ustxtxb_obs_1968_11_29_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

portation department to slow the rate of highway construction and divert money from the highway trust fund to other modes of mass transportation, particularly in ghettos and eastern urban areas. “The effect of these regulations is to put us almost entirely under a federal cloak and umbrella,” Kul tgen said. Among the supporters of the proposed regulations are Interior Secretary Stuart Udall, conservationist and preservationist groups and many landscape and environmental architects. The Smith Staff 1,0 Jerry Hall, chief of the capitol bu reau of Newspapers, Inc., the chain that owns the Austin American-Statesman, will be Preston Smith’s press secretary. Hall, who worked a number of years for Smith’s hometown paper, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, is a political moderate. V Kyle Thompson, Gov. Connally’s present press secretary, will take a post with the Water Quality Board when Connally leaves office. go0 Capitol reporters speculate that other top Smith aides may be Harold Dudley ,former manager of the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce who ran Smith’s state campaign headquatrers; Bob Bullock of Hillsboro, an attorney and former legislator who worked in Smith’s campaign; and Larry Teaver of Lubbock, a homebuilder who traveled with Smith during the campaign. V Newsman Jon Ford has printed a re port that Gov.-elect Smith hopes Gov. Connally will go ahead and reappoint Frank Erwin to the UT board of regents blame for the controversial deed. Antonio, a perennial supporter of liquor by the drink and parimutuel betting, was picked up in a gambling raid on a plush Castle Hills establishment earlier this month. Berry allowed as how he was just there to visit an old friend. V Sen. Yarborough said in a recent Washington press conference that the senate labor and public welfare committee, which he may head next session, will push an industrial health and safety bill. “The absence of state and national safety laws is a national scandal,” he said. V In an unprecedented show of soli darify, the Texas AFL-CIO, the Texas Manufacturers Association and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association have gotten together to propose a new workmen’s compensation law that would raise benefits from $35 to $49 a week. Usually during legislative sessions, the labor group and the manufacturers group offer different bills, and often the legislators have voted both down. V AFL-CIO Seer eta r y-Treasurer Roy Evans said, “We’re not happy with the increase, but most people would agree that a 40% hike is substantial. 8 The Texas Observer V The proposed bill calls for a flat 25% lawyer’s fee in workmen’s comp cases, rather than the present 15% if it is disposed before the industrial accident commission and 30% if it is appealed to the courts. Liberal Carl Parker of Port Arthur and conservative Bud Sherman of Fort Worth will sponsor the bill in the House. Liberal Barbara Jordan of Houston and conservative Jack Hightower will carry the bill in the senate. Even with three major interest groups supporting the bill, it probably will face strong opposition in the legislature, mainly because of a provision which brings all public employees under uniform workmen’s compensation provisions. A Real Estate Note Houston The plight of political headquarters following an election is not a cheerful one. They usually return to being for-rent stores and/or buildings in downtown areas. Consider the lot of the once-coveted abandoned automobile dealership on a key downtown street here. Early in the 1968 campaign, before they became discouraged with their national ticket, Democrats in Harris county eyed it for their headquarters and even appointed a committee to obtain a lease on it. But when apathy and acute foot-dragging set in, the Nixon-Agnew ticket moved in immediately and went into business. Now that the election is over and the Republicans gone, the building will have a new tenant: Big City Newsstand. The firm is one of Houston’s biggest suppliers of newspapers and magazines, including a vast assortment of girlie magazines, nudist publications and films. Sen. Tower has sent letters to all Republican senators asking for support in his bid for the chairmanship of, the GOP senatorial campaign committee. The post is now held by Sen. George Murphy of California. Tower campaigned for the position in 1966, but he met opposition from Sen. Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Murphy was named as a compromise choice. V Both Texas senators, Tower and Yar borough, were scheduled to be in South Vietnam during the latter part of November, Tower to gauge the military effect of the bombing halt, Yarborough to study military and civilian spending in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. George Wallace’s American party, which polled more than 600,000 Texas votes in the Nov. 5 election, is opening a new state office in San Antonio. The party plans to run candidates for state, county and local offices in 1970, State Chairman Bard Logan says. V A West Texas State University stu dent, Joe Lackey, has resigned his part-time job as a campus cop, charging that the security department and the student financial aids department are suppressing political and social dissent. Lackey wrote in a letter to the campus newspaper revealing that the security department has a file on all students known to advocate such controversial actions as writing in Eugene McCarthy for pesident. As a security officer, Lackey said he was ordered to make a list of license numbers on campus having McCarthyLindsay bumper stickers. The student added that the school loan department threatens to eliminate financial aid to students who belong to the SDS, the fourth party, those who try to organize political clubs and those who participate in inter-racial dating. School officials denied all charges. Hunger, Si Texas Welfare Commissioner Burton G. Hackney, the man who last spirng said he doubted that there is any starvation in Texas, conducted a hunger survey last summer at the request of a congressional committee. The survey, which will not be released, shows that more than 350,000 Texans are “hungry or starving.” V Ed Polk, attorney for the federally funded Dallas legal services project, has joined lawyers in 25 other states in an attempt to force the department of agriculture to provide food assistance in 500 counties doing without. Polk claims that at least 20% of the nation’s starving counties are in Texas. On behalf of eight plaintiffs from different Texas counties, he is suing Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, Welfare Commissioner Hackney, William Herdon, director of the state’s commodity distribution program, and S. R. Smith, federal consumer marketing director. The legal action is being coordinated by the center of social welfare policy at Columbia University which reasons that starvation is illegal in the United States. por Chalk up a victory for Indian Power. A member of the Alabama-Coushatta tribe will replace paleface Walter W. Broemer as reservation superintendent next summer \(Obs., missioner Dempsey Henley has announced. In September, Chief B. Cooper Sylestine and 68 tribesmen sent a petition to Henley asking for Broemer’s resignation. The petition said in part, “We disagree no longer feel his actions have our confidence. We have been under this kind of leadership for 10 years and we are ready to choose our own leader and work out our own plans.” The tribe will not actually choose its own leader. The three Indian commissioners, who are appointed by the governor, will fill the vacancy with the advice of the tribal council.