ustxtxb_obs_1983_08_19_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

Autographed copies of AFTERNOON OF A FAUN by Shelby Hearon WATSON & COMPANY Name BOOKS Address 604 BLANCO STREET MC/VISA # AUSTIN, TEXAS 78703 Exp. Date $15.10 per copy, including postage, tax and handling questions raised, I would have never taken the money,” he told the Observer. Mauro bristles, however, at any suggestion that Manges’ money might influence his decisions. “When I spend $1 million to get elected,” he said, “$60,000 doesn’t get you anything except a return phone call. That’s just not that much money. . . . Clinton Manges is not my largest contributor; he’s in the top ten.” The money helped, nevertheless. It helped Mauro, it helped Bullock, it helped Mattox. It helped the Supreme Court candidates. John Rogers, a laborer in the liberal trenches for more than two decades, insists that Pat Maloney, using Clinton Manges’ money, and Houston liberal stalwart Billy Goldberg have between them changed the face of Texas politics. Without them, he says, Texas liberals would be right back where they were in 1962, the year John Connally defeated liberal Don Yarborough in the Democrats’ race for the gubernatorial nomination. Along with Clinton Manges, Rogers also believes that the entrenched Texas establishment banking, oil, insurance interests, and the big law firms is fighting back, and that the Mobil case is the first battle of what may be a protracted war. Mattox was the first target, he believes, partly because his combative, shoot-from-the-hip approach to things made him most vulnerable. With rumors floating around of about questionable connections between the land office and the Krueger senatorial campaign, Garry Mauro may be next. It’s also an effort, some believe, to deliver a message to the state Supreme Court. “The difference for the oil companies with Mattox and Mauro,” Pat Maloney Good books in every field JENKINS PUBLISHING CO. The Pemberton Press John H. Jenkins, Publisher Box 2085 \(1 Austin 78768 told the Observer,” is that now they have to walk in the front door and that’s a terribly frightening experience to them. Before they didn’t have to try a lawsuit on its merits. This would not have happened if Mattox had not been there or Mauro.” Mattox, calling himself “the people’s lawyer,” has been battling high utility rates and industrial pollution. He has looked into nuclear power plant regulation and efforts to locate radioactive waste in Texas. He asked the legislature to grant him wide-ranging powers to pursue antitrust cases and says he plans to look closely at the bond business. Mattox asked the legislature to let him have five more lawyers in the antitrust section to investigate corporate collusion. “We have not had aggressive antitrust enforcement . . . since [Attorney General] Jimmy Allred was known as the trust-buster fifty years ago,” Mattox told the Dallas Times-Herald. In this regard, Land Commissioner Mauro thinks Mattox’s understaffing makes it essential for the AG to hire outside counsel to assist in the Mobil case. “It’s the biggest case in the history of the state of Texas,” he told the Observer. “As far as I’m concerned we ought to have every law firm we can put on retainer to give us another round of ammunition. They’ve hired three law firms, let’s hire three law firms. Let’s match them law firm for law firm, lawyer for lawyer . . . I want to hire whoever it takes to win this case. Jim Mattox takes the position that he’s the people’s lawyer and he ought to handle it. I don’t disagree with that. It’s just a difference in management style. If I were him, I would go out they’ve got Fuibright, Jaworski, I’d get Baker, Botts. They hire Stubbleman, McRae; I’d hire the best law firm in Midland on my side. . . . We’re not talking penny-ante money. We’re talking $150 million, $300 million, $1.7 billion, whatever figure you want to put on it. . . . Jim wants to do it himself. I can understand that. That’s why he got elected. He spent a little over a million dollars to get the job. But my position is he ought to just manage the case and manage a lot of lawyers.” While Mattox has been fighting Mobil, Mauro has been leading the fight against the Exxon Corporation and enacting policies potentially disturbing to other oil companies. He announced a $4 million settlement with Exxon, resulting from questions first raised by Manges on questionable Duval County Ranch Co. leases and from a more aggressive program to collect money on state mineral rights. “The fact is the state of Texas is the largest landowner in the state, but we don’t develop our own land,” Mauro told the Observer. “We are in partnership with people in the private sector to make our money. And the real question is: how do we define that partnership? When the gray area arises, do we split the gray area 50-50? Do we go to the courthouse and try to get it all for us or they get it all for them? Through lack of action on our part do they get more than 50 %? What my job really is is to make sure that in the gray areas we get our 50% . . . . Right now all I want to do is get our fair share. I want the partnership to really work.” Mauro has also asked the King Ranch hard questions about leases on 18,000 acres where the state has mineral interests, and his office has established a field audit team that will check whether the state is receiving the correct amount on each well drilled on state land. “We’re going to run the state’s lands like a business,” he said. “We’re going to make sure every penny the state has coming to it gets here. I am auditing all our leases and we’re going to pursue all of them aggressively, period.” The audits have already turned up $4 million in unpaid revenues. Mauro has also been taking the state’s share of the petroleum pie in gas and oil rather than in royalty payments. He has agreed to supply up to 10 million cubic feet of gas to San Antonio’s city-owned electric service utility for the next five years a deal that should save the city $4 million a year while it increases state revenues by $1 million. As for the case itself, Mattox thinks it will go to court and will be appealed to the state Supreme Court. That’s why he thinks the question of recusing Judge Garcia is a stalling tactic, he told the Observer. Pat Maloney, on the other hand, thinks Mobil will never go to trial. Mauro agrees. “I think it would be very foolish for Mobil to let it get to the courthouse,” he told the Observer. “My guess 12 AUGUST 19, 1983