don’t give a damn about the public being in there as long as they don’t interfere with our business behind the dunes.” With respect to the “business Glusing behind the dunes,” did not the 300-foot limit have an effect on his financial interest? he was asked. “I don’t think materially,” he said. “We’d like to have a kind of buffer zone because the public don’t appreciate What you do for them, generally. Why should they scatter their damn tin cans 700 feet instead of 300?” He remarked that “we would like to have the privilege of fenc ing in the area. We are now designated in the bill as a remote beach.” He concluded: “Don’t crucify me on. that … because I’m just trying to protect my constituents, and myself as well.” Rep. Ben Glusing, Kingsville, led the efforts on the House floor to weaken the bill as conceived by its sponsors. The Observer asked him if he represented, as an attorney, any landowners who have an interest in. beach land. “No,” he replied. He returned to the reporter to add that he is an attorney for the King Ranch, some of whose owners own land on Mustang Island, which has open sea-facing beach. He maintained, however, that “Beaches on Mustang Island were reserved to the State of Texas in the patent,” so they are not in issue. King Ranch has much land along the coast, but Glusing said it all faces on Laguna Madre and therefore is not affected by the open beaches bill. Rep. Bill Woolsey, Corpus Christi, who has been a consistent opponent of the Eckhardt bill, and who announced in cornmittee a night this week that because the issue requires more study, he cannot vote for the bill, has a brother, Bob Woolsey, who is a member of the law firm of Kleberg, Mobley, Lockett, and Weil in Corpus Christi. Rep. Woolsey confirmed to the Observer this week that John Woolsey Mobley in this firm represents the John McCall group of ten landowners who own half interest in about threefourths of all the land of Padre Island. Rep. Woolsey offered the amendment which carried in the House last session exempting Padre Island from the openbeaches bill. His amendment said the open-beaches bill would’ be “inapplicable south of the northernmost boundary of Padre Island.” Woolsey’s arguments were that the open-beaches legislation would affect some parts of Padre “across the entire island” and conflict with establishment of a national seashore area on Padre.