ustxtxb_obs_1990_10_26_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

FUTUM COMMUNICATIONS. INC Data Processing Typesetting Printing Mailing 512-389-1500 FAX 512-389-0867 3019 Alvin DeVane, Suite 500 Austin, Texas 78741 children to Debbie. The dissolution of the Shine family was contentious enough that the court agreement listed, in longhand, under a typed list of property Shine was to receive: “Photos of girls with father.” At the time of the final agreement in 1986, Hugh Shine consented to a court order compelling his employer, Dean Witter of Temple, to withhold $500 of his salary per month in child support. Shine also agreed to provide Debbie $200 a month in alimony for 15 years. Shortly after this settlement, Debbie Shine married Hugh Shine’s longtime business partner, Jeff Lagow, and Shine was back in court filing suit against his former wife. Shine’s conditions to settle the new suit: that the alimony payments be discontinued, that the court order mandating the withholding of Hugh’s income be dropped, and that the child support payments be lowered by $100 a month. It is unclear from the court papers whether Shine had been paying the child support or alimony prior to this new settlement. Observer sources say that Shine was deficient in his child support payments. On the campaign trail, Shine often mentions his wife and children, but he omits the fact that he married his current wife, another, younger Debbie, 15 months ago and that his two girls, age 8 and 10, live in Houston with his ex-wife and ex-business partner. By the terms of the divorce agreement, Shine is allowed very little access to these children. One of the issues in this rather nasty campaign has been whether the kids seen in the commercial are actually the candidate’s. Shine has two girls, but to many who have viewed the commercial, one of the children appears to be a boy. When Shine was challenged on this point at a press conference, he insisted that both children were girls, and were his. But the limited contact access he is allowed with the children raises the question whether Shine could have put them in his TV ad. \(He has since pulled the spot from the air, after a man shown in the ad shaking hands with Shine turned out to be a Democratic In addition to the charge that Edwards supports gay rights, Shine has said that Edwards is an outsider to the 1 1 th District. Edwards’s state Senate district, which he has represented since 1982, includes the largest city in the Congressional district, Waco, but Edwards had to change his residence to run for the seat. Shine, however, may not have his own roots planted very deeply in the soil of the 11th District. A biography distributed by the Shine campaign says that the candidate only moved to the district in 1980. And though Shine owns two pieces of property in Bell County, he does not presently own a home in the district, according to Bell County tax records. “Hugh Shine first served us in Korea,” an announcer says in an ad featuring a black and white photo of the candidate in uniform. Once again, the words may be accurate, but they are misleading. The implicit message is that Shine is a war veteran, but records in the Bell County Courthouse show that Shine did not join the military until 1974, a good 20 years after most U.S. troops had left Korea. Shine, born in 1952, was still in the crib in 1953, when the armistice was signed ending the Korean War. By the time Shine did visit Korea, M*A*S*H was well past its second season. Hugh Shine \(like Republican U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, who is paying for many of the Republican Party’s design to run every race in the same fashion, beginning with the formulaic ad campaign which includes a proper admixture of prejudice, patriotism, and innuendo, to serve as a backdrop for a candidate who is by design an exemplar of Christian, middle-class “family values.” In Hugh Shine’s case as in the case of a few other candidates the man just doesn’t fit the mold. Continued from page 7 oppose the use of hazardous waste as a supplemental fuel, the first step has been to convince the City Council to oppose the Systech/La Farge operation and to enter the TWC review process as a legal intervenor. Initially, the council seemed inclined either to support or be ambivalent about the burning of hazardous waste. They declared the SAFE petitions invalid, and said only that they were “concerned” with the future operation at Systech/La Farge. At. the September 24 meeting of the City Council, however, 700 people attended, and many spoke against the burning of hazardous waste. By the meeting’s end, the council had declared its opposition to the transportation, storage, and burning of hazardous waste in the city of New Braunfels, and set aside $50,000 for the legal counsel and experts needed for the final hearing with the TWC. Further, the council decided to research the legality of annex ordinances and the possibility of taxing and restricting the transportation and burning of hazardous waste. Officials at Systech/La Farge characterize the negative response to their application as irrational. “It’s perfectly safe, they just don’t want it,” said Chadbourne to the Observer. “It’s almost like somebody saying, ‘You’re black, I don’t want you here in my cafeteria.” Now, Chadbourne and his co-workers await the TWC hearing that will decide on their permit application. On Saturday, October 27, over 200 residents of New Braunfels, San Marcos, Wimberley, and other towns marched to the front gate of the LaFarge plant, chanting slogans such as “We’re in charge, not LaFarge.” It was a characteristically polite rally; La Farge officials officials refused to come out and talk to the marchers, but did hire two ladies to sell lemonade to them. The rallyers presented the company with a banner-sized “eviction notice,” and made a point of cleaning up all their litter. Representatives from Air, Water, Earth, Greenpeace, and Texans United made speeches, as did local residents. One professor read off a list of the hazardous chemicals that would be produced by the plant; after each name, the crowd shouted “No!” Since the opponents of Systech/La Farge are pursuing their case by hiring lawyers and experts to represent them in the TWC hearing, the conflict between industry and community continues to proceed by rules that were produced in compromise between the state and industry. And if the permits to burn and store hazardous waste are denied, then, for a time at least, one match is finished and the rules remain unchanged. However, if the Systech/La Farge permits are approved and New Braunfels tries to control the burning of hazardous waste by taxing and regulating the company” activities, the situation changes considerably. By discovering and developing its own regulatory powers, New Braunfels might test the limits of a community’s sovereignty and challenge the centralized authority of the state regulatory agencies. 10 OCTOBER 26, 1990