ustxtxb_obs_1966_02_04_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

picture of Carr following behind a waving Gov. Griffin, with a Confederate flag between them. 12 In the spring that year, Carr told the Observer he favored annual salaries and In 1963 Jerry Sadler, the state land commissioner, who was being sued by the Internal Revenue Service on a charge of not paying sufficient income taxes on his legal fee in the settlement of a huge estate lawsuit, \(which charge Sadler was vigorousWaggoner Carr a $5,000 fee in the lawsuit over the estate when they were both state representatives. There was a story in the Dallas News about this at the time, but it was not entirely correct. The Observer, through contributing editor Bob ‘Sheri11 in Washington, has obtained the relevant part of the transcript of that testimony. It shows that in the summer, 1965, when Carr would have been well along in his campaign to become Speaker of the House in 1957, Sadler paid Carr the $5,000 for Carr’s part as co-counsel in the estate matter. Government cross-examination appeared to seek to indicate that Sadler had paid the $5,000 to Carr with some view to being appointed chairman of the House investigating committee in 1957. Shown the transcript in Austin, Carr’s first point was to say that he had not, in fact, appointed Sadler to this post. “The fee as stated in here was correct,” Carr said. “This was so infinitesimal compared to the amount he [Sadler] had settled for,” \(about three quarters of a it wasn’t out of line at all. Who was I to say it was when he suggested it? . . . I was a starving young lawyer. . . . How was I to know that later he would be charged with not paying his income tax? I paid mine.” The transcript shows that Carr consulted with Sadler on the case in Dallas, but did not do any legal memoranda or other work. Sadler’s clients were attacking the validity them had property, including some oil wells, “in West Texas, out in my area,” Carr said. “He said he wanted me in the case to handle that part of the estate,” and Carr had agreed and was ready to be called on. They settled the case before he was called on, he explained. Here, then, is the pertinent excerpt from the transcript of the hearing, with a government tax lawyer, Harold Rogers, questioning Sadler and later with Carr’s lawyer Wright Matthews objecting, in the case designated Jerry Sadler and Laura Sadler v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, docket number 94581 in the U.S. tax court in Washington, page 60 and following: 4 The Texas Observer annual sessions to take pressures off members to take favors from lobbyists, and he said that Speakers’ Day, \(on which speakers traditionally received lavish gifts paid Q. He didn’t prepare any legal memorandums on the case, did he? A. We didn’t have any legal memorandums to prepare. Q. Did he do any research? A. No sir. Q. He just spent that short while in Dallas. A. Yes. Q. And you conferred with him generally about the facts in the case? A. Yes sir. Q. He didn’t participate in any meetings with the executives? A. No sir, he was there to participate in this meeting. They got to wrangling amongst themselves, and decided there were too many lawyers. They was going to have to appoint a committee, so they appointed acommittee finally that got to negotiating, then. Q. Now, in June, 1956, you notified Mr. Carr that there was going to be a settlement in the Sells matter? A. Yes sir. Q. Is that correct? A. Yes sir. Q. Either June or July? A. June or July. Q. And you sent him a copy of the judgment out in early July; is that correct? A. Yes sir. Q. And a few days later, in July, 1956, you called Mr. Carr and asked him to send you a bill in the amount of $5,000 as the fee you wanted to pay him as co-counsel in the Sells matter; is that correct? A. I called him and discussed the matter with him and asked him what hig fee was.. He wouldn’t set a fee, and so I told him to set his bill for $5,000. Q. Mr. Carr sent the bill for $5,000 and you paid it by check? A. Yes sir. Q. You never advised Mr. Carr in what way he _benefited you in the settlement of the case, did you? A. Beg pardon, sir? Q. And you never advised Mr. Carr in what way he benefited you in the settlement of the Sells case, did you? A. No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to advise him in the big way he benefited me. One of the main resaons why I employed Mr. Carr was to keep they other side from hiring him. I didn’t want him to know thathate for him to find it out now. Q. In the year 1957 isn’t it a fact that you asked Mr. Carr, who was then Speaker of the House of Representatives, for an appointment as chairman of the investigating committee? Mr. Matthews: I don’t think that has any materiality in this case, your honor, what he did in 1957. Mr. Rogers: The purpose, your honor, is to show the purpose for the payment to Mr. Carr for $5,000. Matthews: Did I understand you to say 1957? Rogers: Yes. Matthews: I certainly object to what happened later. To think a man is going to pay $5.000 in 1956 for something he is going to ask for in 1957. I think is absurd. Court: I will sustain the objection. Cmsr. Sadler said in Austin this week that in the part of the U.S. tax suit alleging civil fraud against him, the court judgment ordered the I.R.S. to refund him $8,868, while he had to pay an additional $16,000 tax on a matter not part of the lawsuit. commercial.” Heatly had turned over four lobby control bills to a subcommittee whose majority had opposed them in the past, but Carr’s conferees on the legislation in the regular session were regarded as strongly pro-regulation. When, however, the matter reached its climax in a special session, Carr, the Observer reported, “startled the House . . . appointing a conference committee . . . which is thought to be 4-1 or 3-2 against the stricter conception of the bill,” and Carr told them “they should insist on an exemption of some lobbyists’ expenditures even if it was as low as $10.” With the strict regulationists sharply disappointed, and some of them blaming Carr for his conferees, the legislature accepted a bill that required lobbyist registration, but not much financial reporting by them. 13 Carr \(responding to this interpretathing about it “makes me rebel,” because he had been favorable to lobby registration. The law passed “admittedly was not as strong” as some of the proposals, but as to loopholes in the final law, “I had to take those measures to get it through,” he said. He feels, he said, that the law would, not have passed but for “the effort I’ made to pass it. I know personally it would have never been passed if I hadn’t brought it up and cut off debate to get it passed,” he said. Daniel, he recalled, had refused to approve the conference committee report. By the time that reportthe conferees’ final version of the bill in the special session reached Carr’s desk the final night, he said, he had a list of speakers on it long enough for them to be able to filibuster it to death by midnight, when the session ended. Rep. Ed Sheridan of San Antonio, Carr said, had a list of points of order he was raising, but for a moment he dropped the list, and Carr said, “while he was down on his knees under the table” trying to recover the list, “I pushed it through for a vote.” Carr recalls the roof of the House coming “clear off,” members shouting at him and “actually cursing at me,” and then a half hour of personal privilege speeches berating him. IN THE 1959 RACE for Speaker, Rep. Joe Burkett, Kerrville conservative, ran against Carr, accusing him of being “a captive candidate of the CIO,” and Carr retorted that Burkett was “insulting the liberals who are pledged to him.” Carr won, 79-71, supported, the Observer reported, by a coalition of the 45 liberals in the House and some moderates and conservatives. 14 In this sessionas in 1951the main issue was taxation ; but this time Carr was on the side of business. Gov . Price Daniel flayed the oil and gas lobbyists for opposing his proposed severance-beneficiary tax on natural gas. The governor’s tax program was about half and half business taxes and sales taxes. Business spokesmen were already building sentiment for the `So Infinitesimal’ A $5,000 Fee