ustxtxb_obs_1981_07_10_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

innocent. “All hardened criminals,” Doyle says, waving a hand at the classrooms. “We’ve got little fellers in here for doing some of the most heinous crimes you ever heard of.” The tour proceeds through the industrial shop, where inmates labor at a variety of tasks, such as making brooms and mops. The inmates are not paid anything for their work, which obviously is a major reason the TDC operates at such bargain-basement prices. Texas is one of only three states in the country that do not pay their prison inmates at least a nominal wage for their labors. And the TDC believes very strongly in the work ethic; “laziness” is specifically prohibited by the regulations. The tour moves on to one of the cellblocks, a long row of barred boxes stacked three tiers high. Later Doyle explains that this is a protective cellblock, reserved for weak or passive or homosexual inmates. “I’ve got 15 homosexuals down here,” Doyle says “who think they’re women, and 2,400 I’ve got to protect ’em.” Each of the nine-feet-by-five-feet cells houses only one inmate here \(the tour group is not permitted to see cells where three inmates are housed in the same 45-square feet space, a situation Judge Justice’s order sought to prohibit in the some of them poking about among the meager toilet articles and stationery supplies lined up on the shelves. There are no pictures on the walls, no pinups, no calendars; each cell looks exactly like the others. “Not too bad,” one man says as he looks around a cell that is probably no bigger than his bathroom back in Houston. “Not too bad at all.” That seems to be the consensus. AFTER LEADING the group back to the briefing room, Doyle voices a common TDC complaint: “We’ve got 30,000 inmates,” he says, “and I wish someone would tell us what we’re going to do with them.” “We could send them to Cuba,” one of the jurors says, and some of the others laugh. Doyle closes with a final bit of wisdom. “There is something very basically wrong with an individual who comes to the penitentiary,” he says. The jurors give him a round of applause and then, fine, upstanding citizens all, file out the front door, past the neatly trimmed lawn laced with electronic sensors, past the double rows of chain link and barbed wire fences, past the armed guard in the picket tower. The reporter asks some of them what they think. Some are shocked, some saddened. But most of them seem to think that TDC inmates are getting what they deserve. College Construction Financing The Haves and the Have-Nots Austin A week after the regular session of the legislature adjourned, a Senate aide revealed his solution to the dilemma of college construction financing: “Every two years, we’ll invite all the college and university presidents to the Capitol, put the available construction money in a black pot in the center of the rotunda, and give them 60 seconds to grab all they can. We’ll stand above them at the rail and watch.” His proposal sounds desperate, but so do many recent proposals offered by legislators, who have yet to reach an agreement on college construction funding and will probably Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby is “quite sure” -address the issue again in the special session. Although not specified in Clements’ special session call, higher education finance is tied up in the abolition of the ad valorem tax and even the water fund. The need is a source for college construction revenue for the schools that do not share in the Permanent University bly simple issue are a federal investigation of discrimination in Texas colleges and universitites, the abolition of the ad The writer is a Senior Plan II student at UT-Austin and lobbied for the Texas Student Lobby during the regular session. She is from Commerce, Texas. 4 July 10, 1981 By Amy Johnson valorem tax, the future of PUF, the extent of the need for more college construction, the possibility of major increases in tuition or a minor one in the oil severance tax, and the institution of a credit card tax, not to mention a few billion dollars. The trouble started during the 66th legislature when a last-minute amendment tacked onto the “property tax reform” bill reduced the ad valorem tax from a dime per $100 to a hundredth of a cent per $100. This move has been challenged by three regents and a student from Midwestern State University, who have filed a suit against the State Property Tax Board claiming that a constitutionally established tax was effectively abolished without voter consent. Before its “reform,” the ad valorem tax generated about $50 million a year and financed construction at 17 institutions of higher learning in the state. Now the fund theoretically pulls in about $250 a year. Since schools receiving money from the ad valorem tax are restricted constitutionally from acquiring general revenue for construction, Atty. Gen. Mark White ruled that money cannot be appropriated to such schools for that purpose from the state budget, no matter how minute the ad valorem fund. In the final days of the 66th, a constitutional amendment which would have opened up PUF to all UT and Texas A&M system schools died. Prairie View A&M supporters contend it was squashed by Texas A&M advocates who refuse to fairly share their portion of PUF with the historically black institution. An interim committee, whose members included Hobby, Speaker Bill Clayton, Bill Moore, then a senator from Bryan, and Frank Erwin, former chairman of the UT regents, recommended the system-wide expansion of PUF and a new permanent fund for non-PUF schools that would be filled with revenue from substantial tuition increases. Meanwhile, The Council of [College] Presidents supported PUF expansion and a three-cent ad valorem tax. \(“Colleges don’t care where the money comes from,” Rep. Wayne Peveto of Orange was quoted, “They’d take it from their own mother, as long as they get the Further complicating the situation, the U.S. Dept. of Education was investigating Texas colleges and universities concerning their compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Last January, after receiving a negotiated plan from Atty. Gen. White and disheartening statistics from Rep. Wilhelmina Delco of Austin, outgoing Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Cynthia Brown ruled that Texas