Senate resignations Veteran senator, secretary quit Inside, p. 3.
The University Daily
KANSAN
CLOUDY
High. 50. Low. 35.
Details on p. 2
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
Thursday morning, March 22, 1984
Vol. 94, No. 120 (USPS 650-640)
BSU asks Senate for $19,343
Money to help fight prejudice, BSU says
By MARY SEXTON Staff Reporter
The Black Student Union last night asked the Student Senate Finance Committee for $19,343 — almost one third of the total amount that the Senate has to allocate to all registered student organizations.
Cherri Brown, BSU president, said in a budget request letter that the organization asked for the money in support of the university's national at the University of Kansas.
The request represents a significant departure from the way the Senate usually allocates funds.
The $19,343 request was formulated by multiplying the number of black KU students, which is 806, by the fee of $24, for the letter said
Last year BSU received $3,041 of the $10,000 that it requested from the Senate.
Jon Gilchrist, chairman of the Finance Committee, said that 70 groups had requested more than $157,000, but that the Senate only had $61,000 to allocate to the groups. Heaves the Senate $96,000 short, heaves the Senate.
The budget request letter also said, "In the past, black students have watched thousands of their dollars be allocated to organizations in which they do not participate by choice or exclusion.
"BLACK STUDENT UNION is asking for the amount of money that rightfully belongs to them."
But David Ambler, vice chancellor for academic affairs, said that the Senate activity fee of $24, which last year generated $938,520, was divided among several campus organizations.
For example, $6 goes to pay for the bus system, $3 goes to pay a portion of the Kansan's budget, and $2.40 goes to pay for legal services.
But he said that only $1.81 of the $24 went to finance student organizations.
The committee must cut more than $155,000 in requests down to the $61,000 that it has to allocate to the organizations.
Of the BSU's request, Terry
See BSU, p. 5, col. 1
Senate board to file theft charges against 25
By CINDY HOLM Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
The Student Senate Transportation Board today will file charges of theft of service against 25 KU students who have been caught with bogus bus passes, the board chairman said yesterday.
Mark Bossi, the chairman, said the board would charge the students with a Class A misdemeanor in municipal court.
Bossi said he thought the offenders fell into three categories: students who were making the passes for themselves; students who were making them for friends; and students who were selling bogus passes for a profit.
The 25 students to be charged today fall into the first two categories, he said.
VIC STRAND. A KU police officer, said police had no suspects in the third category.
category
Selling forged passes would be a Class D felony, punishable by one to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
nator, said the board suspected that forgery rings were operating out of Temple Hall. He said the temple that passed sold for $10 in Temple and $15 in Corbin. Duane Ogle, owner of the Lawrence
Duane Ogle, owner of the Lawrence Bus Company, said that the 25 forged passes represented only a small part of the problem. He estimated that about 200 students used forged passes.
Ogle estimated that the Senate would lose $6,000 to $8,000 between now and May as a result of the bogus passes.
"WE'RE NOT LOSING money," he said. "The students at the University are losing money. If the students had the revenue that was lost from the false passes, the service wouldn't cost as much."
The bus company does not lose money because it works under contract to the Transportation Board, Ogle said.
Some of that loss has resulted from the forged passes, he said.
Ogle said the drivers first noticed suspicious looking passes in early February but could not take action
because of controversy over confision he passes that were attached to the case.
The board last year voted to change from cardboard passes to stickers on identification cards to prevent students from tranferring passes.
ROSE MARINO, who works in the University General Counsel's office, said the board could authorize the confiscation of the passes as long as it promptly and arranged a motion, cards promptly and arranged a kind of hearing for the students.
But Ogle said that even when the board authorized the drivers to confiscate passes, the drivers remained reluctant to take them from riders because the board had no policy to deal with offenders.
Jeff Silverstein, a bus driver and a member of the Transportation Board, said that in some instances riders had become violent.
"You can't force them to give you the pass," he said.
Boss said that in the past, the board had referred cases to Caryl Smith, dean of student life. He said that Smith talked to students individually and that sometimes students appeared before an administrative hearing board.
Although in some cases students using forged passes had to pay for a bus pass, Bossi said, the punishment was too little to more than a slan on the wrist.
He said the board had not set a policy earlier because only a few cases had been reported.
Jim McCrossen/KANSAN
Scott Bonham, 908 W. 28th St., loads fallen branches into the back of a pickup truck. The weight from the ice of last weekend's storm brought
the tree limbs to the ground. Bonham helped clear land yesterday at the corner of 11th and Oregon streets.
500 homes still wait for power
By JENNY BARKER Staff Reporter
Although the ice from Sunday's storm has melted, much of the damage it caused remains.
More than 500 Lawrence homes are still without power, but utility crews, aided by moderate weather conditions, are working to restore electricity.
The temperature today should reach 45 or 50 degrees, according to the National Weather Service in Topeka. The temperature will probably drop into the 30s tonight but should climb into the high to mid-40s.
Freed Bryan, division manager of Kansas Power and Light Co., said KP&L expected to have electrical capacity of 65 percent of the 100 homes by tonight.
The other 5 percent may not have electricity until late tomorrow evening, Bryan said, because damage at those households is due to individual transformers, each of which has to be repaired separately.
Bryan said that more than 200 customers had power outages because of damaged transformers but that most of the appliances should be repaired by this evening.
SOME LAWRENCE RESIDENTS may remain without power even after tomorrow because the utility company cannot repair damage caused to the customer's own electrical system, he said. Those residents will have to pay private electricians to make those repairs.
More than 8,000 homes throughout
Carlin wins first round for new tax system
See OUTAGES, p. 5, col. 4
By ROB KARWATH
Staff Reporter
TOPEKA - Intensive lobbying Tuesday afternoon by Gov. John Carlin and his staff paid off yesterday when the House approved a property-tax classification system in Kansas.
If approved by the Senate and by Kansas voters, the resolution would amend the Kansas Constitution and change the rates at which much property is now assessed.
The House voted 89-33 to send the measure to the Senate. The affirmative vote cleared the two-thirds majority required for proposed constitutional amendments with five votes to pass.
MINUTES AFTER THE House vote, Carlin's office released a statement in which the governor appraised the House for passing the
resolution and urged the Senate to do the same. "Today is a historic day for the tapers of the Klamath River."
In an afternoon press conference, Carlin said that because the House had approved the amendment, the pressure on the Senate to do the same was now greater.
The classification measure was prompted by concerns that the state would reappraise all property soon. Both the House and the Senate have passed reappraisal bills. Since the bills differ, a conference committee of legislators from both houses is ironing out the difference
“It’s a lot more than we had this morning,” he said.
The measure proposes that property be classified in groups and be assessed at between 6 percent and 30 percent of appraised value.
The state now assesses all property at 30 percent of its appraised value.
Carlin and other supporters of the classification resolution have said that the classification measure would offset the increases in cost for a smaller sample ratio for most real property. Under the
so that the final draft can be sent to Carlin by the end of the session, probably in late April.
A STATEWIDE reappraisal has not been conducted since the 1960s. If the state reappraised all property soon, the value of property probably would increase significantly.
The most dramatic increase probably would be seen in the value of real property such as homes and farmland. Much real property is not rented because it is owned by this property is not frequently determined.
If the values of homes and farmland increased, taxes on these properties would also increase if the state continued to assess them at 30 percent.
resolution, farmland and residential property would be assessed at 6 percent and 8 percent of appraised value, respectively.
IF THE SENATE approves the measure by a two-thirds majority, Kansas voters would decide in the next general election whether the property classification measure would become law.
ing threats.
But in the press conference, the governor said that his lobbying did not require much arm-twisting. Several legislators, he said, were willing to change their votes when Carlin and his staff contacted them.
After the House tentatively approved the measure Tuesday, the governor and his assistants hustled to persuade representatives to vote for the resolution. Mike Swenson, Carlin's press secretary, described the lobbying effort as "a full-court press."
"It came together by itself," he said.
Countv would face job of reclassifying property
Staff Reporter
If a property-tax resolution passed yesterday by the Kansas House of Representatives is passed by the Senate and approved by Kansas voters, the Douglas County appraiser's office could face the task of reclassifying 40,000 parcels of property, the county appraiser said yesterday.
Bv ROBIN PALMER
Don Gordon, the Douglas County appraiser,
said that the resolution could cause problems
for the county's data processing and the
appraisal offices because the property classes
specified by the resolution don't match those
that are now used by the county, Gordon said.
If passed by the Senate, the resolution will go to Kansas voters. If the voters approve it, the resolution would amend the Kansas Constitu-
THE KANSAST Constitution now requires that all property be taxed on an equal basis. All property is now taxed on the basis of 30 percent of its assessed value.
The percentages under the classification resolution would range from 6 percent for agricultural land to 30 percent for real estate owned by public utilities.
to allow different types of property in Kansas to be taxed at different rates.
If the classification system is passed, the county appraiser would have to replace the Douglas County property classes — such as residential, commercial and farm property — with the ten subclasses proposed in the resolution.
The resolution is designed to prevent Kansas taxpayers from experiencing high tax invasions.
Although the appraiser does not now use those property classes for determining taxes,
classification is used for zoning and identification of property.
GORDON SAID THAT the reclassification of farm property would provide the most work for his office.
If the reappraisal law passes out of the conference committee and is signed by Gov. John Carlin, the appraiser's office will also have a reappraisal about 40,000 parcels in the city.
The appraiser's office now uses fewer classes for farm property than the resolution would require.
If the classification resolution becomes a constitutional amendment, the county's computer would have to be reprogrammed to figure taxes on each class.
Gordon said that reappraisal could take from three to five years to complete.
He said he thought he could complete the reenraial process for less than the $30 for
each parcel of land that reappraisal had cost in Missouri. However, he said he wasn't sure that his office could keep cost below $30 for each parcel.
If the process costs $30 for each parcel, respraisal would cost more than $1 million in Douglas County.
She said that she thought the local officials could reappraise property values more accurately.
Douglas County Commissioner Beverly Bradley said that despite its high costs to the county, she preferred a local reappraisal program to a reappraisal program administered by the state.
The exact effects of reappraisal with classification are not known, she said.
TO COMPLETE REAPPAISAL, the appraiser's office will need another full-time staff member to work only on reappraisal, he said.
WASHINGTON — A company in which Edwin Meese's wife invested $15,000 — money lent by a friend who later got an administration job — is considering of a new investigation in Congress yesterday.
By United Press International
Congress reveals more on Meese includes his wife
Meese, seeking to calm the choppy waters threatening his confirmation as attorney general, trooped to Capitol Hill for a meeting with Senate Republican Leader Howard S. McFarland, former Strom Thurman, and R.S.C. of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Paul Laxalt, R-Nev.
"You can assume that Mr. Meese is going around talking to senators, making a pitch for his case," a Senate leadership spokesman said of the presidential counselor.
At least two congressional committees, the House Small Business Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the Small Business Administration to turn over files on the granting of a special exemption allowing a subsidiary of Biotech Capital Corp, the firm in which Meese's wife bought stock, to qualify for $5 million in federally backed financing.
THE JUNE 26, 1981. exemption for Questech Capital Corp., a wholly owned Biotech subsidiary, was one of eight issued at a time when the SBA had imposed a three-month moratorium on licensing of Small Business Investment Companies because of abuses in the program
Donate rempetman, then deputy chief of the SBA, signed off on the exemption for Queeesteb, on the recommendation of a career official, agency spokesman Joseph Zeilner said. Rempetman, who could not be reached for comment, was recharged as an aide to Perry Jerry RaisL, CalFli.
Asked whether the SBA's inspector general's office planned an investigation of the Quebec exemption, Zellner said. "Nothing has come up here that has appeared to warrant — at least so far — a look at that company's operations."
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