ustxtxb_obs_1963_01_24_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

which, in general, he is clearly skeptical. He proposes “a new concept of social services,” replacing the present “treatment of the effects of our social problems” with programs designed to correct their causes. In reference to the present systems of grants to the unfortunate, Connally’s script said: “Welfare experts of our state agree that this is a holding action, stop-gap treatment at best that wastes millions in state and local funds and does not improve the lot of the individual.” As the governor said this, however, he made two significant insertions. After the word “wastes,” he added, “in one sense”; and he said that the grants do “not basically improve” the lot of the individual. Specifically, he advocated more attention to making juvenile delinquents responsible citizens and “progress toward emptying our mental hospitals through intensive psychiatric research and treatment.” Social workers are aware that treatment of causes is, at the outset, more expensive than treatment of effects, and Connally spoke to this point when he said the state should provide “necessary resources to implement this policy.” He proposed several surgical operations on the state government. He announced the designation of Col. Homer Garrison, director of the public safety agency, as his civil defense and traffic safety man, thereby abolishing separate jobs for each of these subjects in his office. He endorsed the abolition of the white elephant of the public school system, the county school superintendent’s position, a change that would release $2.6 million a year for other educational spending. And he wants to do away with the Texas aeronautical commission, a slip of an agency. It was not lost on political observers that all of his other proposed reorganizations involved additional appointments he would get to make. He asked the legislature to: Create a separate agency of tourist development; abolish the Texas industrial commission and create an office of economic development, its director appointed by the governor; create a development advisory council, appointed by the governor; create a governor’s committee on education beyond the high school, with 25 members; “reconstitute” the commission on higher education as “the commission on excellence in higher education,” with six new members ap pointed by the governor; consolidate the state parks board and the game and fish commission “under a three member commission”; and “recompose” the state banking board, which approves or disapproves applications for new banks in Texas, from its present membershipthe state banking commissioner, attorney general, and state treasurerinto a threeman board appointed by the governor. If his recommendations on the agencies do not make it obvious that Connally intends to be “a strong governor,” those having to do with budget control certainly do. He asked for a division of finance ,in the governor’s office to prepare a meaningful budget and to execute ita cautious reference to legislation that may seek to give him a veto over sixmonth budgets for every state agency. He asked for a commission to study the executive branch to limit expenditureS, eliminate duplication, and insure “businesslike government,” with six legislator members and six more appointed by the governor. He proposed, too, a central housekeeping organization “to provide all arms of the state government with ancillary services, establishment of central maintenance, mailing, messenger, and supply staffs, central duplicating services, and an electronic data processing center, to mention a few.” THOUGH his budget is yet to come, Connally implied his intent to ask high spending for higher education and state parks. His committee on education beyond the high school will be charged to study the state’s systems of junior colleges, colleges, and universities, to make them more intelligent, and to propose that their now neglected needs be provided for. Specifically, it will prepare “findings and proposals, along with related broad financial implications”implications which the governor did not, in his virginal appearance. explore. The governor’s reasoning about higher education is business-oriented. “Industry follows brainpower,” which is “the coin of the realm of this new age,” he said. “One need look only to the vast complexes of industry surrounding institutions such as M.I.T., California Tech, Johns Hopkins, the University of Michigan. . .” Texas produces too few Ph.D.’s, loses too many brilliant students to out-of-state universities, and pays college teachers too little, he said. He asked that the governor be let appoint one member of each college board of regents from out-of:state: he seemed to have in mind some native Texans not now living in Texas. He did not mention the Democratic platform’s proposal for separate boards of regents for each of the state teachers’ colleges. For the public schools, Connally proposed to try to effect, without the legislature at this point, the expansion of vocational training, night school, foreign language, and pre-school English programs, development of programs for , gifted children, and the training of adult illiterates. He said the present state parks system is “sick to the point of dying.” Despite his affirmation that he does not intend, by merging the parks board and the game and fish commission, to shuttle funds from sports to parks, it is a fact that the parks board has been impoverished and the game and fish commission wealthy. He endorsed studies by Texas Tech and the Texas Research League proposing full development of “the productive parks” and returning parks with lesser appeal to local control. CONNALLY is not going to shrink from controversies of a certain kind: that much has already becoine clear. He told the legislature plainly that he wants the state’s tourist and industrial promotions, and the prosecution of the slant-hole oil scandals, financed from public funds, not from private gifts as heretofore. He proposed controversial “family sanctity laws” to prohibit future common law marriages, require a 90-day waiting period before a divorce trial, void any remarriage of a divorced person within six months of the person’s divorce, and require a defendant parent of children to present the court a statement of his financial resources for child support. He wants to raise the speed limit on wide highways to 70 miles an hour. He wants to limit the governor’s tenure to four years, effective with his own. He wants to prohibit cities’ annexation of lands they do not service. From his wording before the legislature, one might even expect, during his administration, a push for revision of the state constitution. It is in the politically most sensitive areastaxation, welfare, federal aid, integration, wages, labor unions, migrant workersthat he has yet to reveal himself. January 24, .1963