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Inside Events on Tax Bill TEACHER PAY WINS IN BRIEF SESSION been holding caucuses with both . conservatives and liberals in his apartments. When the SenateHouse conferees deadlocked, he strongly favored a continuing fight to keep the pipeline tax in the Senate packageand to make it constitutional. It is commonly believed that Daniel prevailed upon the speaker to accept a tax bill that included the watereddown pipeline tax. Turman’s appointment of two more conservatives to the House conference committee Tuesday afternoon, at any rate, turned out to be a crucial move. It gave the sales-taxers in the House delegation a firm 3-2 majority \(it turned committee report that included the two token concessions from the Senate. When the House conferees returned with the new compromise, Eckhardt alone dissenting, the stage was set for the hectic last-minute battle in which Turman gaveled down all opposition and the House approved the tax program only moments before midnight. When the House recessed for lunch early Tuesday afternoon, House leaders believed the Senate version stood little chance of passing. There was ill-feeling on both sides of the aisle over the Senate’s stance on the pipeline tax. Liberals were highly pleased with the outcome of the morning’s work and predicted defeat for the Senate bill and a second special session. The House conference committeeBallman, Murray, Sandahl, Kennard, and Eckhardthad been negotiating with the Senate conferees over the weekend and through Monday. Ballman, the chairman, made a preliminary report to the House Monday, and Murray, Kennard, and Eckhardt the House early Tuesday afternoon. The House conferees had stood their ground for five changes in the Senate bill: making the pipeline tax constitutional. by either rewriting the Gibbens amendment or taking out the non-severability clause; providing for a flat $10 exemption on clothing under the sales tax rather than retaining Hudson, Lane, Martin, Moffett, Moore, Owen, Parkhouse, Ratliff, Reagan, Roberts, Secrest, Smith and Weinert. Voting no to the sales tax were Colson, Gonzalez, Kazen, Krueger, Patman, Rogers, Schwartz, and Willis. Before the vote came, the galleries filled with stoic squatters who seemed not to care that there was so little going on of spectator-interest. They sat, and waited. And after the vote, they got up, still showing no emotion, and walked neatly out. It was nothing like the mob that churned around in the House gallery. Attorney General Will Wilson, a transient spectator, dropped by the press table, sucked on a mint and smiled: “I just came by to see if anyone tries to describe my ancestry.” His legal opinions helped write the bill, especially that portion covering the gas pipelines, wflch, by the time the conference ,:ommittee got through with it, hardly existed. No one even mentioned his name from the floor, so he ambled out. When, with ten minutes left in the session, Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey made no move to let Sen. Aikin bring up his teachers’ pay bill, the Senate’s $10 exemption on “outer work clothes”; abolishing the Senate’s $4.6 million tax reduction for the telephone companies; substituting for the Senate’s increase of the present franchise tax the House-approved franchise tax aimed at interstate corporations; and adding an exemption in the sales tax on lowpriced restaurant meals, possibly at $1. The Senate conferees had refused to accept any of the proposed changes. Tuesday afternoon at 2 p.m. the House voted to discharge its conferees and asked the speaker to appoint new ones. A motion by Rep. Chapman \(see separate ferees to continue to stand their ground for a constitutional pipeline tax for the full $18.5 million was passed by a 78-66 vote. Speaker Turman retained Ballman as chairman of the new conferees. Eckhardt and Murray were also re-appointed. Jim Nugent of Kerrville and Reed Quilliam of Lubbock, both conservatives, replaced Kennard and Sandahl. The major contention between House and Senate conferees all along had been the pipeline tax, and Atty. Gen. Will Wilson had been a key figure in the EckhardtLane battle over constitutionality, backing the Eckhardt position. Wilson had . consistently warned that the Gibbens amendment, in its present form, was unconstitutional. He had appeared before earlier meetings of the conference committee and had offered to give the committee a revised version of the Gibbens amendment which he believed to be constitutional. The Senate had refused to accept such a version. When the new House conferees walked across the capitol to the Senate side for their first meeting late Tuesday afternoon, newsmen discovered that Wilson had been in private conference with Sen. Wardlow Lane for some time. When the conference committee convened, Wilson produced a letter he had written to Lane with a substitute section for the Gibbens amendment which, in effect, took gas out of the gas tax. Wilson advised the conferees that this revision was also -constitutional. The new Wilson amendment the Senate enjoyed ‘ its first full moment of drama. It was evident that few senators knew the play would be made. While they huddled around Aikin’s desk guessing, the session rolled to a midnight end. Teachers, stirred up by their lobbying leaders \(The Texas bombarded legislators all day with letters, wires, and telephone calls urging passage of House Bill 20 hoping thereby to assure themselves of the Aikin raise. At midnight they discovered they had helped pass a sales tax on themselves without getting their “promised” reward. Sen. A. R. Schwartz said he heard that one woman schoolteacher sitting in the gallery remarked hotly: “The next time I prostitute myself, I’m going to get paid in advance.” In one of the Wednesday doldrum moments Sen. Reagan was elected president pro tempore of the Senate, and in his acceptance speech he told the other 30: “I have never known a finer bunch of men in my life. . . . As long as the people of Texas send to Austin the calibre of men we have here, they will do themselves proud.” was much the same as an amendment which Sen. Grady Hazlewood of Amarillo had attempted to insert in the bill during the Senate tax committee’s meetings. It had been offered by Hazlewood almost two weeks before. The Senate conferees also conceded on the $4.6 million tax reduction for telephone companies, with the understanding that the sales tax on utilities would not apply to telephone bills. The House conferees, by 4-1, approved both concessions and signed the conference report with the five senators. This was late Tuesday afternoon. Eckhardt protested the conference committee approval of the new gas amendment, and cited the 78-66 vote instructing the conferees to stand firm on the pipeline tax, but it was approved anyway, and the conferees went to work to get the conference report printed before the midnight deadline. That set the stage for the crucial House vote late Tuesday night. Deserted by Daniel and Turman, the House anti-sales taxers were able to muster a desperation 62 votes against the conference report. Amid clashing tempers and with an active gavel fighting the race against time, the sevenmonth warfare on taxes thus came to an end in the House. W.M. Patman Criticizes Tax-Free Groups WASHINGTON This week in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Wright Patman of Texas announced the Treasury Dept. has agreed to make public, on request, the income, assets, expenditures, balance sheets, and applications for tax exemption of tax-exempt foundations. Patman told the House the Treasury Dept. also advised him of “the staggering growth” of such foundations from 12,295 in 1952 to 45,124 in 1960. By placing huge quantities of money beyond taxation, the trend has placed a greater tax burden on the rest of the people, Patman argued. The foundations have been investing in common stocks \(the Rockefeller Foundation holds in control tax-free businesses competing with tax-paying businesses, Patman said. TOWER criticism of his dictatorial methods. “Would my friend who owns fer that Castro and his Russian masters invade and destroy his country, rather than have the United States intervene to protect Chili?” Tower concluded. We trust the junior senator. from Texas will soon obtain secretarial help who know how to spell Chile; in the meantime let him ponder the meanings of his own doctrine, no matter how it is spelled. If we declare war on Cuba to save Chile, Russia can declare war on us to save Cubaand Chile can then declare war on Russia to save the United States. What John Tower advocates to stop “communist imperialism” is the old-style Western imperialism. Perhaps he feels more secure than the rest of us, for doubtless he has been impressed by the Senate’s special atom-bomb shelter. He is piping the tune of a fool, stagger-marching through the minefield of our collective disaster. . AUSTIN So the teachers finally got their $810 a year pay raise, but the second special session of the legislature, called especially to provide the salary increase, granted it with some hesitation, for the move will cost the state an estimated $149 million in the next two years and for a time there was trouble juggling the funds around enough to provide that much. In fact, the tax bill shortage of about $11 million was only corrected when the legislature voted to transfer money from the permanent school fund to the operating school fund, a maneuver that is allowed by the constitution so long as the amount transferred does not exceed one percent of the general school fund. The pay bill slid through the Senate with little trouble and with the only important competition from Sen. Bruce Reagan’s substitute idea to grant the teachers $600 now, $200 more in two years and another $200 two years later, giving the teachers ultimately more money but, he claimed, saving the state $300 million in the next decade. Reagan’s amendment failed. In the House, debate reached angry climaxes, with Speaker James Turman, himself a professional educationist and a close ally to the lobbying Texas State Teachers Association, sometimes accused of failing to give a fair shake to those trying to economize on the pay bill. This accusation was made, for example, when Rep. Charles Whitfield of Houston, moving that salary increases for administrators be limited to $1,080, called for a recount when his motion failed by seven votes. He charged that the count was illegal and named seven representatives who were absent from the chamber but who were listed as voting, but the speaker refused to grant the recount. The unique escheat bill that passed the House and exempts banks from enforcement of the Here is how legislators voted on the $354 million tax bill this week: houn, Creighton, Crump, Dies, Fuller, Hardeman, Hazlewood, Herring, Hudson, Lane, Martin, Moffett, Moore, Owen, Parkhouse, Ratliff, Reagan, Roberts, Secrest, Smith, Weinert. Kazen, Krueger, Patman, Rogers, Schwartz, Willis. Adams of Mount Pleasant, Allen, Andrews, Atwell, Ballman, Banfield, Barnes, Bartram, Berry, Blaine, Buchanan, Butler, Chapman, Cole of Houston, Cole of Greenville, Connell, Cook. Also Cory, Cowen, Cowles, Crain, Crews, Curington,’ De La Garza, Dungan, Ehrle, Fairchild, Floyd, Foreman, Garrison, Gibbens, Glusing, Green, Grover, Harding, Heatly, Huebner, Hughes of Dallas, James, Jarvis, Johnson of Dallas, Lary, Latimer, Leaverton, Lewis, McCoppin, McGregor of Waco, Martin, Miller, Murray, Mutscher, Neimeyer, Oliver, Parsons, Petty, Pipkin, Price, Quilliam, Ratcliff, Read, Richards, Roberts of ,Seminole, Rosson, Sandahl, Schram, Shannon, Shipley, Slack, Slider, Snelson, Spilman, Thurman, Thurmond, Townsend, Trevino, Tunnell, Walker, Ward, abandoned properties act \(Obs., Senate this week, but not before Sen. Dorsey Hardeman called it a “silly bill” showing “hypocrisy and cowardice.” Gov. Price Daniel, who has shown a belligerent ambition to pry abandoned accounts out of the banks, said he would accept this bill but he vowed that banks would eventually be brought under the escheat law. At this writing, the House is arguing over the Senate version of the run-off bill, a bill that left the Senate only after Sen. Charles Herring, sponsor of the bill, was accused of being an errand-boy for Speaker Sam Rayburn, who opponents claimed wants the bill passed to make it harder for the Republicans to get close to the seat being vacated by Rep. Paul Kilday of Bexar County. The bill would require a majority vote for congressional seats. In an election pitting several Democrats against one Republican, the Republican might hope to see the Democratic vote so split that he could take a plurality victory. A required run-off would cancel that advantage. The lobby-control bill that passed the House died in the Senate. The bill liberalizing unemployment compensation payments to $37 for 26 weeks, maximum,/ passed the Senate, as did the bill tightening down on Sunday sales. There is some. speculation in the capitol that Gov. Daniel will call another special session in the fall to deal with the loan shark problem. In the closing hours of the first called session, Rep. W. IL Miller attacked fellow Houstonian Rep. Bob Eckhardt, accusing him of “hunting headlines” when he proposed an investigation to see if Texans are being deprived of freedom of speech. Eckhardt, Miller said, had made the same accusation of Miller at the start of the regular session when Miller proposed an investigation of subversive activities. Wells, Wilson of Amarillo, Woods. Barlow, Bass, Bridges, Burgess, Caldwell, Cannon, Carriker, Col