ustxtxb_obs_1990_01_12_50_00026-00000_000.pdf

Our environment laws are as good as most industrial states solved. But we now have the opportunity to solve them if we set our mind to it. We’ve seen now the experience over seven years of what can be done to build incentives in the minds and hearts of young people. How we can build hope into those lives. That’s what we’ve got to be doin’. And that hope has got to be translated into reality. What can Texas do to make that a certainty for a kid that’s born in an inner-city neighborhood in Houston or born of parents who for generations have never spoken English in South Texas, or for a poor Anglo kid whose parents have tried to make a living on a rural West Texas ranch. How do we bring all of that about That’s what this campaign is all about..And that’s what my commitment is. We’re going to do it in the next four years at such a rate that people will look around and say, “My God, look at what they’re doing in Texas. They’re number one. They’ve moved to the front.” How would I be different in crime from those other people’s crime packages? I’m curious. I see Clayton Williams has all these actors out there breaking rocks. Clayton Williams is from West Texas. He ought to know that we’ve got enough broken rocks al 26 JANUARY 12, 1990 ready. We’ve got to build lives, we can’t be spending all our time breaking rocks. You know, there are positive solutions to these problems. Nobody’s tougher on law enforcement than I am. Nobody’s tougher on punishment than I am. Nobody. You can be tough but you don’t have to be stupid. You can be strong but you don’t have to be, you know, abusive. Is that a reference to Jim Mattox, who describes himself as the “Texas Tough” candidate? I’m not saying anything about any other candidate but that it’s important that we be wiser in the way that we deal with these problems. The programs I’m talking about, I’m a very strong law-and-order candidate. I have been in every race. But at the same time I’m strong on those issues of crime and punishment, I’m also very very committed, more than anyone else, to the positive side of prevention. And it gets back to again, as we began this discussion of education. Very few kids who have good jobs at I.B.M spend their times robbing 7-11’s. Do you see ethics reform as being an important issue? Campaign finance is something that I have worked on for a long time. And we try to make it full and complete disclosure, rather than have some group come in and give you some higher moral reflex on what had occurred. We saw the efforts at that in Washington and I don’t think they worked by anybody’s standards. If you think what went on in the investigation of Speaker Wright was appropriate I think it was obnoxious. You just lay the facts before the people of this state and this country, and I’m sure they’ll make the right decision for leadership .. . Yet a candidate walked onto the floor of the Senate not a candidate, Bo Pilgrim, trying to influence policy and handed out $10,000 checks to That was awful. Yet [Travis County District Attorney] Ronnie Earl said he could not prosecute because it conformed with existing law. Do some loopholes need to be closed? . . . There are certainly time periods when contributions should be restricted. They do that during legislative sessions. I think public officials for instance, we have several candidates today who spent their full time, it appears, during the last several years doing nothing but fundraising. In the face of no official action . . . That has to be changed. I think that’s a very important issue. It’s unbecoming, if not illegal. Or it raises a suspicion of some nefarious conduct, when you see people taking official action and at the same time there’s a campaign contribution .. . Would you encourage do you think the [environmental] laws are adequate? . . . We have laws that aren’t being enforced today. They can be properly and soundly enforced. The biggest polluters in Texas sometimes today are public authorities. It shouldn’t be that way. Our cities and political subdivisions should be taking the lead in seeing that our environment is protected. And we can do that. We’ve seen dramatic changes in Houston, in our cleanup of the Houston ship channel .. . Are there important bureaucratic solutions, in the sense that there needs to be a reorganization of existing enforcing authorities for environmental regulations? I think that Texas, of all the industrial states, has probably done a better job than most. I would put us up with, well better than New York, better than New Jersey, Perth Amboy, better than many places. California? California has it’s own problems: