ustxtxb_obs_1990_07_27_50_00022-00000_000.pdf

If you’ve missed the Southwest Review in the past few years, you’ve also missed: John Barth Paul Christensen Annie Dillard Millicent Dillon Rita Dove Horton Foote Laura Furman Reginald Gibbons Don Graham Allan Gurganus Elizabeth Harris Shelby Hearon Rolando Hinojosa Edward Hirsch James Hoggard Beverly Lowry Walter McDonald James Merrill Howard Nemerov Naomi Shihab Nye Joyce Carol Oates C. W. Smith Frederick Timer Miles Wilson Don’t miss it, or them, any longer. Subscribe now. $20/yr $40/2 yrs $50/3 yrs Name I enclose $ \(Please send Southwest Review, 6410 Airline Road, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Continued from page 15 to “cut state operational spending by 7 percent except for education, law enforcement and health care.” According to figures from page 1-1 of the Legislative Budget Board’s 1990-91 Fiscal Size-Up, the state operational budget, less education, law enforcement and health care, comes to $13.09 billion. Seven percent of this sum is $916.3 million not nearly enough to fund Claytie’s drug war. What are the chances of trimming this amount from the state budget? Galveston state representative James Hury, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, believes chances are slim. “If you remove [education, law enforcement and health care], then you are basically talking about … the judiciary. The judiciary budget could not be cut by $900 million.” Citizens especially those in the state’s urban centers who already face long waits for court dates would doubtless agree. Hury said that in attempting to resolve the Edgewood case the Legislature had scrutinized the budget and mapped out cuts to finance education reform. Those cuts totaled only about $120 million. “I think we’ve looked at every nook and cranny,” Hury said. “If he thinks we’re going to cut another billion … I’m at a loss where he’s going to find it.” San Antonio state Representative Dan Morales, a member of Ways and Means and candidate for attorney general, described chances for a $900 million budget cut as “zero.” “Those sorts of reductions do not represent prudent decision making. I do not think he’s serious in that proposal,” Morales said. But let us assume that Williams is able to bankrupt the judiciary \(the same judiciary that’s supposed to be putting the drug crimiup almost $600 million short. Revenue Total: +$916,144,000 Balance: $ 1.605 billion PARING PLANES Williams also suggests privatizing the state’s 61 airplanes in a bid to save money. Jerry Daniels, fiscal officer of the Texas Aircraft Pooling Board, does not think the airplane proposal will fly. He said the Board was appropriated $472,691 last year, but collected $2,648,205 from governmental users. Air travel thus costs the state $3,120,896 yearly. Daniels said private carriers could not provide the same service so cheaply. “It would be like selling your car and taking a cab,” he said. He said that charter flights would not provide the spot service the state requires. “They couldn’t call up on two hours notice. You can’t do that with a private charter. They’ll say, ‘You want what? When?’ Daniels said the pooling board undertook 2,249 flights in 1989, totaling 502,760 miles. Jerry Lanzer, chief pilot for Houston’s Enterprise Aviation, said that his firm charges $2.80 per statutory mile for a turboprop airplane. Jet travel is proportionately more expensive. In mileage alone the state would then be paying $1,407,728 per year. However, Enterprise charges a minimum of $1,000 per flight, and $100 per hour for waiting, or $250 for an overnight stay. So the cost of the state’s ticket then jumps to at least $2,249,000, plus fees for time spent waiting on the ground. These charges could quickly whittle away at the remaining $871,896 dif ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES AUSTIN, TEXAS 7S131 512 45:3-1533 Send me your list. Name Street City Zip ference between what the state now pays and what Enterprise would charge. But let’s assume the state is able to work out some kind of volume discount that would neutralize those waiting fees, and allow Williams his revenue estimate. Revenue Total: + $871,896 Balance: $586,472,604 WAGING WAR ON WAGES Another Williams revenue -raiser is his promise to repeal the state’s prevailing wage law . trying to balance the budget on the aching backs of the blue-collar workers. But many doubt that anti-union measures save the state money. “States that do not have a right-towork law … those are the most progressive states, who seem to flourish economically even in the hard times,” said Jim Stinson, executive secretary of the Houston-Gulf Coast Building and. Construction Trades Council. “When local, city, or state governments spend taxpayers’ money, and have semiand unskilled workers complete these projects, we see a lot of re-do and maintenance work … You pay for a cheaper product, you get a cheaper product,” Stinson said. It is not yet proven that paying lower sums for state contracts will save Texas money in the long run. Revenue Total: + $0 Final Balance: $586, 472, 604. . So there it is. What makes it so difficult to hold the Republican candidate for governor accountable for his promises is their vagueness; Williams has not sat down with the current state budget and shown, line by line, just what he intends to cut and what he wants to augment. But even giving Clayton Williams every favorable assumption including his plan to devastate the court system even if he gets everything just the way he wants it, we find that Williams still , comes up over one and half billion dollars short. Considering the three special sessions and court order that it took to produce a revenue increase of “only” $628 million, is it realistic to think that Texas can pay for Williams’s pipe dreams? What’s much more likely, of course, is that the lawmakers and the people they represent won’t stand for such huge cuts in an alreadyaustere budget, meaning that a Williams \(upon whose lips we have read a promise of no new tory will leave Texas at least $2.6 billion in the red, and probably much more. This is fiscal conservatism? Maybe Ann Richards could find out just how honest Williams is being about those proposals: She could ask him to guarantee, from his considerable personal fortune, the state’s balanced budget under a Williams administration, allowing no tax increases. His answer to such a request would probably tell us all we need to know about Clayton Williams’s budget and his promises. 22 JULY 27, 1990