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Senate Axe Active to Last Daniel Begs Aid; Lashes at Lobby AUSTIN While the House ended its part of the session in a blustering upheaval of angry rhetoric over the tax bill \(see separate ate closed out its 140 days with all the decorum expected of it: quietly killing the Padre Island bill in a nine-hour filibuster. Sen. Hubert Hudson, wealthy Brownsvillean who has announced he will not run for re-election, supplied the wordage in protest to the bill that would have made Padre Island available to the federal government as a national park. Ostensibly the only thing Hudson didn’t like about the bill was that it did not include provisions for a road down the middle of the island, a failure which he contended would make the area useful only to “a handful of birdwatchers.” Hudson also had played a central role in the extensive filibuster against the adoption of the University of Houston by the state system of higher education, which, however, passed. In Washington, Sen. Ralph Yarborough said he doesn’t think the bill’s failure in the Senate will prevent the U.S. Congress from accepting the area, if the bill is AUSTIN The race for the speakership of the 58th Legislature became more crowded, and probably more confused, this week when the field was foimally joined by Rep. Alonzo Jamison, who is called a liberal moderate but is solidly for the sales tax and for the sit-in bill, and Ben ‘Glusing, who is a conservative but voted for the escheats bill and against the sit-in bill. At the same time, Rep. Jack Woods, Waco, told the Observer that contrary to what is generally believed, he did not withdraw from the speaker’s race and is still very much in the running, although he conceded that Glusing’s entry “cuts right across many of the votes I had been hoping for,” namely, the moderates and mavericks. Woods is a conservative, but not until the final vote Monday did he go for the sales tax. Hewever, he said the reason he did not like the bill is that it isn’t stiff enough. He wants no exemptions. Glusing and Jamison said they would both favor a requirement for speakership candidates to declare how much money they spend in the race and where it came from. Woods says he doubts that he would favor such a requirement. “I’m not saying such a bill couldn’t be written effectively, but I’ve never seen it. I would like to see a limitation put on the expenditures, but as a practical matter. …” Glusing says he started out with 16 votes committed to his candidacy, and has now built up to “between 20 and 30.” Jamison claims he is “sitting pretty good,” though he won’t say how many votes he has cornered, and Woods freely admits “I don’t have very many votes.” He said he was working on the moderates and independents, but that Glusing’s entry would force him to reappraise his strength in that area. Of the three new candidates, only Jamison has anything resembling a program of reform. Otherwise, all three believe their appeal rests in what each contends is a recognized penchant for fair play. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page. 2 June 3, 1961 passed in some later session. With all 31 senators up for reelection next year, their record for this session will undoubtedly be heard of again and again on the home area hustings, for many House members, disgruntled over the death of their pet measures in the Senate, already have flooded the mails with newsletters to constituents blaming the Senate for the generally negative record of the 57th Legislature. The House, however, has a number of deaths to its record this session, including several migrant labor bills, industrial safety bills, and bills to reform the educational standards in Texas. Both houses were generous in one respect, however, though voters who hate to cope with lengthy ballots may not appreciate their generosity; they put 14 amendments to the state constitution on the next general election ballot. But the same voters could be Jamison would like to see “more action in committees, less on the floor. We need to strengthen the committee system.” He doesn’t approve of letting just any citizen come in and talk on a bill before the committee as long as he wants to talk. “I would like to see committee members themselves, representing opposite views, thresh it out between themselves, and let witnesses be those experts the committee wants to hear, with a time limit on their testimony,” he said. Jamison says “what my philosophy is, I don’t know,” adding “I haven’t been identified with any particular faction.” While he supported the sales tax, he also supported the gas pipeline tax an -1 the corporate tax. He claims to have voted “about as often for management as for labor on bills relating to labor-management relationship.” The controversial liberalities attached to Speaker’s Day came in for some criticism from Glusing and Woods. While Glusing would only have the give-away ceremony removed from the House chamber because “it has no direct relationship to the affairs of state,” Woods would do away with the ceremony altogether, his argument being that “It looks bad, and besides the speaker’s job as presiding officer doesn’t deserve such recognition. The chairman of one of the hardest working committees deserves it just as much. I would be embarrassed to take all those igifts, and I think ed.” Glusing, serving his fifth term in the House, is 45 years old, a native of Kansas, a graduate of and Georgetown Law School Kingsville law firm and a director of the State Bank of Kingsville. However, he voted for the escheats bill, which would make banks surrender to the state money in long-dead accounts, although he does not like the way the escheats bill was written and he does not think it is written the way Gov. Price Daniel intended for it to be written. Glusing considers himself “more conservative than Turman, less conservative than Spilman.” B.S. thankful that the rest of the more than 100 proposed amendments didn’t make it through the two houses. Written into the lengthy obituary of the 57th was the $810 teacher pay raise, which both houses passed but which died when no tax to finance the raise was passed. Rep. DeWitt Hale, Corpus Christi, who sponsored the pay raise in the House, came under attack from Rep. Henry Grover, Houston, who claimed that Hale wants the support of the teachers but doesn’t want to risk political unpopularity by voting for a sales tax with which to pay for the raise. Hale was absent at Monday night’s final vote on the sales tax. Pay Pessimism Some House members now contend that the teachers will be lucky if they come out of the special session with more than a $600 raise. passage of a bill, already approved by the House, to allow counties under 100,000 population to abolish the office of county superintendent if residents vote to do so. Persons sent to the penitentiary will have a chance to re-open their case within two years, providing they turn up new evidence, if the governor signs HB 27, which wiggled through both houses with several critical compromises. Originally the bill allowed five years to turn, up evidence that would be basis for a new trial for a convict. Rep. Tom James’ bill to define legal pornography, which for a time appeared to have been killed in the Senate, was revived and passed. Movies were eliminated from the bill by amendment. Penalties for second-offense conviction are especially stiff. The definition of pornography follows the Roth case decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which makes “community standards” the criterion. Under James’ bill, the “community” is defined as nothing smaller than that area encompassed by the borders of the state. Also going to the governor’s desk this week was the milk bill, which gives the State Health Department the power to reject the importation of milk that is not inspected by standards equivalent to those used by milk inspectors in Texas. The Missouri legislature has threatened to pass retaliatory legislation. The private clubs in the state will be regulated by the Texas Liquor Control Board, according to HB 892, which also passed both houses and was sent to Daniel. The clubs must pay license fees of $500 for memberships of more than 250, going up to $2 a member for each head in a membership of more than 1,000. Del Mar College in Corpus Christi was approved for offering senior college courses, but the bill that gave approval stipulates that Del Mar won’t ask for full state aid for another 20 years. This precautionary article in the bill was inspired by the bitter opposition to the admission of the University of Houston to the state system and by the fear, common to several senators, that a number of junior colleges are just waiting until next session before making a concerted drive for fouryear, state-supported status. Since the Senate killed the much-amended loan shark bill, the only thing passed with finality on that subject this session was a resolution in the House, sponsored by Criss Cole of Houston, author of the original bill, urging district attorneys in the state to prosecute everybody they caught charging more than 10 per cent interest. AUSTIN Between his Tuesday press conference and his Thursday state-wide television appeal to the people for help, Gov. Price Daniel appeared to have weakened in his stand against the sales tax, although he was as vehement as ever against the Austin lobby. If he is becoming discouraged, it is not without cause, because as Daniel has pointed out, he has just about every newspaper in Texas against him on the sales tax issue, most of the Senate against him, and a solid half of the House against him. In fact, if Daniel has a decisive group on his side in opposing the tax, it is the people in general, and that’s why he went on the air and why he said he would go on radio and television repeatedly in the 40-day interim before the special session beginning July 10: to whip up support from the voters. While in Tuesday’s press conference he said he would accept a “selective or limited sales tax,” but would not accept one such as that offered by the Senate during the regular session, by Thursday night’s television appearance Daniel had veered to a less personally aggressive position, saying that he is now leaving the matter in the hands of the people of Texas, that he cannot indefinitely overrule the majority of the legislature, and that “I must assume when they \(the expressing the views of the people who elect them to pass the laws of this state.” He said if the people do not want a general sales tax; they had better start bombarding their legislators with letters stating their opinion in the matter, to counteract the powerful pro-sales tax lobby in Austin, which Daniel damned in his broadcast for such highhanded tactics as calling lawmakers from the floor, sending in chicken dinners to the legislators, and having them run errands for the lobbyists. He said that the lobbyists who “swarm” through the corridors and galleries of the state capitol building at a lobbyist-legislator ratio of 10 to 1 had stymied “all efforts of compromise” on the tax dispute, and he said that if lobbyists tried to act that way in Washington they would be barred from the city. In his appeal to the people, Daniel said: “I hope you will talk with your representatives and senators during the next 40 days. If you agree with me that the gas pipeline companies should pay at least the same two percent tax that they The 72 in the House who voted to concur with the Senate tax Monday: Adams, Lubbock; Adams, Mt. Pleasant; Allen, Longview; Andrews, Aransas Pass; Atwell, Dallas; Banfield, Rosenberg; Barnes, DeLeon; Bartram, New Braunfels; Bell, San Antonio; Berry, San Antonio; Blaine, El Paso; Burgess, Nacogdoches; Butler, Kenedy; Connell, Wichita Falls; Cory, Victoria; Cowen, Fort Worth; Cowles, Hallsville; Crain, Ringgold; Crews, Conroe; Curington, Corsicana; de la Garza, Mission; Ehrle, Childress. Fairchild, Center; Floyd, Houston; Foreman, Austin; Garrison, Houston; Gibbens, Breckenridge; Glusing, Kingsville; Grover, Houston; Harding, San Angelo; Heatly, Paducah` Huebner, Bay City; want Texas consumers to pay, and that interstate and foreign corporations ought to pay on a basis comparable to our own domestic companies, and that any sales tax aught to he collected on whisky, beer and other alcoholic beverages the same as on other products, I hope you will tell your members of the legislature how you feel. “I hope you will also tell your representatives if you disagree with me and think Texas should continue to get less than half of the taxes that Louisiana collects on natural gas, and the big interstate corporations should continue to pay on a cheaper allocation than domestic corporations, and that clothes should be taxed while beer and whisky are exempt.” At his press conference he said he will appoint another citizens advisory group, similar to the one that thought up the ill-fated payroll deduction tax plan, to work out another possible program for settling the tax quandry. Although critics said Daniel was putting off the first special session to July 10 to give himself time for a trip to Hawaii, Daniel said he was allowing the time gap to let the legislators cool off and to give the people time to draw their attention away from the lobbyists. “The members of the legislature have worked hard this session and have naturally reached the point of weariness and short tempers. I do not believe they could accomplish in the ensuing 30 days what they failed to do during the past 140 days. “By waiting until July, we will be certain to have fewer special sessions. Two years ago I called the first special session almost immediately and we ended up with three special sessions. If I had waited 30 days, there could have been only two before the Sept. 1 deadline. “Forty days at home talking with the people instead of being subjected to the daily harassment of the lobbyists here in Austin will enable the members to return with more certain knowledge of what their people desire.” One question thrown at Daniel by reporters was whether he intends to heed the admonition of E. B. Germany, head of Lone Star Steel and president of the East Texas Chamber of Commerce, to keep his hands off tax legislation in the future. Daniel said he intends to “get hands on it more than in the past.” Germany is also one of the state directors of the Citizens for Sales Tax committee, which under the chairmanship of Tom Sealy is campaigning vigorously for passage of a general sales tax similar