Jon Murray, the former president of American Atheists, along with his mother,
Madalyn Murray O’Hair and his niece, Robin Murray, are still missing. But there
is mounting evidence that the atheists’ disappearance was carefully planned,
and that they cashed out their chips before leaving. John MacCormack of the
San Antonio Express News reported on Sunday that Jon Murray placed a
classified ad in that paper last September — shortly after the trio hurriedly
left Austin — in an attempt to sell his car, a 1988 Mercedes Benz. The ad
read, “’88 Benz 300 SEL, $15,000 cash. Firm.” The ad listed Murray’s cellular
phone number. The paper did not report whether or not the car had been sold.
Spike Tyson, the head of the Austin office of American Atheists, said of the
revelation, “It probably doesn’t mean anything.” —R.B.
Dueling Ordinances
Back in December 1994, developers must have danced a jig after the citycouncil enacted the Composite Watershed Ordinance II (CWO) in response to the
Save Our Springs (SOS) ordinance’s demise at the hands of a Hays County jury.
The city council put the less stringent ordinance into effect in a scramble to
protect the area at least somewhat. But now the recent appeals court decision
puts SOS back in the driver’s seat, and explicitly states that SOS has been in
effect since it was enacted in 1992. But what of the more lax CWO II enacted by
the council 18 months ago? It states that it is the law until there is a final
court ruling on SOS, a decision that could be years away. City Attorney Andrew
Martin has re-drafted the language of the ordinance (which will be presented to
the council for a vote today), in an effort to clarify that SOS — not the CWO
II — is applicable to development applications filed since the recent court
decision on July 31 in favor of SOS.
Not so fast, says Roy Minton, attorney for Barton Creek developer
Freeport-McMoRan. Minton maintains that changing the ordinance a year and a
half after the fact would not only be illegal, but would backstab developers
who expected to build under the less restrictive CWO II. “(The council) passed
an ordinance,” says Minton, who believes the proposed change is lawsuit
fertilizer. “Are they going to now say, `Oh, we were just cutting up?'”
Oddly enough, Bill Bunch, legal eagle for the influential SOS Alliance, agrees
with Minton that changing the CWO II is a mistake, but for different reasons.
Bunch points out that the move is unnecessary, since last month’s ruling
explicitly states that SOS has always been in effect. He also maintains that
the CWO ordinance was never valid in the first place. As councilmembers noted
at last week’s meeting, only five councilmembers voted to enact the CWO II in
1994, and six votes are needed to overturn a citizen-initiated law. Therefore,
allowing the CWO II validity for even those 18 months would wrongfully permit
1,500 acres of development over the most vulnerable aquifer in the U.S., says
Bunch. City attorneys erred, he says, when they allowed the more
developer-friendly CWO II to become law in 1994. “The citizens of Austin, and
two-thirds of the voters, and everyone who wants clean water from the aquifer
shouldn’t suffer just because city lawyers gave their clients bad advice a year
and a half ago,” says Bunch.
But Martin, who doesn’t deny the mistake, says that keeping the CWO II as is
would put the city in a worse position. The language of the ordinance needs to
be changed to reflect the July 31 appeals court decision that SOS once again
rules the day, he says. If the city enforces SOS while its own ordinance says
the CWO II is in effect, “we’ll have even more lawsuits,” he explains.
The council put off voting on the new language last week, but is expected to
take the matter up again today. — A.M.
Recycle at Work
Here’s something for the business community to gnaw on — mandatory recyclingat the office. To Willie Rhodes, the director of the Solid Waste Services
Department, the proposed ordinance wouldn’t be all that burdensome because most
workplaces and multi-family residences already recycle. To private industry
folks, the idea of Big Brother poking around in their dumpsters simply
smells.
“Anytime the city comes in and tells you that you have to do something,
it doesn’t sit well with any industry,” says Bill Roland of Granite Properties
and the legislative chair of the Austin Apartment Association. Roland believes
a good chunk of the city’s 100,000 multi-family units recycle as a rule anyway.
He noted that a recent survey of complexes with 100 or more units showed a
40-60% recycling participation rate.
An effort to get a recycling program up and running in Austin’s burgeoning
apartment colonies has been on and off several working agendas for six years.
This time, it looks as though the latest proposal — which Rhodes pitched to
the Solid Waste Advisory Committee on Aug. 7 — just might make its way onto
the books, provided some compromises can be achieved from varying sectors. This
call to action is necessary, Rhodes intones, because the city-owned landfill
will close in 1999 to make way for the new airport. That means residents can
expect to pay higher garbage fees when the city begins relying on a private
facility for disposal services. And the more garbage is hauled to the landfill,
the higher the costs will be.
Rhodes would like to see Austin with a similar, yet softer, version of a
recycling ordinance that Portland, Oregon, put into place this year. The
Portland measure applies to all businesses, apartment complexes with five or
more units, and construction projects valued at more than $25,000. Violators
are subject to penalties of up to $500. In Austin, exemptions might be given to
multi-family residences with less than 100 units. Plus, the ordinance wouldn’t
apply to some 2,000 small businesses because the city already is phasing them
into its recycling collection program.
If the Solid Waste Advisory Committee does vote to draft an ordinance, there’s
no guarantee it will gain support in the private sector. “We understand the
logic of what the city staff is trying to do,” says Ralph Wueller, municipal
sales director for Texas Disposal Systems. “But I don’t think the business
community is going to be appreciative of the effort because they’re thinking in
the short-term of what it’s going to cost them now. It will cost businesses
more, but how much more I don’t know.” — A.S.
Sex Crime
Two and a half years after the Clinton Administration passed its muchballyhooed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, members of America’s armed forces
are still being persecuted for their sexual persuasion. Take the recent case in
Texas of Maj. Debra Meeks, 41, who, instead of being lauded for her 18-year
career rising through the ranks of the male-dominated military to become a
recruiter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, is now facing court
martial.
Meeks, who has a spotless service record with no disciplinary infractions,
faces a possible jail sentence because a woman who claims to be her former
lover says that Meeks is gay.
A memo obtained by the Chronicle shows that her commanding officers
knew what they were doing when they chose to pursue her case. In February of
1995, Maj. Gen. Henry Hobgood wrote a memo to investigators at the Air Force
Office of Special Investigations, ordering them to “expand the scope of the
investigation” of Meeks to include allegations that “she has engaged in
homosexual conduct.”
Meeks’ court martial began at Lackland on Monday morning. She is represented
by Michael Tigar, a professor at the University of Texas Law School, who also
represents Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma City bombing trial, and Peter Held, a
San Antonio-based lawyer who spent 18 years in the Air Force as a judge
advocate.
Meeks will be prosecuted under the sodomy provision of the Uniform Code of
Military Justice (UCMJ), the regulations which govern all military personnel.
The sodomy regulation has been on the books since the uniform code was adopted
in 1951. If convicted, Meeks may be sent to military prison for up to eight
years and lose her military pension of $1,800 per month.
The statute is broadly written. It says that any person who engages in
“unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex”
is guilty of sodomy. Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense under
President Ronald Reagan and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,
says the language could pose a problem. “If we read that article in the UCMJ
literally, we wouldn’t have too many people left in the force,” he said. “We’d
probably have the chaplains and that would be it.” — R.B.
Global Warming
Do global sea level increases, temperature increases, more killer heat waves,and greater risk of epidemics sound ominous, threatening, and worrisome?
Certainly, and the U.S. Climate Action Network would have us believe that
greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from car exhaust can cause such
catastrophes. A Town Hall Meeting entitled “Global Warming and the Greenhouse
Effect” at the UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs on Tuesday, sponsored by a
bevy of environmental groups, addressed the debate over whether or not our
production of greenhouse gases will lead to the aforementioned disasters. As
A&M Professor Kenneth Bowman put it before the full house at Bass Lecture
Hall, “evidence suggests a human influence on global climate,” although “many
uncertainties remain.”
After greetings and introductions by Austin City Councilmember Gus Garcia, who
emceed the event, two panels of professors, environmental experts, and elected
officials batted around such topics as ozone depletion, the effects of warming
on agriculture and sea levels, and the accuracy of global climate
predictions.
Roger Duncan led an impressive overview of the City’s efforts to curb
greenhouse gases, primarily based on Sustainable Community Initiatives such as
rebates for energy conservation, the city’s Green Builder program to make
residences more energy efficient, and Climate Wise, a program for industries to
cut greenhouse emissions. Duncan added that the city is using solar and wind
power to fuel some of Austin’s electrical needs, and has plans to convert
Austin’s power supply to renewable resources. He also mentioned that Austin
joined the international campaign Cities for Climate Protection, which strives
to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 20% of 1990 levels by 2010. —
C.C.
This article appears in August 16 • 1996 and August 16 • 1996 (Cover).