The University Daily
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
KANSAN
Thursday, February 26, 1981 Vol. 91, No. 104 USPS 650-640
Budget cuts alternative to extra tax
By GENE GEORGE Staff Reporter
TOPEKA-Senate Republicans would rather cut the budget—and possibly create more problems for the future—than deal with Gov. John Carlin's proposed severance tax on oil, natural gas and coal, the governor's press secretary said yesterday.
The press secretary, Blich Hoch, told reporters from several state university newspapers that the Republican-dominated Senate was common before the primary, and the budget from Carlin's proposed $7.8 billion in 1923 budget.
"I think the Senate leaders see it (the cutting) as the only way of avoiding dealing with the severance law," Hoch said at the briefing, which included Associated Students of Kansas mass lobby day.
CARLIN'S SEVERANCE TAX, designed primarily to finance highway maintenance and general education, would put an 8 percent surcharge on the production of oil, natural gas and coal.
State Sen. Paul Hess, R-Wichita, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, yesterday repeated earlier statements that the cuts were not politically motivated.
"To say or imply, with insidious instinctions, that we are trying to avoid the severance tax is far from the truth." Hess said. "It distorts the mood of the Senate."
Hess, an opponent of the severance tax, said the committee was "making across-the-board decisions."
THE SENATORS WHO support the budget will also will vote against the severance plan.
The Hess committee cut $3 million from the Board of Regents system-wide proposed budget this week, including the trimming of faculty pay raises from the governor's proposed 8 percent to 7 percent. It also endorsed an increase in student tuition.
In three earlier appropriations bills, the committee cut back the governor's proposals, and the full Senate cut the committee's recommendations even more.
HE ADDED THAT the governor had not an-
nounce the kind of cutting the Senate con-
mendation here.
Hoch said the governor was "aware of the broad brush strokes with which the committee has painted the picture," but said he had not yet fully analyzed the impact the cuts would have.
The governor was meeting in Washington with the president's staff when the committee made the cuts in the Regents budget. He returned to Kansas late yesterday.
Hess said the president had warned in the meeting that he would cut back federal support.
Kansas should start saving money now to cover the loss. Hess said.
Hoch agreed that the mood of the nation was "not tax, cut spending, cut government."
"We're doing nothing more or less than what is going on in Washington," he said.
BUT HE ADDED that Kansas still needed an additional source of revenue.
"Depending on what the legislature does," Hoch said, "unless it passes a severance tax, it will find itself in the same position, possibly far more severe. We can only hope Mr. Hess knows that."
Hess said he would concede that the state probably was going to need an increase in revenue, but that the Senate was not sure that increase should be voted on this year.
"He (the governor) is critical of the cuts because we won't increase the tax," Hess said. "We are not going to treat the governor's proposal as sacred."
Weather
COMFORTABLE
It will continue to be warm today under partly cloudy skies with a high near 70 degrees, according to the KU Weather Service.
There will be a 50 percent chance of thunderbows tonight with a low of $2
Tomorrow's high will be in the upper 80s under partly cloudy skies.
Winds will be out of the southwest at 10 to 15 mph.
KU's 6-foot-10 forward Art House rejects a shot by Nebraska's Andre Smith during last night's game in Allen Fieldhouse. KU won the victory by the Jayhawks tied for third in the Big Eight as they led 34-27.
Students, profs critical say architecture studios hot, dark, fire hazard
By BOB MOEN Staff Reporter
Basketball courts one and two of old Robinson Gymnasium continue to cause problems for the School of Architecture and Urban Design and its students.
The courts, now a makeshift architecture studio, have been criticized as being too hot, too cool, or too messy.
After touring the studio yesterday, Dennis Domer, acting dean of the school, warned that there was a fire hazard because students were forced to load electrical outlets for light.
THE HAZARD WAS created last November when one of the maze-like partitions that supported electrical conduits was moved, cutting off electricity to a large section of the studio.
KU's assistant director of refrigeration and electrical systems said he did not know of any request concerning electrical problems in Robinson.
The Robinson studio is temporary until the completion of the Marvin Hall renovation next
WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE FIRE hazard, the assistant director, Robert Porten, said, "Nobody has called that to my attention, but if it was an emergency, I promise I will have somebody down there today."
Domer said he had asked Facilities Operations to fix the problem several weeks ago but at the time he did not know there was a fire hazard. The request was turned in, nothing has been fixed.
If you down there and check it out myself.
Domer said he would wait to see if the problem
was corrected and then would take another tour of
the studio tomorrow morning.
"I'll go down there and check it out myself."
"This can be straightened out quickly," he said.
ROBINSON CENTER has not been inspected for more than a year but will be inspected sometime next month, Paul Markley, state supervisor of fire inspectors, said.
He said that with only nine inspectors in the state, problems tended to creep up, particularly with situations like the temporary studio in Robinson.
"Anytime you've got temporary quarters you're going to have problems," he said.
Meanwhile, the faculty and students have been bothered by a serious lack of lighting.
"Architecture students especially need good lighting, and the ceiling lighting in the gym is not that good," Gaylor Richardson, associate professor of architecture and urban design, said.
HE SAID THAT THE outlets there were not ancient and that the students were plugging long lines into the cable.
"It's a serious inconvenience to them, especially in the evening." he said.
At night, Bob Simmons, St. Louis senior, said, there is a desk a laptop, there's not enough light.
Other problems pointed out by students were noise, temperature and vents on the ceiling.
CAROL VONRUMP, St. Louis senior, said the vents that went directly outside had been open since last October. Despite requests by students to close the vents, no action was taken.
Finally, she said, two students shinned up the beams and closed the vents when snow was coming into the studio earlier this month.
However, with the onset of warm weather, the air inside the gym tends to get murky.
"We're not looking forward to May," I小憋msis over the monotonous whirling of a large痛 fan across the lawn.
"But most of the people who wanted to work in the studio have made it livable, and Dennis Mann said that."
THE SCHOOL'S FACULTY and students are spread out among Robinson Center, Lindley annex, the Visual Art and Design Building, Blake Annex, Carruth-O'Leary Hall and Fowler Hall. Of the school's disunity, many students think they are missing a crucial part of their education.
County paramedics safeguard basketball crowds
"An important part of the architecture
see ARCHITECTURE page 5
Staff Reporter
By DALE WETZEL
Among 13,500 basketball fans, a roaring
rock concert audience.
They've got a lot to offer.
But, to a spectator whose body has betrayed him, they're among the most important people in history.
They're two Douglas County Ambulance Service paramedics. For their combined 4,000 hours of classroom, hospital and ambulance training, they earn $22.50 an hour. with$1 for gas and oil blowup.
"We come pretty cheap, when you think about it," an ambulance director Ted McFarlane said. "Our guys have a lot of training and we know they've pretty sophisticated equipment to work with."
AS HE SPOKE, McFarlane sat in an unpretentious, straight-backed wooden chair in the service's cramped office at 1830 S. Ninth Street, the SI Office at door, one could see two gleaming, $70,000
orange-and-white emergency wans waiting for the next radio crackle.
"We have four units," McFarlane said, indicating the vehicles with a wave of his hand. "Three of em are like this one you see in our backyard. Chevy Suburban. We use it for longer trips."
At last night the KU-Nebraaska game, one of the "umits," as McFarlane calls the spacious vans, sat incongruously on the field house's artificial track, an internal-combustion hulk threatening to belch carbon monoxide into the stuffy field house atmosphere.
However, McFarlane said the van hadn't taken away from Allen a spectacular spectacle.
"We had somebody last year, with a heart problem," McFarlane said. "But, for some reason, we lost the game."
"If anybody becomes ill, however, we're ready."
IF MEDICAL GEAR is any indicator, they are. McFarlane and an assistant come equipped with a stretcher, portable heart monitor, oxygen tank and a "first aid kit" full
of intravenous fluids, syringes, needles and "a wide variety of drugs."
"Pharmacology is one of our great areas of training." McFarlane said. "We know when to give drugs, in what amounts, what their side effects are, how to administer the drugs, and how to handle an allergic reaction."
"It's easy to train a robot to dispense drugs, but our people are certainly not robots. They're highly trained and know what they're doing."
"We also have this," McFarlane said, pointing to a medium-sized brown case. "That's a heart defiltrator; we use it on people having heart problems. Those two paddles give 400 jolts of shock. If you apply them to a 180-磅 man, he'll lump."
Rock shows and football games keep McFarlane the busiest.
BESIDES WORKING basketball games, McFarlane also appears at football contests, rock concerts—'any event in which there's a contest'—and the March 8 Kansas concert, for instance."
"We don't have as many ODs at rock concerts as we used to," he said. "I've been
here since 1968, and in the early 70s we were taking a couple of people away every time we were there.
Football's more frequent player injuries cause the Kansas University Athletic Corporation, which contracts for the ambulance two units at each game. McFarlane said.
"We usually send four paramedics," he said. "On our staff we have 12 paramedics and five EMTs—emergency medical technicians."
EMTS, McFARLANE SAID, receive 100 hours of training, versus up to 2,000 for a paramedic. The latter's regimen includes a semester each of classroom studies, hospital employment and work on an ambulance service.
"To generalize," McFarlane said, "EMT can preserve a patient's present condition—stop the bleeding, splint fractures, prevent a patient from getting worse.
"Paramedics, on the other hand, can
condition. For example, they can perform an
condition. For example, they can perform an
See AMBULANCE page 5
Proposed bill angers bikers; provisions push costs higher
By BRAD STERTZ Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
TOPEKA--They sauntered into the old Supreme Court room yesterday to settle the score. They had long hair; some had ponytails and dense, wiry beards.
Amid the Ivy-league tied and white-shirted legislative regulars, these men of the motorcycle violently clashed with their conservative backdrop. In arguing against a bill in the House Committee hearing that would require bikers to wear placets or carry insurance, they remained placet
They wore dingy blue jeans and weathered leather jackets. Some of them had chains and most smelled of exhaust fumes lingering from an exhaustive highway journey.
Although many were not happy with the content of the hearing, they did not break any case.
"I don't think that the members of the Insurance Committee got our message," Gordon Chappell, president of the biker's club, American Bikers Aiming Toward Education, said. "But we are probably going to come back Thursday and talk to individual legislators."
"Take myself, for instance," Chappell said. "The bill would force me to either wear my
helmet all the time or pay an extra $300 for insurance that I have already got from my job."
CHAPPELL, ONE OF THE more temperately attired members of ABATE, said that his group had tried to impress on the committee that he was a representative of operators to carry double-insurance coverage.
The bill, as proposed by State Rep. Timothy O'Sullivan, D-Hutchinson, would require motorcycle riders to either wear a safety helmet all of the time or be covered with personal injury gear. The bill has been required to wear helmets since the traffic and motor safety act was amended in 1976.
"What we are saying," Chappell said disgruntled after the hearing, "is that the problem is really in the accident itself and not the absence of a helmet. A helmet is not going to prevent all that many injuries in motorcycle accidents."
Two Harley-Davidson devotees settle into some unfamiliar surroundings—the old Kansas Supreme Court room—to argue their case against a bill requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets or carry insurance.
BRUCE SILKEY, a Lawrence biker, said that trauma often increased the likelihood of accidents.
"I have had several close calls with helmets because I can't hear when I have them on," said Silky, an owner of four motorcycles who hasn't worn a helmet since 1976. "They also make wrecks more likely because they cut down on my peripheral vision.
"Hell, in 80 percent of car accidents, there are serious head injuries. Why not make car drivers wear a helmet too? That is what really pisses me up. This bike is like buildings altogether if they are such a hazard?"
Many of the bikers said that they did not think that they could afford the premiums of another car.
got laid off at Goodyear, so tell me how I can afford to pay for that insurance."
"we have four buses and I would have to pay an extra $800 a year." Victor Poe, a Topeka rides on the bus. "You can take a train to New York."
RICHARD WRIGHT of Eudora said that he would have to pay an extra $240.80 for the inlui
"I already have insurance to cover me from
southwestern Bell, where I work," he said. "I will
have a second job." "I also hate this."
"It could get so that every time I need to scratch my head, I could get a ticket."
bill because it forces me to take out insurance or take out my helmet when I ride.
Police harassment was another aspect that night was afraid would come about because of the
See BIKERS page 5