ustxtxb_obs_1982_02_26_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

THE TEXAS OBSERVER there, we are run by a few people basically with almost identical backgrounds, that being in the oil and gas industry, and I have just said that at some point we need to break loose from that, and that’s what I would intend to do. And that would be the context of “of the few, by the few, and for the few.” That’s true. Probably more the context of why I think we’re becoming run by the oil industry. Unwise Cuts Now we’ve got Mr. Reagan’s transfer program to deal with I hope we don’t. I believe that Gov. Clements is gonna have to deal with that billion-dollar tax cut he promised and the 25,000 state employees he was gonna reduce the rolls by. Do you intend tax cuts, tax increases, do you have a tax program? What do you have to say about Clements’ fiscal management? Well, first of all, he is too simplistic in his approach. His first year in office, his idea was that everybody was gonna get cut. Now when you are that simple in your approach, you have to get in trouble, I think. Lemme just give you some examples. He cuts a prison facility . . . That prison not only might have alleviated some of the problems that we’re havin’ with the federal government’s investigation, but for sure we’re gonna build it at a cost probably 25 to 30% more than it would have been if we’da built it with 1978-’79 dollars. And so that was one that didn’t make any sense in the name of cutting government. Second, my office is one that I feel somewhat strongly about because the environmental management division is not just one to show environmentalists what we’re doing. It’s what lets us have a drilling program. It’s the group that works with our universities on the sensible leasing of our grazing lands. It’s the group that works with the Forest Service people on how we manage our timberlands. It’s the group that approves all of our permits in the coastal area to see that we don’t do something that knowingly or unknowingly destroys an environmental resource. We may decide knowingly to do it because the economic benefit or the jobs or whatever offsets it. But when you just have to operate a permit mail-order house, you know, you don’t look at the tract itself, to find out environmental management is very significant. . . . When they came to see me here they said, “Now we’ll teach you some business practices over here like we use. One of ’em is ‘management by objective.’ ” I do not believe that they understood that I brought in a guy from Colorado who set up ‘management by objective’ in this office. It was the subject of a paper that business school. That paper either was picked up, or maybe it was happening at the same time, by Texas Instruments. Texas Instruments then gave it to Bill Clements, and Bill Clements said, “Lemme tell you about ‘management by objective.’ ” “Management by objective” was the way we caught up on a three-year back-log in this agency that I inherited. He said, “We’ll show you how to do job task analysis so people become efficient and know what they’re doin’.” We’d completed our job task analysis six months before they ever came in and cut our budget. . . . Would you tell me about your drilling program? . . . What I did when we started was to take every tract that we had and ask for a review of each tract by the environmental groups. In other words, if it was close for their comments. They would come back and say, “Don’t drill while the birds are in.” So we would say, “If you’re gonna have a tract in this proximity to this refuge, you will be on that tract only after April 15th and you’ll be offa that tract before October,” so that no disturbance would happen in that area except when the birds were north. That kinda thing. Or they’d say, “Don’t dredge if the water is six feet deep or less because you’re gonna get below the ability of the sun to operate and make the vegetation that you need then for whatever goes into the food chain, the fish, and that sorta thing. And so we would maybe have a no-dredging requirement. Or we would say, “No drilling within so many feet of an oyster reef.” We’d say, “No drilling except onshore, and slant back.” . . . It’s . . . how you regulate oil and gas leasing in sensitive areas. The oil companies didn’t like this when I did it. They were very bitter about coding all these tracts. Two years had been stopped, California offshore had been stopped, federal offshore had been stopped in various areas, and the companies were saying, “Would you please help us show these people how they can have a sensible environmental drilling program.” . . . I thought it was just good common sense. Now that \(environmental management nated all of these tracts and that sorta thing: how they were coded and how we protected the environment at the time that we produced the oil and gas. Now “Ned Fritz* says, “You never have really stopped anybody from drillin’.” And the answer to that is, there have just been one or two places where we thought it was so sensitive that there just wouldn’t be any. But we have never done it that we didn’t do it properly, which is the other answer to that, and if there ever was one where we just shouldn’t, we wouldn’t. You mean with hearings and giving everybody their say. Well no, I could just say, “We’re not gonna have it.” . . . The basic thing we have done is that we have not unnecessarily disturbed the environment on the coast at the time we have produced the oil and gas. State Enriched Maybe we oughta return to the open *Fritz is a leader of environmental causes who lives in Dallas.