THE UNIVERSITY DAIL KANSAN
VOL.101.No.146
THE STUDENT NEWSAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1991
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Hiring freeze begins
Kansan staff writer
Bv Kellev Frieze
KU felt the first effects of Gov. Joan Finney's tax bill veto with the announcement Monday of a hiring freeze.
Del Shanket, interim executive vice chancellor, told KU officials in a letter that all vacant classified and unclassified positions were included in the freeze, which took immediate effect.
In his letter, Shankel said, "The state's financial condition has created difficult circumstances for me to prepare these extraordinary measures."
Lindy Eakin, acting associate vice chancellor for administration and finance, said the freeze would affect faculty, staff and student monthly employees, but not student hourly employees are paid a set amount each month, and student hourly employees are paid by the hour.
The freeze will remain in effect until Finney announces the amount of the budget cuts and the University's plans to meet those cuts, Fakin said.
Neither Shankel nor Eakin knew how many positions at the University were open before the freeze
The veto of a $138 million tax bill
May 24 and the House's unsuccessful attempt to override it left University officials wary of budget cuts.
"Once again the Regents universities have been undercut, leaving serious doubts among faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends," said Chancellor Gene A. Budig in a statement released after the veto.
Because of the threat of state budget cuts, University officials also have asked each department to identify areas for possible reductions.
He said he did not yet know what was each department would choose for him.
He said he expected that some courses or sections would not be available because of the hiring freeze.
Also, needed equipment for maintenance, science and research could not be purchased and some repairs would have to be postponed, be said.
Possible reductions Eakin identified were in facilities operations, police patrolling and library acquisitions.
He said slowdowns likely would occur at the office of the comptroller or the treasury department.
Finney has told state agencies to prepare for a 1.5 to 2.5 percent cut in state general fund appropriations.
"I'm real anxious to see how she's going to make up $138 million with the help of a new fund."
State general fund cuts could be announced sometime this summer, or they may not be made at all
Eakin said the Board of Regents had asked the University to identify ways to cut 24 percent of its budget. Results from the schools and departments will be reviewed and confirmed next week.
A cut in general financing appropriations would affect two-thirds of the main part of KU's budget, which is made up of money from the state general fund and from the general fee fund. The University receives less than from the state general fund and $30 million from tuition and fees.
Of the $150 million, Eakin said, $120 million goes into University salaries
Other money in the budget comes from smaller revenues such as parking tickets.
Eakin said the University woul try to make more cuts in other areas to cushion the effect on academic resources that grades all the schools in the University.
Veto of bill troubles legislators
By Kelley Frieze
Kansan staff writer
In regards to the recently vetoed tax bill, State Rep. John Solbach said he would have preferred to have the bird in the hand rather than being a cop. Gov. Joan Finney will try to capture in the next Legislative session.
"I felt like most legislators felt betrayed by the governor because she didn't come out and say she opposed it until we finished it," she said. "I was very skeptical. I saw a work product that was very difficult thrown in the trash can."
Several state legislators said they were disappointed, hurt, even disgusted about Finney's veto of the $138 million tax measure and the failure of the House to override the veto.
The tax package, which took the Legislature almost 100 working days to complete, included a 0.25 percent increase in sales tax and an increase in upper-bracket income tax.
Finney vetoed the bill May 24,
and the House was nine votes short
of overriding the vote May 28.
'I felt like most legislators felt betrayed by the governor because she didn't come out and say she opposed it until we finished it. We saw a work product that was very difficult thrown in the trash can.'
State Rep. John Solbach D-Lawrence
policy because it would keep property taxes from increasing.
State Sen. Wint Winter, Lawrence, said that he thought the bill should have raised more money for state programs but that he liked the package because it worked better than making people less than $35,000.
Winter said that what disa$_{\nu}$ pointed him the most about the veto was the dramatic effect it had on all levels of education.
Sobach said $55 million of the tax bill was earmarked for school districts and that to make up that money, school districts may have to increase property taxes significantly.
"The veto could cause property taxes to go up over $100 million for lack of $55 million," he said.
All three legislators said they foresaw problems in the next legislative session in putting together another tax bill.
The problems from this session still would be there next year, Winter said, and he doubted that Finney's idea of a good tax bill would change.
Winter said that because Finney might have created an "us-against-them" situation, where, in hammering out a new tax bill, the two parties would blur the partisan lines during the next session against a common cause.
Praeger said she thought Finney would return to the next session with the same unpopular tax plan and a different year, causing the same impasse.
House rejects Bush's version of civil rights bill
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The House discarded President George Bush's limited civil rights bill and a liberal alternative yesterday as Democratic leaders hunted for the two-thirds main opposition to their version immune from a veto.
was out off until today
The House rejected the Republican-sponsored job discrimination bill, endorsed by the president, on a 266-162 vote.
Earlier it defeated the most liberal of three competing versions, voting 277-152 against a purists' bill sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic congresswomen and some liberal lawmakers.
The third version, assured of passage, was backed by Democratic leaders as well as civil rights groups but condemned by Bush as encouraging employers to use racial quotas in hiring. A final vote on that measure
The action came as the House wrapped up a long day of debate, with Bush's veto threat shaping the maneuvering by Democratic leaders. They were confident their version would prevaile by a large margin but struggled to approach the two-thirds majority needed to demonstrate they could overcome a veto.
Accusations and insults,building
for weeks, proceeded unabated. House Speaker Thomas Foley contended angrily that Bush had been unfair in accusing Democrats of encouraging hiring quotas and exacerbating racial divisions.
"For the president to accuse us of raising racial or other divisions in this society is incredible," Foley said.
position that provisions in the Democratic-sponsored bill amount to quotas. pushing employers to hire on women. demanding Democrats stricter denounce the charge.
Bush's press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. restated the president's
At issue was whether to write new federal laws reversing a series of 1989 Supreme Court rulings that have contributed to win job discrimination suits to win job discrimination suits.
Also in dispute was a complicated series of changes in job discrimination laws, including the expansion of the rights of women, religious minorities and the disabled to collect monetary damages.
But the political debate has eclipsed the highly technical, legalistic substance of the bills, and in fact threats to overshadow 1992 elections. The issue of hiring quotas is seen as a potent one among voters, especially as the recession has made good jobs harder to find.
Chris DeGhedder (left), Kansas City, Kan., junior, Laura Lade (center), Overland Park senior, and Cameron King, Wichita junior, work on stunts in front of Allen Field House. The variety cheerleaders were practicing for a national cheerleading camp that will be this summer in Knoxville, Tenn.
Oops!
Police drop assault charges filed against 2 KU students
By Jeff Meesey
Kansan staff writer
Charges were dropped May 22 against two fraternity members who fired a BB gun from their fraternity and another student were nearby. KU police said.
The men, who were charged with aggravated assault May 9, are Seth Rupp, 22, Hays senior, and Todd Cleveland, 22, of St. Louis, who were charged as members are members of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, 1540 Louisiana St.
According to a KU police report, Leslie Davis, Wichita graduate student, and Carin Martin, Kansas City, was shot at from the fraternity house.
"I believe the incident was racially
Sean Williams, adviser to the fraternity, denied that the incident was racially motivated.
motivated." Martin said. "The people who were being shot at were Black and the people shooting the gun were white."
He said the men were not shooting at the couple but at a lamp on the sidewalk.
"To label the incident as racial is irresponsible." he said.
Williams said the two fraternity members did not see anyone walking along the path near the fraternity house.
"Because of racial fears, I believe the couple thought they were being targeted." Williams said.
KU police Lt. John Mullens said the
charges were dropped because the alleged victims could not be reached for comments for the preliminary hearing.
He said the couple could choose to refile the assault charges.
The fraternity had a verbal policy against weapons that fired bullets.
Williams said that Rupp and Cleveland, as well as other members of the fraternity, often shot BB guns out the window. The BBs have made dents on backs of signs, and on fences, as well as on the lamp.
"BB guns fell into a gray area," Williams said. "We have since taken steps to outlaw BB guns and anything that could be used as a weapon."
Bush faces heat for China policies
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Congressional opponents of President Bush's China policy used the second anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown yesterday to turn up pressure on the Chinese government on Beijing's favorable trading status.
"Time is running out on the repressive regime in China," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, chief sponsor of a bill that would impose strict conditions on that country's most vulnerable status, beginning a year from now.
Bush, meanwhile, met with a group of senators to argue his case for extending the preferred trading terms. But in a separate statement marking the Tiananmen Square anniversary, he said, "The brutal and arbitrary use of deadly force against the peaceably demonstrating people of China can never be forgotten."
Bush said the United States maintained more sanctions against China for human-rights violations than any other nation.
"Our goal is to remain engaged over the long term with China in order to foster its return to a pattern of reform," his statement said.
Pelosi and six other House members sought to deliver a letter expressing their concerns to Chinese Ambassador Zxu Qixen, but they were turned away at the embassy by his sister. The judge said he had no authority to accept it.
The refusal was gratuitously offen-
Dave, said Rep. David Skaggs, D-CO., another member of the group. When a similar congressional delegation marched to the embassy two years ago, the ambassador invited them in for tea, he recalled.
"I'm not encountering much sentiment for unconditional renewal" of MFN status, which grants the lowest possible tariff treatment to Chinese imports, said Rep. John Miller, R-Wash.
A short time later, a group that included Chinese students rallied on the Capitol lawn and heard others recall the events of two years ago and condemn the repression of Chinese democracy advocates since then.
Lawmakers in both parties were predicting that Bush will have to soften his stand or suffer a stunning defeat for his policy on Capitol Hill, and a senior administration official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, agreed a compromise was likely.
And Li Lu, a top leader of the student democracy movement, recalled the most enduring image for
Unless Bush agrees to human rights conditions, the president may see increasing sentiment in Congress that he would denial of MFN status, Miller said.
Perhaps the most famous dissident from that period, Chinese physicist Fang Lizhi, said that human-rights conditions had not improved and that many front should be made a condition for renewed favored trading status.
U. S. citizens, "That young man who stood bravely in front of ... columns of tanks is still listed as missing by our government. Dare we forget his courage?"
Estimates of the number of deaths in the confrontation between soldiers and pro-democracy demonstrators vary from several thousand to the China government's official estimate of 100 protesters and 100 soldiers. Amnesty International has put the number of deaths about 1,000.
As 13 senators of both parties went to the White House to hear the president argue for his policy, one of the senators was on the case of the Senate floor to condemn it.
Last year's action to renew MFN status brought the world nothing in the way of reform of the Chinese Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine.
Others cited China's sale of weaponry to the Middle East and other unstable regions, the growing trade imbalance with the United States in Iraq and the use of slave labor and continuing infringement of the right of dissent.
At the White House, White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Bush repeated to the senators his argument that the United States must remain engaged with China to have any hope of helping reform
"He did not open the door to conditionality." Fitzwater said afterwards. "He made it clear that he did not have conditions" placed on the renewal.