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I
2 • The Red and Black • Tuesday, January 8, 1991
BRIEFLY
■ UNIVERSITY
Willingham denied new trial. Former University Library
Director Robert “Skeet” Willingham, who was found guilty on 13
counts of theft by conversion, was denied his motion for a new trial.
Willingham was convicted in September 1988 of stealing valuable
books from the University’s Hargrett Collection of Rare Books and
Manuscripts. After Willingham’s conviction, Athens attorney Ernest
DePascale filed the motion for a new trial, claiming the state had
insufficient evidence. The Appeals Court of Georgia denied
Willingham’s motion in December.
■ STATE
ATLANTA (AP): Budget hearings start today. Budget
hearings begin at the Capitol today with the state’s slowing economy
unimproved. But on the eve of the hearings, two legislators said the
fiscal crisis may not be entirely bad.“Adversity breeds opportunity,"
said Rep. Bill Dover, D-Clarkesville, new chairman of the House
Ways and Means Committee. He said the problem will force
legislators to find ways to economize. Rep. Roy H. “Sonny” Watson, D-
Warner Robins, chairman of the House Industry Committee, agreed
that the recessionary economy will make legislators “downsize and
reduce administrative costs” in order to make the books balance.The
House and Senate Appropriations Committees begin three days of
joint hearings this morning. The first day’s session will open at 10
a.m. with Gov.-elect Zell Miller delivering his recommendations for
the midyear budget, often called the supplemental budget.
ATHENS (AP): Programs help ‘latchkey’ kids. At first
glance the group seems much like any other class. But unlike the
typical Fourth Street Elementary classroom, the students in Ms.
Hucks’ room are not in school. Rather they are participants in an
after-school program at Fourth Street and Barnett Shoals
Elementary Schools. Organized by the Junior League of Athens, the
program is for “latchkey” children who may otherwise go home to an
empty house after school. By keeping the school’s doors open a few
hours each afternoon, organizers are providing students with a
nurturing environment in which to spend their afternoons. Last
Wednesday, the first day of the new program, Barnett Shoals’
program had about 24 students who stayed past the end of school.
About 10 Fourth Street kids spent their after-school hours in the
classroom. Grants from the Junior League and the federal
government provided the seed money needed to purchase supplies
and materials, a telephone and to pay organizers’ salaries until the
program gets up and running. The cost for the program is $4 per day
per child.
ATLANTA (AP): Miller’s inauguration to be eclectic.
Zell Miller’s inauguration next week as Georgia’s 79th governor will
be an eclectic affair mixing country music with symphonic airs, pomp
with quiet prayer. It’s a little different kind of inauguration for a man
who in some of his campaign ads last year called himself a different
kind of politician. The two-day celebration, which culminates Jan. 14,
mixes elements that at one time or another have been part of Miller’s
life. The Marine Corps — part of Miller’s life from 1953 through 1956
—will be represented with a band from Parris Island, S.C. A gala
celebration afterwards will feature some of Miller’s friends from the
country music world. And a former student from Miller’s days as a
teacher at n small mountain college will deliver the invocation. The
location is different, too. Instead of the west steps of the Capitol, often
cold and windy in January, the inauguration will take place in the
enclosed comfort of a basketball gymnasium on the Georgia Tech
campus.
■ NATION
NEW YORK (AP): U.S. to buy Soviet nuclear reactor.
The United States is completing a deal to buy a nuclear reactor built
by the Soviet Union to power systems in space, according to a
published report. The intent is to study Soviet technology rather than
to use the reactor in space, according to a federal official who spoke to
The New York Times on condition of anonymity. The transaction
would be the first major sale between the two superpowers of a
technology with military potential since the Cold War ended. The
purchase was scheduled to be announced Monday in New Mexico at a
scientific meeting, the Times said in Monday’s editions. The reactor
will be set up in the Albuquerque area and tested by the University of
New Mexico, the Sandia National Laboratory, the Los Alamos
National Laboratory and the Air Force Phillips Laboratory, the
federal official told the Times.The reactor is an advanced version of
devices that have powered Soviet spy satellites for decades.
■ WORLD
ROME (AP): Pope’s family contradicts Vatican.
Relatives of the late Pope John Paul I have contradicted the Vatican’s
version of his sudden death 33 days into the papacy, reviving old
questions about the case, according to published reports. When John
Paul I was elected head of the Roman Catholic Church on Aug. 26,
1978, he was a 65-year-old Italian apparently in good health. He died
on Sept. 29. According to the Vatican’s official account, he was found
dead in his bed that morning. The Vatican said he suffered a heart
attack. Some published theories have blamed John Paul’s death on
foul play, linking it to power struggles between church conservatives
and liberals and to an Italian banking scandal involving the Vatican
bank. One relative, meanwhile, has been quoted as saying the pope
may have died after he stopped taking crucial medicine, apparently
because he felt inadequate for the job. And another was quoted as
saying the Vatican apparently covered up the full circumstances
surrounding his death.
GIZA PLATEAU, Egypt (AP): Sphinx gets facelift. The
ailing Sphinx is starting 1991 with a new lease on life. Antiquities
officials are thrilled with the results of the first year of one of the
largest renewal projects in the statue’s 4,600-year history. They say
that by the time restoration is finished, the monument will be in its
best shape in centuries. “For the first time we can say to the world
we’ve returned the Sphinx to its youth,” said Zahi Hawass, director
general of antiquities for the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx. It has
been a year that saw the Sphinx embraced by scaffolding, its right
paw dismantled stone by stone and reassembled with new stones,
layers of crusted salt removed from its sides and the water table
beneath its mammoth body stabilized. After the current project,
officials say, the statue still will have no nose. That was lost to
antiquity.
UGA TODAY
Meetings
The Incinerator Advisory
Committee will hold its second
meeting today at 10 a.m. in Room
144 of the Tate Student Center.
Individual incinerator units, the
advisability of their continued
use and alternate solutions to the
potential loss of some units will
be discussed. The public is
invited to attend.
Announcements
The Career Planning and
Placement Center is offering
seminars about resumes and
interviewing for students
planning to conduct a job search.
The 50 minute seminars will be
taught almost daily through
winter quarter. Students must
come by Clark Howell Hall to
sign up for seminars and on-
campus interviews. For more
information call the Career
Planning and Placement Center
at 542-3375. -
Exhibits
The Cortona, Italy Studies
Abroad Program 1990 Exhibition
will be showing until Jan. 31 in
the visual arts building on
Jackson Street. Hours are from 8
a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The exhibit
is free and open to the public.
Items for UGA Today must be
submitted in writing at least two
days before the date to be printed.
Include specific meeting location,
speaker's title and topic, and a
contact person’s day and evening
phone number. Items are printed
on a space-available basis.
Because space is limited, long
announcements are shortened.
Local Fulton Federal claims business as usual
By STEVE HiLLMER
Campus Correspondent
Students who have accounts at
the troubled Fulton Federal Sav
ings Bank, which was placed under
government conservatorship
Friday, shouldn’t rush to close
their accounts with the bank, a
bank official said Monday.
Phil Bettendorf, managing of
ficer of the Atlanta-based bank’s
two Athens branches, said stu
dents with accounts at his bank
aren’t in danger of losing their
money.
Bettendorf said Monday things
are “business as usual.”
The federally operated Resolu
tion Trust Corporation, which has
taken over management of the
bank, will try to find a buyer for
the institution while at the same
time attempting to minimize its
losses.
Among the many reasons the
bank has been placed under gov
ernment control are the poor cur
rent market conditions and bad
consumer loans, Bettendorf said.
He said the primary reason for
the takeover is the 1989 law
change that no longer enables the
bank to count $80 million in good
will funds, which
available assets.
Such changes, Bettendorf said,
aren’t easy to comply with.
‘There’s not a whole lot you can
do,” he said.
The likelihood of finding a buyer
during the conservatorship, a
status which typically lasts from
six months to a year, is quite high,
said James Verbrugge, chair of the
University’s banking and finance
department.
Among Fulton Federal s assets
is its large Atlanta presence, he
said.
Current capital requirements,
aren’t readily according to Verbrugge, are around l
7 percent, meaning that roughly 7
percent of assets must be in ready
reserve — able to be turned into
cash quickly.
Fulton F Val fell far short of |
this requiiement, Bettendorf said.
Fulton Federal is the only insti-
tution in Athens currently offering
totally free checking accounts,
which some regulators have
blamed for declining bank profita
bility.
Approximately 45 percent of
Fulton Federal’s checking accounts
are of this nature, Bettendorf said.
Athens-Clarke County follows in unification
By KRISTA HARRIS
Campus Correspondent
As Athens-Clarke County offi
cially becomes the second unified
government in Georgia, the ex
ample of Columbus-Muscogee
County, Ga. becomes important to
implementing the new govern
ment.
Columbus and Muscogee County
unified in 1971 and remained the
only successful unification in the
state until now.
Architects of the new govern
ment “tried to learn some lessons”
from the Columbus-Muscogee con
solidation and their 20 years of op
eration, said Dan Durning of the
University’s Carl Vinson Institute
of Government.
Durning said the Athens charter
commission looked at Columbus’
charter as the only example of a
successful unification in the state.
Similarities exist in the Athens-
Clarke charter, but the differences
in the two cities required different
perspectives.
Unlike Columbus, the Athens-
Clarke unification involved a large
turnover in elected officials,
Durning said. “Lots of new blood
was injected into the new govern
ment.”
The unified government ex
cludes Winterville because of its
small size and its opposition to uni
fication, he said. Bibb County was
excluded from Columbus-Musco-
gee’s new government for similar
reasons.
Columbus’ first city manager,
Franklyn Lambert said in a 1971
interview with the Atlanta Consti
tution “the most complicated
changeover (in Columbus) will be
in the tax and property appraisal
offices.”
A special service district re
placed the former city limits of Co
lumbus, similar to the district
created in the former city limits of
Athens, Durning said. This district
was created to differentiate for
property tax purposes between city
residents and county residents, be
cause city residents receive more
government services.
“A unique situation to be suc
cessful” existed in Columbus,
Durning said. Several attempts to
consolidate had been made before
1971, and the city had continued to
annex Muscogee County until city
residents greatly outnumbered
county residents.
The success of Columbus’ unifi
cation depended on this annexa
tion, Durning said. Athens hasn’t
annexed Clarke County to the
same extent in the past.
Durning said the public support
for unification here depended
somewhat on a change in voting
laws in Georgia. After 1982, the
city’s support of unification was
able to
veto.
prevail over the county’s
‘The rules changed as to how the
votes were counted,” making it pos
sible for passage of a unification
bill, Durning said.
Foreshadowing similar
statements by Athens officials, Co
lumbus* city manager at the time of
unification Frank Lambert de
scribed the reorganization process
as confusing. But 20 years later the
unified government is still oper
ating.
Durning said an opinion poll
conducted in Columbus in the early
1980s showed the public was favor
able to the unified government.
BUDGET
From page 1
travel and supplies. In his depart
ment’s case, that amounts to as
much ns 17 to 25 percent. Marine
Sciences also was forced to dismiss
several staff members, he said.
“It’s part of the real world we
live in,” Chin said.
University research and other
services will lose close to $800,000
with the new reduction. Included
in the reductions are: agricultural
research facilities, Cooperative Ex
tension Service, Minority Business
Enterprises, all areas of veterinary
teaching, research and services
and marine sciences.
Chin said he isn’t sure what will
be done if the further budget cuts
are made.
“We’re holding our breath,” he
said.
The new cut and subsequent use
of contingency funds also has elim
inated all funds held in the Univer
sity System reserve, according to a
memo from Propst.
*The decision to take this course
of action removes all remaining
flexibility that we have centrally in
dealing with any further budget re
ductions or any emergency funding
situations that might arise,”
Propst stated in the memo.
Prokasy said the new reduction
will also aggravate problems
caused by the last cut, which in
cluded inadequate funds for tea
ching and research equipment, and
the huge cuts taken from the oper
ational budget of Physical Plant.
Physical Plant is responsible for
the $10-12 million asbestos-re
moval project, fire safety and air-
quality projects.
Prokasy said that despite the
current squeeze, he feels the Uni
versity is nealthy.
“One year’s cutback does not kill
an institution. It’s the steady ero
sion that’s the real problem.”
&
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