Newspaper Page Text
Busbee gets tough
on welfare cheats
ATLANTA (UPI) - Gov. George
Busbee, announced a war on welfare fraud
Thursday saying that the state has “no
choice but to initiate a major crackdown
on welfare cheaters and chiselers.”
Busbee said that the state is going to
launch “a concerted effort” to stop and
prosecute the estimated one out of every
four welfare recipients, who are now
bilking the state at a cost of sl7 million.
“I’m going after the cheaters, the
swindlers and those committing fraud, and
who are taking food out of the mouths of
those who deserve help,” said Busbee.
Busbee said 27.5 per cent of the
recipients in Georgia’s largely federally
funded welfare programs received more
than they were eligible for during the last
half of 1974 — and that 10.7 per cent of the
recipients were ineligible for any welfare
at all. He said the underpayment rate was
just 9.2 per cent.
Busbee said that not all of those
overpayments were the result of welfare
fraud saying that there are "many oppor
tunities for human error” by both the
recipient and the case worker.
At his weekly news conference, Busbee
spread charts and statistical tables across
the white marble top of his curved desk
and told Capitol reporters that the state
will lose $17.2 million — $12.8 million in
federal funding, the other $4.4 million in
state money — if it does not correct those
percentage margins of error.
He said there will be revisions in the
ATLANTA (UPI) - Construction
workers ended their 17-day strike today
and returned to job sites with a two-year
contract phasing in a 70-cent hourly pay
raise that would put Atlanta’s building
tradesmen among the region’s best paid.
The strike, which also kept tradesmen in
related fields off the job, stalled the
building of about $l5O million worth of
downtown structures, including some
hotels which will be hard pressed to open
as scheduled in the fall.
Claude Feninger, vice president of the
Omni International Hotel, said there is “no
way” his hotel can open in September, and
that 23 conventions had already been lost.
Officials of the World Congress Center said
ATLANTA (UPI) — The Georgia Public
Service Commission plans to meet soon
with two natural gas companies and
industries in Gainesville to seek a solution
o potential fuel shortages this winter in
the northeast Georgia city.
Atlanta Gas Light Co. advised the PSC
by letter that it can supply natural gas to
22 industries in Gainesville which are
threatened with a cutoff this winter from
their supplier, United Cities of Nashville,
Tenn.
President W. L. Lee of Atlanta Gas
wrote the state Public Service Commission
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STOCKBRIDGE, Ga. — Although he said to love, honor
and obey, he didn’t say he had to share all his bananas
with his mate who sits to his right. Mr. Tuan, a giant
orangutan makes sure he has plenty for himself, while his
mate, Betsy, clearly keeps an eye on the fruit clutches in
Construction strike ends
PSC checks natural gas
eligibility procedure and in the way
allowable payment levels are determined,
said Busbee.
Busbee’s three-part formula for
reducing the error rate includes:
— Doubling the current staff of three
attorneys in DHR overseeing welfare
cases and referring deliberate fraud to
district attorneys in the 42 circuits for
prosecution.
— An immediate doublecheck on all
families receiving $25 a month or less in
welfare payments because “these are the
instances in which the families have a high
amount of income and are on the very
fringes of eligibility.”
— Appointment of the House and Senate
overview committees to come up with
long-range legislative solutions to the
quandry.
“I’ll tell you this: We’re going to reduce
that error rate,” Busbee said. “We’re
going to make some corrections and we’re
going to prosecute for fraud some of these
cheats and chiselers.”
Busbee said he and Department of
Human Resources Commissioner Jim
Parham are joining in a suit challenging
federal sanctions against the state, which
he said have already cost Georgia $3.2
million for having ineligible or over-paid
recipients on welfare rolls.
Parham said the federal government’s
paperwork requirements set up the maze
of bureaucracy which makes it virtually
impossible for hardpressed caseworkers
they are forced on “a tight schedule” to
meet the scheduled September, 1976,
opening of their center.
The 3,000-member Laborers
International Union came to terms with
the Associated General Contractors
Thursday night, getting 20 cents more than
the half-dollar hourly pay raise the AGC
offered at the outset of the strike.
The settlement immediately adds 15
cents to the base pay of $5.30 an hour for
construction laborers, with another 15
cents next Jan. 1. The contract calls for 20-
cent increments next July and in January,
1977.
The union also won fringe benefits worth
50 cents an hour more per worker.
that his company was willing to contract
with the firms served by United Cities for
certain quantities of gas provided the PSC
approves.
“We would deliver the gas to the
customer into the lines of United Cities at
the point where our high-pressure lines
cross about seven miles south of
Gainesville,” Lee said in his letter.
United Cities has advised the affected
industries that it does not expect to be able
to meet demands for gas this winter and
that the Gainesville firms, the only ones in
Georgia served by United, can look for
interruptions in service.
Time to eat
his hands, as he watches to make sure she doesn’t try to
grab them. The huge ape weighs in at more than 300
pounds, and he and Betsy make their home on a island at
Lion Country Safari. (UPI)
to ascertain eligibility, so the state should
not bear sole responsibility for having
unworthy recipients on the dole.
Busbee said the House and Senate set up
welfare overview committees to draft
legislation for streamlining state procedu
res, and that he and Parham are looking
into a system of making simple direct
grants to qualified recipients.
The current system requires an intricate
balance of needs and income, and Busbee
said recipients — even if they know the
rules — are often lax in reporting changes
in family status or income, which affect
eligibility.
Busbee said the federal medicaid
program adds to the problem since anyone
receiving “even one dollar” of welfare is
automatically eligible for medicaid
treatment and that means changes in the
family status are less likely to be reported
promptly.
Busbee said the state mails out
questionaires for changes in the income
status, but many welfare recipients don’t
read them.
“It gets kind of like those stuffings that
come in your gasoline credit card bills
each month,” he said. “You don’t read it,
you just throw it away.”
Busbee said it is not humanly possible to
reach the federal standard of 3 per cent
error in welfare rolls, but said he was
going to try to shoot for a “zero” error
percentage anyway.
Another contract provision calls for
mandatory dues checkoff, so that union
dues will be automatically deducted from
a member’s paycheck, but the LIU lost in
its demand for an “administrative fee” of
10 cents per working member to be used in
organizing non-union construction
workers.
The settlement raised Atlanta
construction wages among the highest in
the South.
About 5,000 craftsmen in related fields —
iron workers, heavy equipment operators
and carpenters — had agreed to new
contracts earlier this week, but they
honored LIU picket lines and remained off
the job until today.
Atlanta Gas has said that its supplies
from Southern Natural Gas of
Birmingham, Ala., will be sufficient to
meet all needs.
Lee also suggested in his letter that
Atlanta Gas might buy out United Cities in
Gainesville. He said the system was
valued at $3.5 million on a depreciated
basis in the PSC filing by United for a 13
per cent rate increase.
But he added that such a move would not
help now because the legal and technical
problems involved in any such purchase
would take several years to work out.
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Attention
SAN SALVADOR — Miss England, Vicki Harris, a Miss Universe contestant, is the center
of attraction as she watches the horse races at the Izalco Jockey Club here. Miss Universe
will be crowned here tomorrow night. (UPI)
Busbee stresses textiles
ATLANTA (UPI) — A Macon man was
temporarily appointed to the state Board
of Pardons and Paroles and a textile
executive was named to fill a vacancy on
the Georgia Ports Authority by Gov.
George Busbee Thursday.
Busbee named Bibb County
Commissioner Floyd E. Busbee, Sr., 58, of
Macon to take over while board member
Joseph G. Maddox undergoes treatment
for cancer.
He also appointed L. P. Greer of Toccoa
to the Georgia Ports Authority to succeed
Jim Barbre of Dalton, who was not
reappointed to the seven member board.
Busbee said “the heavy workload of the
board and reports that some cases remain
undecided because of tie votes among the
board members present” forced him to
appoint someone temporarily even though
Maddox’s term expires in January.
A report by two physicians, which is
required by law before any temporary
appointments can be made due to illness of
a board member, indicated Maddox was
“incapacitated to perform the duties of his
office.”
GRIFFIN
Gun control bill has
15-day cooling period
ATLANTA (UPI) — The sponsor of the
General Assembly’s most strict gun
control bill said Thursday his bill is
designed so there is a 15-day “cooling off
period” not only to prevent domestic
quarrels from turning into murders, but
also to check into the background of the
person purchasing the weapon.
“The whole issue of handguns in the
United States has become a disgrace for
Georgia,” said Rep. David Scott, D-
Atlanta, who has authored the bill with the
purchase delay and setting up quality
standards for separating cheap “Saturday
night special” pistols from legitimate
handguns.
Scott said his bill would give police a
chance to find out if “you’re a criminal or
mentally incompetent” before a pistol is
delivered.
Georgia sells 13,000 handguns a week
and many of those weapons end up in the
north, Scott said.
“The opponents of my bill always say,
‘Look at New York and Newark — gun
laws didn’t reduce the crime rate up
there’,” said Scott. “Well, most of those
guns came from South Carolina and
Georgia.”
The 1968 federal gun law forbids import
of foreign-made pistols, but Scott said “it
has big loophole” because foreignmade
Page 3
Griffin Daily News Friday, July 18,1975
Busbee said he will not make a
permanent appointment for the seven
year term until the end of the year.
The Bibb County Commissioner has
served in that capacity for three years and
is chairman of the commission’s
Courthouse and Properties Committee,
which oversees jail operations.
Greer is vice president of the Finishing
Division of Coats and Clark, where he has
been employed since 1948, and is in charge
of three of the company’s Georgia plants.
He has a B.S. degree in electrical
engineering from Georgia Tech and is a
graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy
postgraduate school of Naval
Architecture.
In appointing Greer to the post that runs
through June 30,1979, Busbee said that “it
is vital that we increase the tonnage of
textile goods” flowing through Georgia
ports.
“I am confident he (Greer) will provide
a great service in working toward this goal
which will be an economic stimulus to the
textile industry, our ports and the state as
a whole,” Busbee said.
pistol parts are not banned. He said Georgia
and South Carolina gun dealers do good
business with gun runners who buy pistols
legally in the South and smuggle them
back to New York or New Jersey illegally.
Scott said in an interview he intends to
testify before a U.S. House of
Representatives committee headed by
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., which is
holding hearings in Atlanta next Monday
on gun control.
He said 38 per cent of handguns
confiscated by New York City police
following crimes originated in South
Carolina and Georgia. He scoffed at the
argument that “guns don’t kill people,
people kill people,” as advanced by
bumper stickers and posters.
“That’s the gun lobby talking,” he said.
“It’s the gun that people are afraid of, not
other people.”
Scott’s bill is one of six pending before a
special House judiciary panel making an
interim study of the handguncontrol issue
between sessions of the Georgia General
Assembly.
Scott said 710 persons were killed with
handguns in Georgia last year, 200 of them
in Atlanta, and that almost all of them
were killed by persons without a criminal
record.