Edited by Andrea Barnett, with contributions this week by Alex de Marban and
Roseana Auten.
UNDER THE RUG: Lance Winters, a 13-year city employee known for his outspoken
citizen advocacy, has been informed that he is a casualty of the
belt-tightening proposed by the1995-96 budget. Winters’ boss, City Clerk Elden
Aldridge, says he was under orders to cut his department’s budget by 6%, and
that he did so by transferring Winters’ job – along with another position – to
a different department. “I really had no other choice,” he says.
Winters’ supporters, however, suspect the city’s motives. “Are they trying to
penalize him because he’s an advocate of the citizens?” asks Mack DeLeon,
Ronney Reynolds’ appointee to the Human Rights Commission. “Is it because he
spoke up during the forum? Did they answer him by saying you’re fired? It sure
appears that way.”
To begin with, Winters, who makes $20,000 a year, has more experience than
eight of the 11 employees in the clerk’s office. Adding credence to the
suspicions, says DeLeon, is the harsh and swift way that the clerk’s office
dealt out Winters’ termination.
Though the council is not scheduled to accept the proposed budget and hence,
the dismissal, until mid-September, Winters was asked to pack his belongings
and leave on July 26, the same day he received his termination notice. In fact,
even before Winters arrived to work that day, a locksmith had already begun
changing the locks to the all of the department’s offices. “I did not want
him… to have access to the building,” admits Aldridge. Winters says he
immediately fell ill and went home, unable to remove his belongings. The
following day, with Winters still absent from work, the clerk’s office ordered
an employee to box Winters’ items.
Winters, whose tasks included the publication of ordinances, thinks the reason
for the rushed dismissal is simple: after years of his criticizing city
government, the powers that be no longer trust his proximity to sometimes
privileged information. “The objective is to oust an advocate of the people,”
says Winters. “That’s what it boils down to.”
Beginning in 1991, Winters, who calls himself the “Citizen Advocate,” appeared
weekly during Channel 6 public news conferences to distribute information about
bureaucratic wrongdoings or mismanagement. A year later, with the news
conferences at their height of popularity, then-City manager Camille Barnett
severely restricted Winters’ access by allowing each citizen only 10 news shows
per year. The new regulations also required each citizen speaker to sign a
document stating that the shows may not be aired depending on the content.
Thereafter, Winters began utilizing the citizens’ communication portion of the
council meetings to denounce the altered regulations as a First Amendment
infringment.
The controversy came to a head during Channel 6’s 10-year celebration on June
15. The mayor, among a panel of guests responding to questions from the public,
was asked by Winters for an explanation of the altered regulations. The mayor
responded that “city management” felt that limiting the amount of conferences
for each citizen would “encourage a broad base of participation.”
Winters, who points out that weeks now go by without a single speaker signed
up, replied “Why not let [the public] come in week after week to do their own
show, just like city staff does?” The mayor did not respond then, but
thereafter, says Winters, mayoral employees began a campaign of “psychological
warfare. They refused to greet me, and they would turn their heads as I came
down the hallway.”
Mayor Todd could not be reached for comment. Aldridge has granted
Winters his paycheck until October 2, and has advised him to seek other city
employment at the Human Resources Department.– A.M.
BACK TO SCHOOL, ALREADY? Once upon a time, the school year always began some
time after Labor Day, and ended some time after Memorial Day. But for some time
now, school has been starting earlier and earlier every year. For the second
year in a row, the Austin Independent School District (AISD) is starting its
calendar three weeks before the Labor Day holiday – Monday, August 14.
Why the early start? The reason is twofold, says AISD spokesman
Jeff Prescott, who headed the calendar committee in 1993. Parents, students,
and teachers – especially at the secondary school level – all wanted to end the
first semester before the winter break in December. Many people found it
difficult to rebound from the two-week hiatus over Christmas and New Year’s in
time for final exams in January.
The second reason is that the AISD administration hoped to curb late
registration and admission. In the years when school started a week before
Labor Day, literally thousands of parents did not send their children to school
until after the holiday – the proper, “traditional” time to return to school.
This situation made it impossible for principals to know exactly how many
teachers to hire, rendering the campus unstable for several more weeks. The
calendar committee speculated that parents would be much more reluctant to
allow their children to miss three weeks of instruction, instead of just one,
and thus, would be more likely to comply with the start date.
But the earlier start has had little or no effect on late admissions. Last
year, 7,039 children still showed up at their schools a week late – a figure
that is comparable to enrollment patterns of previous years. Another 2,247
students enrolled in AISD over the next five weeks. The district’s enrollment
in 1994-95 was 73,342 by the end of the first six weeks; enrollment is expected
to be 74,885 by the end of the first six weeks in 1995-96, says Dan Robertson,
AISD’s director of planning and development.
The AISD Office of Student Records (414-1726) can help you find your assigned
school and get your child registered, if you have not already done so. If you
know where your child is supposed to attend school, you may register on campus
before the first day. You’ll need proof of immunization and school supplies
(lists are available on campus) to be admitted. Low-income families can get
financial assistance with school supplies on campus, courtesy of For the
Children. If you need information on student transportation, call 414-2370. – R.A.
BIRTH OF A WISE-USE NATION: If all goes as expected, national property rights
groups may be coming to Austin in the future with hands outstretched. The Farm
Credit Property Rights Foundation, based out of the Farm Credit Bank of Texas
on US 290, has set forth on a mission “[T]o serve as an educational and
research organization that actively protects property rights.”
In its first newsletter, dateline July, the non-profit group exorts supporters
to donate, saying “[t]he main function of the Foundation is to raise money for
the property rights movement. This is not a short-term project; it will take
years to `correct’ the wrongs, rewrite the laws and try the lawsuits necessary
to restore what the Founding Fathers envisioned.”
So far, that has meant collecting more than $1.1 million in donations, and
doling portions of that money out to groups like the New York-based Alliance
for America, the conservative National Policy Forum, and American Loggers
Solidarity in Washington state.
Dan Byfield, president of the foundation’s board, works for the Farm Credit
Bank, and is the contact for a national conference scheduled for the end of
August at the Austin Marriott on “The Future of Property Rights.” Speakers will
include Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Attorney General Dan Morales, and
Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho).
A former Austinite and environmental activist says he attended a similar
conference in Arizona last month, where Byfield spoke, introducing his
organization and passing out copies of their newletter. The activist (who asked
not to be named, as he wants to go to future conferences incognito) says that
leaders in that conference hammered home three points: “First, they’re trying
to paint property rights as civil rights. Second, they use the Endangered
Species Act as an example of nameless, faceless government bureaucrats turned
extremist environmentalists who hate people. And third, they try to portray
radical environmentalists as terrorists, and polluters as the real
environmentalists.”
According to the foundation’s newsletter, the group expects more than 250
people to attend the conference, “all of whom will leave with a conference
manual consisting of source documents, case information, and legal strategies.”
For more information, call Byfield at 465-0400. – A.B.
NUCLEAR PETITIONS: The French may have slowed down the Rainbow Warrior’s
efforts to protest the planned testing of eight nuclear bombs this fall in
French Polynesia, but Greenpeace has not given up the fight. The ship will be
returning to Moruroa in September, joined by two other Greenpeace vessels and
ships from all over the world, including an unarmed New Zealand naval ship, and
a traditional ocean canoe from the Cook Islands, to again try to stop the
bombs.
French officials seized the Rainbow Warrior last month when it sailed near
Moruroa to protest the planned tests, and to publicize support for the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, currently being negotiated in Switzerland. The
seizure occurred exactly 10 years after the French bombed the Rainbow Warrior
as it was docked in New Zealand, leaving a Greenpeace photographer dead.
Landlocked Austinites can join the fray by signing one of Greenpeace’s
petitions to the French, protesting the tests. The group is trying to gather
five million signatures in 160 countries by September 1. Austin’s goal, says
local director Bill Jackson, is 30,000. “We’re working internationally to put
pressure on France to show them that the whole world is watching,” Jackson
says. So far, Austin Greenpeacers have gathered about 3,000 signatures by
canvassing places like Whole Foods, Sixth Street, and the Drag. For more info
on the French nuclear tests, to get a copy of the petition, or to volunteer,
call 474-2117, or stop by Greenpeace offices at 1403 Rio Grande. –
A.B.
This article appears in August 11 • 1995 and August 11 • 1995 (Cover).