VOL.100, NO.82
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
(USPS 650-640)
TUESDAY, JAN. 30, 1990
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
NEWS: 864-4810
Curbside survey
Larry Glesner, Jeff, and Mike Hattesohl, of BG Consultants Inc., survey curbing along 19th Street for a street improvement project.
Area plants may face cuts
DeSoto and Parsons on defense hit lists
By Chris Siron
Kansan staff writer
Two Kansas ammunition plants may face backacks after Defense Secretary Dick Cheney yesterday proposed ending military contracts with more than 72 U.S. military installations in an effort to cut defense expenses.
Army ammunition plants in Desoto and Parsons were listed among those considered for "realignment." Realignment is the process of ending government contracts with a plant. If the realignments became part of the budget, they would not occur until October 1992.
More on proposed cuts
Walt Riker, press secretary for Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, said Dole stressed that the proposals did not mean cutbacks had been finalized.
Sharon Fritz, public affairs official at the Desoto plant, said realignment would not close the plant but would cause plant officials to search for new contracts outside the defense industry.
The DeSoto plant produces one of three chemical components used to propel rockets.
Fritz said that layoffs would be ineventive with the proposed cutback. She said she could not speculate on the number of employees it would affect.
The Desoto plant's contractor, Hercules Inc., employs about 700 people at the site, and the U.S. Army employs 32.
Army leaders. Pritz said the Defense Department had proposed ending only current contracts and might negotiate new contracts with the plant in the future.
Brian Gaston, an administrative assistant for U.S. Rep. Jan Meyers, R-Kan., whose district includes Desoto, said the proposal did not come as a surprise.
Gaston said the plant, which produces an explosive propellant, returned to military production in 1984 with the understanding that government contracts would be cyclical.
Carl Wilson, plant manager of the Parsons plant, said he did not expect future defense contracts at his plant if the proposal were finalized.
"New contracts would probably come only in case of all-out war," he said.
Wilson said that he did not like Cheney's decision and that if the proposal were not revised, the Parsons plant would not quickly recover from the cuts.
Wilson said he did not expect the plant's gates to close. He hoped that private contracts could be expanded to replace lost government contracts.
He said the Parson plant relied on the Defense Department for 20 to 30 percent of its production. The plant employs about 800 workers.
Rob Mooney, senior legislative assistant for U.S.
hep. Bob Whittaker, R-Kan., whose district included Parsons, said Whittaker was disappointed with Cheney's proposed cuts, although Whittaker had supported plant closings last year. Mooney said Whittaker hoped the plant would make up any lost production through private leasing.
mooney said the contract cuts should not mean a corresponding cut in employment.
President Bush asked Congress today to trim defense spending by 2 percent, after inflation, in a $292.1 billion Pentagon budget proposal for next year that acknowledged a diminished Soviet military threat.
The budget does not include the $11.1 million in nuclear weapons programs administered by the Energy Department.
Cheney recommended cutting 38,000 men and women from the 2 million in uniform and called for the elimination of several weapons systems as well as the closing of military bases.
The proposed defense budget includes $500 million for the Strategic Defense Initiative. The recommendations are certain to create controversy in Congress. Lawmakers cut SDI funding last year and are unlikely to support military realignment or closings in their own districts.
Cheney's list of suggested sites for cutbacks is included in a proposal for a study to determine which bases should be closed.
Cheney also proposed paying for five new B-2 Stealth bombers, another $1 billion Trident submarine and two intercontinental nuclear missile systems.
The Associated Press contributed information to this story.
Bush's budget slows spending Cost exceeds $1.23 trillion
WASHINGTON — President Bush yesterday sent Congress a $1.23 trillion budget for fiscal 1991 that keeps new spending below inflation, scales back defense and rewards emerging democracies.
The Associated Press
Bush called the spending plan an investment in the future. But Democratic leaders in Congress pounced on it as a "standup budget" and challenged its claim to cut the federal deficit to $63.1 billion, half its current size.
Fights loom with the Democratic-controlled Congress on a range of fronts including Bush's desires to cut Medicare and capital gains taxes, to close military bases he considers outmoded and, on the other hand, to preserve some expensive weapons.
Bush would increase spending for space, education, the environment and the war on drugs. Losers this year are Medicare, college student loans, farm subsidies, energy conservation grants and mass transit.
The president's budget for the
fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 calls for $36.5 billion in spending cuts and other deficit-reduction measures.
Bush proposed defense spending of $292.1 billion, a cut of 2 percent measured against inflation. His budget would increase foreign aid to Eastern Europe, the Philippines and Latin America.
It projects a 7 percent increase in revenues, to $1.17 trillion, without a general tax increase and just a 3 percent boost in overall spending. That is more than a percentage point below the current rate of inflation.
Still, the budget recommends $15.6 billion in lesser tax increases and a $5.6 billion increase in user and service fees, most of them recycled from Reagan budgets and previously defeated in Congress.
On the domestic front, his budget would leave in place the Social Security tax increase that took effect earlier this month. But it honors Bush's 1988 campaign pledge to propose no general tax increase.
State revamps campaign filing
This is the second of two articles on campaign finances in Douglas County.
rne Campaign Finance Act was updated in July because previous legislation was wague, confusing to candidates and difficult to enforce, a state official said last week.
By Kathryn Lancaster
Kansan staff writer
The confusion has caused uncertainty among local candidates, many of whom are not sure of their filing requirements.
In Lawrence, seven candidates for local offices missed a December 31 deadline to file campaign finance statements. The statements list campaign contributors, amounts spent and amounts received by candidates.
Of those who did not file in December, four candidates said they did not know they had to file, two said they thought the statements had been filed and one, Ken Dzieuwalski, did not receive any contributions.
The six candidates who did not file were John Barbian, Tom Graves, Ellis Hayden, LeRoy
Young, Kristi Lewis and Larry Morlan. Six of the candidates sought election to the City Commission, and one sought a school board position. None was elected.
The elections were conducted in April before the new law went into effect. The Public Disclosure Commission, a state agency that regulates lobbyists and oversees campaign issues, urged counties to follow the old law. That law provided no mechanism for notifying candidates of deadlines.
"I could certainly understand how a candidate could forget to file, especially if no one sent out a reminder that the statement was due," said Carol Williams, administrative assistant for the commission.
Candidates were notified before the election that two statements were necessary, said Patty Jaimes, Douglas County clerk Within 30 days after the election, they had to file personal expenditure statements. In December,
See CAMPAIGN, p. 5
Topeka clampdown influences Lawrence
Robbers may be fleeing into area to avoid effects of task force, local authorities say
By Curtis Knapp Kansan staff writer
An armed-robbery task force implemented today in Topeka may force Steve robbers to Lawrence, said Steve Harsha, detective sergeant of the Topeka police department.
"I'ts our feeling that because of their clampdown, it forced individuals over here." Mulvenon said. "That's not for certain yet. That's just one of the things we're looking into."
Chris Mulvenon, Lawrence police spokesman, said word of the task force, which was created to reduce robberies in Topeka, may have already sent criminals here.
He said Taco John's, 1101 W. Sixth St., was robbed twice in the last three months. At 11:10 p.m. Saturday, a man carrying a small semi-automatic handgun entered the restaurant with an accomplice and demanded money.
Mulvenon cited recent robberies in Lawrence to support his theory.
The men stole an undetermined amount of money from the cash register and safe and then forced the two employees on duty into a freezer, Mulvenon said.
The freezer was not locked, and the employees waited several minutes before leaving to call police from a nearby fast-food restaurant, Mulve.
— Chris Mulvenon police spokesman
'It's our feeling that because of their clamp-down, it forced individuals over here.'
Mutevienon said the armed man was described as a '30-year-old Black male, about 5-feet-6 inches tall and 150 pounds. He had a moustache, a heavy build and was wearing black glasses and a gray jacket, he said.
Taco John's assistant manager, Bonnie Donzacc, said that the restaurant was installing cameras this week to improve security.
non said.
The accomplice was described as a 40-year-old Black male, about 6-feet tall and 215 pounds. He was stocky, wore a beanie cap and a brown sweater. The men left in a large, late-model car, Mulvenon reported.
Mulvenon said that Taco John's also was robbed on Nov. 2 and that police were looking into the possibility that the two robberies were part of the same incident, an unarmed accomplice may have been involved in the earlier robbery.
Mulvenon said that police believed a robbery on Dec. 23 at Hickory Farms, Ninth and Iowa streets, also was related. The amount of money stolen was not determined.
Phil EllsworthKJANSAN
Expedition members, Rand, Forster and Minden, discuss their trip.
Students return from icy research
New, faster radar used in Antarctica to study ice floe
By Sandra Moran Kansan staff writer
Two KU graduate students and their faculty adviser never saw the sun set when they spent almost two months researching in West Antarctica.
On Friday, after 58 days of cold weather and continuous sunlight, they returned to the University of Kapsas.
The team consisted of Tim Rand, Valley City, N.D., graduate student, Rick Forster, Westmont, N.J., graduate student, and Gary Minden, associate professor of electrical engineering.
Rand said the research trip, financed by the National Science Foundation, was organized to test the depth and structural composition of the ice using a new type of radar developed at KU.
"If there is any type of global warming, it would be West Antarctica that would be affected first." Rand said. "We're interested in studying ice floes and warming and freezing because there is some concern about this global warming."
Forster said he and Rand volunteered for the project.
"They needed people for the project at the time," Forster said. "It was pretty much on a volunteer basis."
This was the fourth year that KU engineering researchers have studied in Antarctica and the first year the new, faster radar was used.
The team stayed at an outdoor camp named Upstream B, which is located near one of three glacial ice streams. The Ice in Stream B moves at a rate of 3 feet per day.
"We were studying the ice foe because the ice is so thick, nobody knows what it looks like underneath." Rand said.
He said they attached the radar equipment to sleds, which they pulled slowly across a 1.2 by 12 mile grid marked in the snow.
They sent bursts of radar at a rate of 5,000 pulses per second into the ice. They timed how long it
took the signals to travel to the bottom of the ice and for the echo to return to the top.
"One of the things that made it
These readings will be taken and graphed to determine the topographic contours of the land beneath the nearly 9,000 feet of ice.
Rand said there were 12 men and one woman at their camp, including seven researchers from California who used boiling water to drill to the bottom of the ice stream for mud samples.
Rand said his team left Kansas City, Mo., on Nov. 30. Both he and Forster said it was difficult being away from their families on Christmas.
See ICE, p. 5
E. Germany arrests ex-leader
The Associated Press
EAST BERLIN — Erich Honecker, who led East Germany for 18 years until his downfall in October, was released from a hospital yesterday and immediately arrested for treason, the national prosecutor said.
Plans to put the former Communist Party chief and three members of his Politburo on trial in March were announced by Prosecutor Hans-Juergen Joseph at a session of Parliament where Premier Hans Modrov offered a grim account of the state of the nation.
The swift action against Honecker, 77, indicates the strength of a nationwide backlash against cops in Honecker's Stalinist regime.
Economic problems and widespread unrest have forced Modrow, the criticized Communist premier, to move the country's first free elections up from May to March 18 and bring the opposition into a coalition that will govern until then.
Honecker was recuperating at Charlie hospital from surgery performed Jan. 8 to remove a malignant kidney tumor. He was arrested as he left the hospital and taken to Rummelsburg prison in East Berlin, the official news
See HONECKER, p. 1