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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
TOPEKA, KS 66612
VOL.101.No.141
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
MONDAY, APRIL 29, 199
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
(USPS 650-640)
Senate slays tax measure
NEWS: 864-4810
Bill would have raised millions in State General Fund revenues
By Joe Gose
Kansan staff writer
TOPEKA - The Senate killed a tax increase measure Friday that would have raised $134 million in State General Fund revenue
The 1991 legislative session was slated to end Saturday night, but the Senate's action now forces legislators to remain and decide where to budget. The session is not expected to end until Thursday or later.
The House Appropriations Committee met yesterday afternoon and evening to discuss subcommittee recommendations that would cut $200 million from programs throughout the state.
The subcommittee responsible for the Board of Regents budget recommended a cut of almost $15 million, but authorized the use of the $5.7 million that the tuition increase will raise.
However, KU's budget could face a $3 million decrease from its present level of financing because of health care and other benefits.
The Regents budget, as well as KU's budget, could be cut even more in a conference committee before the session is complete.
One such attempt was made Friday afternoon during the House discussion of the omnibus bill, a catch-up on a loose ends at the end of the session.
State Rep, Robert Vancrum, Overland Park, unsuccessfully tried to amend the bill to implement a plan that would require 20 students to be enrolled in every class in the Regents as well as community colleges.
The plan has been submitted to every legislator throughout the session by Walt Chappell, a strong critic of the Regents system, said State Rep Betty Jo Charlton, D-Lawrence, who argued against the amendment.
"The Regents institutions and community colleges are not factories; they cannot be standardized," she said, which worse than across-the-board cuts.
State Rep. Carol Sader, D-Prairie Village, said the proposed plan was parallel to her irrational diet plans.
"Oftentimes I try to figure out how to lose weight," she said. "One of them is to cut off my legs. This amounts to the same thing."
The Regents budget is not the only program being targeted for decreased spending, however.
Cuts to virtually every program throughout the state were discussed in a meeting yesterday that brought tears to one legislator.
State Rep. Henry Helgerson Jr., D-Wichita, choked up when he announced that, in addition to the deletion of $10 million dollars from the Social Rehabilitation Services budget, his subcommittee would recommend that two hospitals be closed down in 1993.
Gov. Jan Finney said she was disappointed in the Legislature's failure to pass a tax increase, and that it would be about the scalpel in legislators hands.
"I am afraid they might do some real damage," she said. "I think they should just close up shop and wait until next year."
"Education is the answer to so many of our problems. The solution is not just to build more iails."
Finney might not have to worry about fighting new jail construction next year. Another discussion in the committee meeting centered on the
closing of two minimum-security prisons and freeing 200 prisoners.
Although legislators know they have to cut, many different reasons have been offered as to why the cuts have to be made.
Charlton said that she blamed the 1899 income-tax bill that removed a tax bracket and lowered income-tax rates, in a windfall of profits to the taxpayers.
But State Swint. Wint Winter Jr., *J.* Lawrence, still was hopeful for a tax increase for two reasons, even after the tax bill was rejected.
Winter also said that when lawmakers actually saw the recommended cuts of state programs, they realized the need for a tax increase.
He said one reason was that he would be working behind closed doors during the weekend to perform translators to vote for a tax increase.
KU student flees K-10 kidnappers
1 man charged, to be arraigned todav
By Michael Christie
Kansan staff writer
A KU student was kidnapped early Saturday morning but was able to free herself, Lawrence police said.
Patrick James Harris, 20, 2922 W-44th St. Kansas City, Kan. Kane and charged with kidnapping an battery, Set Ron Dalton said
Harris is scheduled to be arraigned at 4 p.m. today.
The following information was obtained from Lawrence police:
The student was walking on Kansas Highway 10 about 1 a.m. near the Knights of Columbus parking lot. 2206 E. 23rd St., when four men in a car pulled up alongside her.
The driver of the car then turned around and headed toward Kansas City.
A man got out of the car, grabbed the student and forced her into the front seat of the car.
As the car approached the Johnson County border, about 10 miles
A man got out of the car, grabbed the student and forced her into the front seat of the car.
- From Lawrence police reports
east of Lawrence, the student noticed a police car on the side of the road. She managed to hit the horn and interfere with the driver.
The men let her out of the car at that point, and she ran to the police car and told two officers what had happened.
Anger boils over at Haskell forum
The police stopped the suspects' car between 1 and 1:30 a.m., and Harris and a Kansas City, Kan., were meted.
Neither the Kansas City man nor the third and fourth men in the car were charged.
The Kansas City, Kan. man was wanted by the FBI as a witness to another crime.
According to the Douglas County jail log, FBI agents took custody of Hunter on Saturday
By Vanessa Fuhrmans
Kansan staff writer
Outrage over the recent fatal shooting of a local American Indian by Lawrence police and suspicion of the police department's ensuing domination, dominated discussion at a forum held at Haskell Indian Junior College
Nearly 200 people attended the public meeting, arranged by the Lawrence Indian Center in response to the fatal shooting of Greg Sevier, 22, by two Lawrence police officers April 24.
Don Bread, who served on the eight-member discussion panel, decreed Sevier's killing as the latest in a series of American Indian deaths shrouded by mysterious circumstances.
The police shooting, occurring only a month after racial slurs made by a Lawrence police representative were published in a professional journal, is further evidence of the police department's misconduct, he said.
"I'm speaking of an attitude, a philosophy, a policy that is in the minds of the decision-makers of this community, in the minds of the people we entrust to be the protectors of our safety," said Bread, whose son Chris was killed by a hit-and-run driver last year.
Bread, along with several people on the panel and in the audience, questioned the use of gunfire as the only means of disarming Sevier, who had a knife in his hand when he was killed. Family members had called
police to the Sevier home at 2:28 a.m.
April 24 to assist in dealing with
Sevier, who had been distraught
about personal problems, according
to police.
Lance Burr, Lawrence attorney and representative of the Sevier family, denounced the city's investigation and coroner's inquest into the shooting as predetermined by Jim Flory, Douglas County district attorney and other local officials handling
"Flory has made it clear that he thinks this is justifiable homicide," he said. "We obviously can't allow him to conduct this inquest."
Burr said he was requesting that the announcement of the inquest results, scheduled to be released tomorrow, be postponed so that an outside authority could determine the results.
"We want a fair inquest and we demand a fair inquest." he said.
Some of the criticism and questions from the audience were directed toward City Manager Mike Wilden and other managers, who both attended the meeting.
"We've gone by the book with this entire investigation." Walters said after the meeting. "Right now my hide's a little tender."
He said he had not expected such harsh criticism, but acknowledged the frustration behind the remarks by some of the people at the forum.
"They were said with feeling," Walters said.
April showers
Cary Stegall, left, Lawrence resident, stands on top of a submerged picnic table as Megan Meyers, also of Lawrence, carries a reluctant dog over the water after torrential rains flooded Central Park just
north of Eighth and Tennessee streets. While most people were heading for cover yesterday, Stegall and Meyers found a watery playground in the flooded park.
America's casual immorality is revealed in new book
Authors designed new survey to ensure participants' privacy
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Only 13 percent of Americans obey all Ten Commandments.
Most workers admit to goofing off for about seven hours a week, and almost half say they regularly call in sick when they are not. Ninety-one percent of us lie regularly, at work and at home.
But Americans can still tell the truth when no one is watching or listening. That, at least, is the assumption of "The Day America Told the Truth," a new book based on an extensive opinion survey that guaranteed anonymity to participants.
ity before they were 13. One in six adults say they were physically abused as children, and one in seven say they were sexually abused. Twenty percent of women say they were raped by their dates. A third of AIDS carriers have not told their snores or lovers.
"There's a lot of bad news," says James Patterson, who wrote the book with Peter Kim, a fellow executive at Walter Thompson advertising agency.
According to the survey, one in five Americans say they lost their virgin-
"In looking at consumer research, we felt something was going on below the surface. For instance, you ask
people why they buy a certain luxury car, and they check off 'resale value' or 'engineering.' That's baloney. If you want to know people's darkest secrets, they're not going to tell you."
So Kim designed a survey to get people to unburden themselves of their feelings about personal and moral issues in near-total anonymity. Traditional polling methods were deemed insufficient.
"The idea of 200 names and a telephone and you've got a poll is ridiculous." Patterson said.
more than 2,000 people selected at random gathered at 54 sites around the nation. They were paid $5 or $10, and spent about 90 minutes writing answers to 1,800 questions. They completed the forms in privacy and dropped them unsigned into a locked box.
During one week late last fall.
The poll has a margin of error of 2 percent to 4 percent.
"The Day America Told the Truth" is troubling on several fronts.
Marriage: Nearly 50 percent say there is no reason ever to get married, 31 percent of married people are having or have had an affair, and
47 percent are not sure they would marry the same person if they had it to do over again.
Community: Seventy-two percent do not know their next-door neighbor. Seven in 10 say there are no American heroes.
Crime. Six in 10 say they've been victims of major crimes. One in seven carries a gun or has one in his or her car. Two-thirds favor capital punishment; one-third would volunteer to throw the electric chair switch. And 7 percent say that for $2 million they would commit murder.
The Associated Press
Bush asks foreigners to help U.S. by cutting interest rates
WASHINGTON — President Bush, confronting a U.S. economy still mired in recession, took his case directly to foreign finance ministers yesterday, trying to convince them of the need to cut global interest rates.
Bush took the unusual step of inviting the finance ministers and central bank presidents to a White House meeting on lobbying before the start of a regularly scheduled meeting of the so-called Group of Seven, the world's seven richest industrial countries.
However, U.S. allies — especially Germany and Japan — were resisting the pressure, contending that any threat from China could be the risk of making inflation worse.
The United States was represented at the sessions by Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and Federal Reserve Chairperson Alan Greenspan. They normally meet four times a year with their counterparts from Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy to seek a coordinated strategy to promote global prosperity.
After day-long discussions, the group was to issue a communique that economists were predicting would do little more than cover over
the sharp differences between nations.
"I don't think there is going to be any change in interest rates as the result of this meeting." said Robert Hormats, vice president for international investment at Goldman Sachs. "The countries will essentially end up pursuing policies they feel are necessary for domestic purposes."
Earlier in the week, Bush had expressed the hope that interest rates would fall in the United States and in other nations.
The administration considered a drop in world interest rates critical to getting the United States out of the
The boom in foreign demand for U.S. products has been one of the few bright spots for the U.S. economy during the past two years.
current downturn by increasing foreign activity and thus providing stronger markets for U.S. exports.
In addition, the administration is worried that without cheaper credit internationally, the recessions in the US could worsen into a global downturn.
Such a development occurred in the 1983-84 period when weakness in one United States, which accounted for about $5 billion, was enough to trigger a worldwide downing. Robert Hormats
turn.
'I don't think there is going to be any change in interest rates as the result of this meeting.
Vice president for international investment at Goldman Sachs
However, Japan and Germany, the countries with the second and third largest economies respectively, are still enjoying strong growth and they argued that cuts in interest rates could help inflation improve by boosting demand.
Tornadoes ripped through
Wichita before hitting
Andover on Friday.
Gov. Joan Finney declares
the site a disaster area.
See stories, photos Pages 8 & 9