ustxtxb_obs_1972_12_01_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

Brown, a planner for a developer involved with a half dozen districts, said he had never heard criticism of the districts by Coulson and Conrad Hinshaw, engineers who have done water district work, detailed the “multiplicity of duplication” involved in district regulation already. And Bob Hale, counsel for the Houston Board of Realtors, informed the panel that a Realtors Board committee was being formed to “work with the committee in the future,” but presented no substantive testimony. Newspapers, Inc., publishers of the Austin American-Statesman, has brought a $35,000 damage suit against the Austin local of the Printing Pressmen and Assistants’ Union. The suit grows out of a continuing spat over the installation and operation of a new press at the newspaper. On Oct. 24 union pressmen refused to put plates on the new machine and 17 were fired. Union president Kenneth Hurst says the pressmen considered the press unsafe; publisher Richard F. Brown says it was ready to go. The paper later fired 19 more union pressmen in two other disputes. Now it is contending in court that the union members’ “refusal to work” has caused delays in printing, hiring and training. Hurst replies, “The union men did not walk out, they were fired. The union men are not on strike. They were fired.” The union has requested arbitration by the National Labor Relations Board. Rep. John Allen, a Longview Democrat, was unopposed on the ballot for re-election to the House on Nov. 7. On Nov. 6 he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating state nepotism laws. In addition to a $1,000 fine, the maximum penalty for the offense, Allen agreed to repay more than $13,000 received by his daughters while they were on the state payroll as employees of former state Sen. David Ratliff. Allen and Ratliff were also charged with conspiracy to commit theft, a felony. Two of Ratliff’s children, a son and daughter, were on Allen’s payroll at the time Ratliff employed Allen’s daughters. Neither legislator will be tried on the felony charge, though both will make restitution. Aesthetics Congress in Austin, the one where, the Legislature voted last month, a high-rise office building would not be aesthetically pleasing? The Legislative Budget Board voted last week to recommend that a high-rise parking garage be put there instead. The FBI is apparently investigating a case involving Sheriff A. B. Nail, the mad on against long hair. Acting on a complaint by Steve Kelsey of Dallas, the feds have contacted both Nail and the DPS. Two Highway Patrolmen arrested Kelsey’s son Peter and two companions for hitchhiking \(kicking and punching him in over to Nail for booking. At the jail the three got what Nail calls “the routine treatment,” dry shaves and haircuts. They were fined $5 each and ordered out of town. That’s the routine, all right, according to experienced hitchers. But Nail denies that he’s tough on longhairs per se. It’s just that, well, “Eighty-five percent of the people in this jail are were longhairs. That indicates to me that practically all thugs wear long hair.” An upper from San Antone. A young lawyer named Rick Cates got himself elected to the San Antonio River Authority, the chief water pollution control agency there, by spending $350 and working hard. His opponent, an incumbent, spent an estimated $5,000. The opponent’s name is Drought. An Internal Revenue Service agent testifying in an income tax evasion case in Houston told the court that the IRS is investigating a report that two Houston police officers in the narcotics division were given a $190,000 bribe. The report came from an unnamed informant who claimed to have seen the payoff in 1966. The defendant in the tax evasion case, Jesse Mirelez, has a narcotics-arrest record and allegedly paid the officers for protection. Houston police chief Herman Short and the head of his narcotics division said they knew of the IRS investigation but were not aware that bribery was the issue. A man who spent eight days in solitary confinement in the Dallas County jail has been awarded $6,500 in damages by a federal jury: Celso Cantu was arrested on Feb. 15, 1971, as a murder suspect. When eyewitnesses failed to identify him in a lineup the night of his arrest, he was supposed to be released. Sheriff Clarence Jones said it was an “administrative error” that kept Cantu in custody for over a week. Jones is personally liable for damages, since Dallas County is by law immune to such suits. Remember the lot at 1 1 th and Mild-mannered Republican By Dave McNeely Dallas Faster than a 67-year-old, four-term incumbent; able to stop a crumbling establishment with a single campaign; appeals to conservative Republicans but doesn’t alienate too many blacks it’s a bird! It’s a plane! No it’s STEELMAN!!! “Alan Steelman Will Work,” one of those catchy campaign slogans that somehow leaves you with the feeling that he is trying to convince himself of that as well as you. But he probably will. Alan Steelman is a 30-year-old Mr. McNeely is a reporter for the Dallas Morning News who frequently writes about political figures. The Texas Observer Republican, former executive director of Dallas County’s Republican Party. He took it upon himself this year with computer magnate Sam Wyly’s financial help to unseat Earle Cabell, the semi-Democrat who has represented Dallas in Congress for eight years. Steelman managed to knock off Cabell, which by the time of the election didn’t surprise many people. The size of Steelman’s margin, however, did. He .got almost 56 per cent in a district considered about an even break between Republicans and Democrats. “I felt good about it,” Steelman said after his election. “I had expected it to be real close.” It was a funny campaign, the epitome of the old against the new or perhaps of the new against the old. Steelman took his campaign to the people, door-to-door, the old person-to-person political campaigning tactic that has become known in some circles as the new politics. He had done his homework, part of it probably during his time in Washington as director of the President’s Advisory Council to the Office of Minority Business Enterprise. He had studied Cabell’s voting record, including his absenteeism. He capitalized on Cabell being named a member of the Congressional Dirty Dozen by environmentalists. He poked fun at Cabell’s committee assignments \(District of He knew the district, which had been re-structured to Cabell’s specifications in 1971 congressional redistricting by the Texas Legislature. He had the Republicans’ organizational strength plugged into his corner by virtue of his party service. And he was willing to get out and talk to people, some 26,000 households visited during his 10-month campaign. CABELL, meantime, secure in his tenure, well-known among Dallasites,