Black churches have burned throughout the South; redistricting to give blacks
a voting majority was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court; and now
affirmative action was dealt a devastating blow at the University of Texas last
Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a reverse discrimination
case against UT’s School of Law. That means the Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling
barring the school from considering race in accepting students still stands.
Only universities under the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction — Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas — are affected, so the rest of the country can still use
race as a factor in admissions. The law could hurt UT’s already sparse minority
enrollment, its faculty recruitment, and its efforts to obtain grants…
Speaking of court decisions, at least the Texas Supreme Court came up with a
good one. Property-rights advocates were told last Friday that they would have
to yield to the benefit of all with regards to water rights, when the state
Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Edwards Aquifer Authority’s right to
regulate the amount of water that can be pumped from the southern portion of
the aquifer. The case had been brought against the Authority, the State of
Texas, and the City of San Antonio by farmers and ranchers who irrigate their
crops with water from the aquifer. The decision means that landowners will now
have to seek permits from the Authority to withdraw water from the aquifer in
all or parts of Hays, Caldwell, Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe, Medina, Uvalde, and
Atascosa Counties… Texans got tons of attention — most of it unflattering —
in Washingtonian magazine’s annual ranking of the best and worst in
Congress. About 300 congressional staff members voted on the categories which
ranged from “best dressed” to “brainiest.” Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm
was voted the biggest Senate “showhorse,” and ranked third in the “meanest” and
“biggest windbag” categories. Fellow Texan and Republican Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison came in second behind California Representative Sonny Bono in the “no
rocket scientist” category, and managed to win first place as “best dressed” in
the Senate, earning her a photo on the magazine’s cover… — A.D.
Talk about synchronicity. TheChronicle recently told the story of one
family’s fruitless struggle to obtain mental health services for their
nine-year-old daughter through their medical plan (“Warning: Managed Care May
Be Hazardous,” June 21, 1996, Vol. 15, No. 42). A seven-year-old community
partnership, dedicated to aiding families in the same type of crisis, is
shedding its old skin and repositioning itself as a “new” resource. The
Children’s Mental Health Partnership, a coalition of over 44 different
public-education, law-enforcement, and mental-health entities in the
Austin/Travis County area, helps coordinate some of the most-needed services of
all — monthly conferences with parents, counselors, and other involved parties
to help end the delays in service that hamper a child’s recovery. Need help, or
know a family who does? Call 445-7780. — R.A.
Red-Baiting Rednecks
You could almost hear the collective panties of Austin’s businessestablishment wadding all over town last week when news got around that KVET’s
morning deejays Sammy Allred and Bob Cole had launched a red-baiting attack on
the much-wooed and oft-praised Samsung Corporation. During their June 25 talk
show, Sammy and Bob expressed fear that Samsung, which will open its first U.S.
chip-making plant in Austin, will bring dreaded socialism to our fair city.
“These people aren’t used to living in a democracy. They ain’t Christians,”
quipped Allred. The duo also managed to slip in a Korean War reference and made
fun of the popularity in Korea of the name Lee. Rather than ignore the shocks
the jocks were trying to cause, pillars of the business community spent the
next few days phoning each other to spread the word that it was time to send
fawning apology faxes to Sung Lee, president of Samsung Semiconductor. If Sung
Lee didn’t catch the show before, he has now.
Cole says his words, to some extent, have been misconstrued. “I was talking
about how the cradle-to-the-grave protectionist philosophy that Samsung uses as
an employer meshes very well with the `It takes a village to raise a child’
philosophy [recently espoused in a book by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton].”
Cole, who has arranged to meet with Sung Lee to “understand each other,”
regrets that the Statesman did a front-page article on a show that he
says received little attention from rank-and-file listeners. Cole explains,
“This article will be photocopied and put in the hands of every company that
considers coming to Austin by competitors who will say, “Do you want to go to a
town with rednecks like this?'”
Statesman editor Rich Oppel says he is a Sammy and Bob fan, and
happened to catch the show about Samsung. “I thought that might stir a few
leaves around town,” Oppel says. “Indeed, we discovered that calls had been
made to Samsung… I thought it was a story and we published it.” —
A.D.
Convoy in East Austin
The alarm in Hispanic East Austin continues. Numerous neighborhood leadersattended last Thursday’s Austin city council meeting to denounce a proposal by
Capital Metro and Longhorn Railway Company that would have sent 180 18-wheelers
a week through Eastside neighborhoods. Since the city is the owner of the
railway, the city council is a major target for the neighborhoods’ anger.
“We’re concerned about safety,” said a tearful Lettie McGarrahan, president of
the Guadalupe Association of Independent Neighborhoods (GAIN). “Our children
are just as important as anyone else’s children.”
The original plan, which Capital Metro nearly authorized on June 24, would
have allowed Longhorn Railway to transport aggregate to Capital Metro’s
Downtown Properties at East Fourth and Waller. From there, the aggregate would
be loaded onto trucks that cut through neighborhood streets, and routed down
East Seventh Street, bound for Capital Aggregate’s concrete production
facility.
But after the public outcry began, Longhorn and Capital Metro began discussing
other sites two weeks ago, and Councilmember Gus Garcia passed a resolution
last Thursday directing the city manager to include affected neighborhoods in
discussions to move the site farther east, preferably past Ed Bluestein. Still,
that means little to the residents, who say one of the sites under discussion
is at East Seventh and Pleasant Valley, just a mile from the original location.
While Longhorn Railway seems open to finding a site that doesn’t affect
neighborhoods, the final resolution is still up in the air, and so is Eastside
security. — A.M.
Money Matters
It doesn’t matter if you care about building a “world class” public educationsystem in this community or not. No matter how it turns out, you’re going to
pay — and pay some more — for it. The AISD Board of Trustees on June 24
passed the largest budget in the school system’s history — $411. 5 million for
maintenance, operation, and debt service. What will the district do with it
all? Accommodate almost 2,000 new students, compensate its teachers a bit
better, and launch a number of new initiatives in the curriculum, including
putting technology into the classrooms. AISD officials boast that they’ve made
a good head start on raising student achievement and quelling the dropout rate;
the subtle subtext behind that spirited claim is that these recent gains well
justify the increased spending AISD plans to do.
For many political conservatives, however, school spending is just like sand
down a rat hole; they say costs for U.S. public education have skyrocketed
while test scores and graduation rates have dipped. The American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, recently
published a public school “report card” for all 50 states, proclaiming, “there
is no statistical correlation between spending and student achievement.” Over
the last 25 years, inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending has increased 82%,
ALEC complains, and education’s costs have run amok of the Consumer Price
Index. None of the states that spend the most per pupil — for example, Alaska,
New Jersey, and New York — are the country’s top-achieving states, the group
reports.
But assertions such as these are nothing new in the debate about public
education’s efficacy, and public school apologists say the allegations are
complete canards. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (also in
Washington, D.C.), funded in part by the Metropolitan Life Foundation, found
that education spending has indeed risen — by 61%. But the money goes to a
very different kind of public school than it did 25 years ago. Special
education accounts for the majority of the additional spending; programs such
as dropout prevention, alternative instruction, and bilingual education swallow
up the rest.
What’s more, the report states, the Consumer Price Index is a very poor
yardstick with which to measure the “output” of schools. And unlike in the rest
of American “business,” cutting back on labor costs, the biggest expenditure in
education, does not generally yield more student “productivity.” They also
point out that at least some of the ebbs and flows in standardized test scores
are the result of some significant changes in the makeup of the student
population. — R.A.
Pedaling Politics
In a little over a month, Austin police will start issuing tickets tobicyclists caught pedaling in town without helmets. However, some bicycle
enthusiasts, calling themselves the Citizens for Cycling Freedom (CFCF), are
not giving up without a fight. The CFCF is determined to repeal the helmet
ordinance passed May 6 by the Austin City Council.
If the councilmembers stick to their original votes, a repeal won’t happen —
even with two new councilmembers. The ordinance, sponsored by Mayor Bruce Todd,
passed unanimously. (Former Councilmember Max Nofziger, who was against it, was
not at the meeting.) Despite the odds, CFCF members, led by founder and UT
student Becky Schleinkofer, are lobbying to change some Councilmembers’ minds.
Schleinkofer says she already has the support of Councilmember Eric Mitchell
for a repeal, but she adds that he would not sponsor a motion to overturn the
ordinance. The CFCF has set their sights on new Councilmembers Daryl Slusher
and Beverly Griffith; however, Slusher’s aide says that the councilmember has
not taken a position one way or the other. And Griffith’s aide says the
councilmember supports the helmet law. If CFCF can’t gather the council
support, they say, they’ll try another route — to force a referendum to repeal
the law by collecting the signatures of 40,000 registered voters over a span of
six months.
The CFCF and others appear to be turning up the heat. Susan Sheffield,
Councilmember Jackie Goodman’s executive secretary, says the flow of calls
opposing the new law has been steady for more than a month.
Between 50 and 70 CFCF members regularly attend council meetings, where they
make these arguments against the helmet law:
* It eliminates cyclists’ liberty to choose whether to wear helmets. That could
reduce the number of cyclists — and increase the number of exhaust-spewing
cars on the road.
* More needs to be done to create a safe environment for bikers than simply
requiring helmets. The group wants to see new bike lanes and other improvements
around Austin.
* So many people will violate the law that police can’t possibly ticket them
all. So they’ll ticket selectively, and unfairly. “That’s going to create a
cops-and-robbers game,” Schleinkofer says. “It’s not an enforceable thing.”
Mayor Todd brought the helmet proposal to the council table in May, but his
aide Trey Salinas says he was responding to calls for a helmet law from the
public. And the opposition, he says, sounds a lot like early opposition to seat
belt and motorcycle helmet laws. “Basically, it was the right thing to do,
period.” This law is important, Salinas added, because when uninsured riders
are injured, taxpayers have to pick up the hospital bills.
A citation will cost the unhelmeted $50 for their first offense and more for
additional offenses. Until August 15, police are only writing warnings. —
G.M.
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This article appears in July 5 • 1996 and July 5 • 1996 (Cover).