WGBH Journal; Conference On Local Aid To Cities And Towns, Right turn On Red Lights, The Lowell Offering (Book), Louis Lyons

Why. Good afternoon and welcome to TB external. I built that with local aid to cities into controversy over the issue of right turns on red lights. And interview about the book the Lowell offering. And commentary on the news from the airlines. These are the four features on today's edition of GBH Journal. There are 351 cities in towns and Commonwealth of Massachusetts and they rely almost exclusively on money from the state operations of their local governments.

The reason this bill in this session of the legislature focuses on the best way for this local aid to be distributed. Governor Dukakis this program is tied to a new method of providing aid to local schools. The Massachusetts House leadership on the other hand would prefer to see the state take over the costs of county court. I joined the just late have conference on local aid to cities and towns took place on Saturday at which the topic of this local aid was addressed Bangs was there and has this report. It could be that the primary issue in the legislature this year will be local aid local government officials have become more vocal in their demands for money from a state which mandates programs like the chapter 766 special needs education program and then pays only 35 percent of its costs. These mandated programs have been the primary reason for the state's ever increasing property taxes for which local officials bear most of the brunt of constituent criticism. Over the

weekend many of these dissatisfied local officials attended a conference sponsored by the Massachusetts League of Cities and towns and the Massachusetts select Men's Association. Those attending were generally pleased with Governor Dukakis's newly released proposals to aid cities and towns. Part of the say would come in the form of the Bovary Collins bill which would introduce a new formula to pay towns and cities for education costs. Another aspect of the proposed local aid package is the provision to distribute most of the money to poor communities and to set a fixed level of state distribution to cities and towns. Keynote speaker Governor Dukakis talked about these proposals one of the things that we've been trying to do over the course of the past three years as we build and revitalize our economy is to focus in in this day those communities which are most seriously distressed and the biggest economic problem. And by and large we're talking about a fairly substantial number of communities some of them a city some of

them a town all of them are old. All of them are relatively poor. It is high time that the Commonwealth make a permanent commitment in a lot of the proposition that is state revenues grow. Cities and towns should share in that growth. And that too is a very important piece of our local aid package and you know what we have proposed is the creation of a local aid fund in which at a minimum. And I want to underscore that at a minimum 40 percent of the growth in the corporate income and sales taxes of this date each year will be committed to local aid automatically as a part of state law Dukakis's proposals please most of the local officials attending the conference. But the big question is whether the legislature will pass them. Town and city officials showed some skepticism during the day toward the state legislators ability to handle money and it was apparent that state officials felt the same way about local officials to caucus focused on some of the mutual distrust.

And there are a great many members of the legislature who are genuinely concerned. With what they fear may well be a wasting or a spending or a dispensing of this additional state aid at least in some communities in a way which will swallow up that money an ever increasing level budgets and make it virtually impossible for those funds to be down to the benefit of local property tax payers. Now I think as local officials you can understand the concern of those legislators and I say that even though you can also say to them in return will having mandated all of these burdens and costs on us what you expect us to do. But I do offer this is a friendly bit of advice and a warning. Because if working together we can be successful this year and enact ing into law the kind of comprehensive local AA program that I've been talking about I think is going to be very important for the cities

and towns demonstrate the kind of fiscal restraint which I think in all honesty most of you have been attempting to demonstrate and by and large I think the cities and towns probably done a much better job at that than we have the state level. Thank you. Thank you. Right. At least before I became governor probably the biggest worry for towns and cities is the current attempt by many legislators to have the state take over all county court costs this year instead of doing it gradually as the governor has proposed. Make no mistake about it. Ladies and gentlemen make no mistake about it. If we do that then you can kiss educational reform goodbye for the forseeable future in this state. I must say to you as a veteran of now some 15 or 16 years of the political process on Beacon Hill I think that the events of the last few days defy even my very liberal view of what is appropriate by way of

legislative license. In fact I can't understand what's been going on up there. It seems to me that the subject of court reform. To be dealt with separately I think from the broader subject. But those legislators who favor assuming all court costs this year say they prefer this method of local aid because it would bring about a direct property tax relief. They argue that the Dukakis kool aid package leaves too much power in the hands of local school committees many of which have reputations for being spendthrifts. The legislature will probably decide sometime this week whether to give the governors local aid package a chance or whether to in effect kill it by assuming all county court costs this year. This is Peggy bangs. The trend in driving these days seems to be going the route of California. By that we

don't mean that people are heading westward nor do we mean that people are driving more. What's happening in legal terms is that more and more states are adopting the California tradition of allowing right turns on red lights in city driving. Right turn on red as developed into something of a controversy here in Massachusetts with more details here is reporter Robert for Aagot. In Massachusetts it is illegal to turn right in a red light unless a sign permits it as any pedestrian or motorist knows traffic in the state is notoriously dangerous game. Whether the reason is the low level of police enforcement or simply the congested maze of roads is academic. If a right turn on red is allowed in the state many people feel there will be an increased threat to safety. Undoubtedly it will confuse an already confused number of drivers. So why change the law. Well the main reason is money. If it's not an acted the Energy Policy Office may lose a federal grant. The total sum one million one hundred fifty six thousand dollars.

The Energy Policy Office depends on this money to run all their various energy conservation programs statewide. A cut off would mean such programs as van pooling solar engineering and energy efficient lighting would end completely. And the policy office itself would have to close. In order to understand how a simple traffic laws come to endanger a highly successful conservation program consider a traffic accident in Washington D.C. Congressman bumpers of California working on the wording of the grad program turn right on a red light when he wasn't supposed to. The result was a good piece of fender work and a grad program that mandated right turn on red in order to hear the argument for a right turn on red. I talked to Richard Hoover the Triple-A the Triple-A supports our TLR and I asked Mr. Hoover if this office bases its support on the alleged fuel conservation of a right turn on red. It certainly will save some if you like but I travel I don't think that's the primary concern. Your questions indicate we would support right in the

interest of uniformity. Again and again and again it has been proven that when traffic laws differ from the locality to locality state this day you have a confusion in the motorist and you read access. If this reason alone should be one to allow write and read we can do it. It's been done before he ate of the other states. I'm sure Massachusetts can work it out. Mr Hoover went on to describe the political climate surrounding right turn on red in Massachusetts and the various political influences affecting the law. I think we have to come to grips with this thing. I don't feel we'll lose federal aid I can only make myself believe that with the speaker of the House of Representatives coming from Massachusetts Massachusetts is going to lose very much Federal Way. I'm sure that Speaker Boehner wouldn't let that happen but I'm sure that we must. Son time into agreement with the other states the problems the legislature faced in this is been

up before the legislature about three or four years now is to try to hit sort of a compromise between conflicting points of view. Our secretary of transportation claims that this thing is going to hurt people don't kill people. The Registry of Motor Vehicles is quite concerned about the blind and the pedestrians. So is this organization. That's why we say there should be engineering studies but we don't feel if you should leave your head in the sand we believe that Red is going to happen and it probably should happen here in Massachusetts but it has to be carefully controlled. Those against our trio are basically object to the permissive and dangerous nature of the law. Among the most vociferous lobbying groups and the right turn on red the Bay State Council on the blind is the most active. That organization feels our t o r would only further mass motorists disregard for traffic laws and would not guarantee an empty street for a blind person crossing with the green light. These safety problems have not

gone unnoticed by various state agencies and the official position is currently at t r t o r the State Department of Transportation is doing a study that will gauge the hazards of right turn on red and that study will be sent to Washington DC along with a waiver request for a right turn on red. Henry Lee head of the energy policy office in Massachusetts detailed the conflict between his office and the federal agency in charge of the grant program. Well I think eventually they'll be more flexible I think in any bureaucracy. You have a built in flexibility and flexibility that sometimes results and solutions live in you know a little bit overreaction I think. Take the Massachusetts energy conservation program and really destroy it over a measure that saves no energy and perhaps could jeopardize the lives of many pedestrians. Seems to me to be a little bit backwards.

The possibility of our trio our right turn on red will depend on how the Massachusetts waiver request fares in Washington. The Department of Energy's decision is expected in July which is just prior to the date the next million dollar grant payment falls due. Even if a waiver is not granted right turn on red opponents can still pressure the legislature not to pass the law although it may be amazing that a simple traffic law can become such an involved issue. The fight over a right turn on red could easily escalate into a brawl as the showdown approaches. The end result will either be that Massachusetts will be the only state in the United States without R T O R or motorists will soon have another reason to honk at the car in front of them for GBH Journal. I'm Bob for Aagot. The first female industrial wage earners in the United States where the miller women

who came from farms in New England to live in the boarding house mills in Lowell Massachusetts. And in the 1830s and 1840s earning between a dollar 85 and three dollars per week. These women were the highest paid female employees in the country. Women created a literary magazine about their lives and about their work and called it the Lowell offering a book of that name has recently been published which compiled for selected writings from this magazine. It has been edited by Benita Eisler who spoke recently with reporter Erica funk. By the 1840s there were thirty nine thousand women who had worked in the New England textile mills. They came from the farms of the region for economic reasons to help pay the mortgage to send their brothers to college or to save money for a dowry. And these women who are entering the workforce for the first time left a written record of their impressions of their new lives as industrial workers. But he has compiled and edited a

book of writings by 19th century New England Mille women. But the title the Lowell offering did not originate with her. She spoke with me about the original offering. It was a monthly magazine that sold for six and a quarter cents and the articles in it are so extraordinary as well in variety some of it is what we would call creative writing which is really thinly disguised fiction short stories which frequently show the concern about the. Way in which mill work was taken to be degrading these were girls. Fine old Yankee stock farm families and they were astounded to realize that middle class and better off women view the mere fact of having worked in a factory as indeed many people still do. As in some way degrading of kin and close to prostitution and which impugning the morals so that a number of the stories hard to justify and then indicate the worth of all its labor the dignity of any kind of work that others consider in life in the boarding houses the making of friends the living in very close

confinement again where they would be frequently six and eight to a room and sometimes three to a bed so that the boarding house life where they were contractually I should add that the girls by contract had to live in the company boarding house but the corporations paid twenty cents a week and the girls paid twenty five cents a week and they were also bound by contract when they could receive visitors. How many candles I could have and by contract to go to church every Sunday. So their laws were completely regulated as in the strictest boarding school but it's still and this I think is very important in the sense of how long it has taken women to come out of patriarchal domination. It's still represented enormous freedom because you have to remember that young people children in those days were virtually owned by the father I mean who could they could be abused overworked treated as animal labor beasts of burden in every respect they had absolutely no rights of the mere fact of these girls coming to live among their peers as we would say had been the many. Same reason why people young people want to go away to college I mean they are working in the mills

might be an enormous oppressive labor as we would see it but it represented freedom and independence the first paper money many of these girls have ever seen let alone owned as well as the fact of living independently. Hello offering a literary magazine created by women factory workers received a great deal of publicity in its day. There seemed however to be a rather patronizing element in all the celebration as if creative pursuits were somehow incompatible with factory work. But it Eisler explains. These were the beginnings of that tragic. Division in our society between what we now call blue collar and white collar because in the early days of this country from which culture they were really a part of congressmen and senators went back to the farm to do plowing. There was not this division between work of the head and work of the hands. And I think this is a problem that is still with us in the course of their stay in the mills. The women workers tended to develop a certain critical consciousness about their situation. But the

low offering did not evolve to reflect this change in consciousness. But he spoke about the changing relationship between the offering and the lives of the mill women by working by writing for the offering itself by reading and going to lectures and being exposed to so much of what was happening in the outside world. There is a growing sense of the right to criticize the right to demand things that the sense of comparison between one's own state and things as they should be. This took place at the very end of the life of the low offering and was in fact one of the reasons for its demise ultimately in 1845 which is the fact that the more militant of the girls those who really had arrived at a state of consciousness as workers as well as women and a sense that they were indeed being terribly exploited compared to the conditions which had brought them there they had deteriorated terribly both inside the mill and inside the boarding houses. The era of paternalism was ended. The owners on Beacon Hill no longer gave it to me about what

the life of conditions the working conditions of the workers were offering which had been determined under the two women who were former mill girls and were its editors to remain neutral as it were and they really did not want to get involved and hoped they could remain un involved in agitation all issues they hated to be in the position of criticising management who in any case had helped subsidize. The low offering and they had were accuse the editors of rejecting articles that were too critical of conditions in the mills and too critical of Management and ultimately that meant that the magazine began to address itself to fewer and fewer constituents at the same time that conditions were worsening the Yankee New England girls had other options and were leaving the mills in droves. They went to teach school in the Midwest they went home to the farm they had someplace to go when they realized that things were not as they had seemed and that they were worse than they had been at the beginning. They left and indeed the mill owners were only too happy to encourage their departure

because a new source of cheap labor had arrived on these shores in the form of the Irish. The writings of these New England mill women seem to offer insight into a particular moment in the development of industrial capitalism and to capture some of the changes in life rhythms which occurred in women's lives during the country's transition to a mature industrial society. This is a work of funky for GBH Journal. Now a commentary on recent international national and local series Lorelai and friends split right down the middle in the first round of parliamentary elections yesterday. The final outcome in next Sunday's round remains on certain as before yesterday's voting.

The left lead yesterday but by the thinnest margin a good deal less than the expectation from the polls. Just over 50 percent of the socialist communist candidates 48 percent to the center right governments. The high tension of the campaign had considerably polarized the vote present to send a party one less than their more conservative allies the neo Callister Chirac and on the left the fall out from predictions was at the expense of Mitterrand socialist communist got the 21 percent predicted for them but the socialists felt that had been forecast this 30 percent turned out at only 24 percent fall left vote on affiliated with the socialist communist coalition accounted for the other 4 percent. So it's fractured French politics and the test to come will be on the success of the rival factions in putting together a winning combination next week. The solidarity of the crowd. Chirac Center-Right combine his

reported quite secure. But the socialists and communists need to mend their differences over how much change they want to ensure that each will join in support of the other candidates that have shown the greatest strength. A measure of French political concern is the turnout yesterday of 85 percent of eligible voters. After the murderous raid of Palestinian terrorists Israel's prime minister begun has put off his trip to Washington until next week. The intensity of Israeli reaction to the murders is felt in Washington to diminish the prospect of any early progress toward peace negotiations which were already dimmed by the serious dispute over a continuance of the Israeli settlements begun statement to the Knesset today can be interpreted as threatening military reprisal against the guerrilla bases in Lebanon where the raid is believed to be launched. So Dot's effort to secure recognition of a status for Palestinians is weakened his relations with both

Arab and Israeli governments embarrassed the announced purpose of the raid was to block any movement toward Israeli reconciliation. But within Israel leading newspapers are urging begging not to allow negotiations to be derailed. This week will wind up the Panama Canal debate and bring a vote Thursday on the first of the treaties four of five senators so far uncommitted hold the balance that will decide whether the treaty wins the needed two thirds. These are under pressure from both sides. The result may be decided by administration tactics to contrive an interpretation as the sense of the Senate or a reservation that will satisfy some who've been demanding amendments such procedures been discussed between the administration and the Senate leadership and broached to some undecided senators Senator Brooke of Massachusetts who is the only New England senator not supporting the treaties has discussed in a talk with the president the kind of interpretation attached to the treaty that would satisfy him. Some of the doubtful

senators have reported personally satisfied with the trees but concerned about public opinion against a show in Powell's constituents urged them not to give away the canal. Others of the Republicans are under party pressure not to give away a campaign issue. Those that are up for re-election this fall and brokers want to have a personal stake. Not many will stand up like Senator McIntyre of New Hampshire who supported the treaties in an eloquent speech while saying he expected his stand to bring his defeat in November. Reports from the coal fields are that the official proclamations of the injunction against the strike are having little if any immediate effect. The miners are not returning to work but the industry wide negotiating committee and the national coal union leaders have resumed their meetings and give out vague statements of some progress. They rejected government mediators and bad reporters. So the reality of such reports can't be checked. Of course the so-called cooling off period of 80 days stipulated in a Taft-Hartley

injunction is intended to provide occasion for resuming negotiations. Both sides have a stake in continuing negotiations. For if a government declaration of an impasse is made the industrywide bargaining agreement can be dissolved by either side. This would return call disputes to the chaos of an earlier day. It would probably be fatal to the national union leadership and from the operators and let them pick us off one company at a time. As one put it. Governors of Virginia and Indiana have called up National Guard units to escort convoys. But so far both federal and state authorities have restrained enforcement action to a minimum holding on the possibility of a negotiated settlement. How much melt is reducing our walls of snow. Living in filth a massive black and roadsides and opening great potholes in the highways from the frost heaving. Much was always mud time. But the unwelcome legacy of February's great snows keeps it

longer makes it. In the woods a sap is tearing in under the snow. Crocus is I ready to spring up as soon as this burden is removed. But it takes some imagination right now to feel any relation to those reports of Red Sox baseball scores. For this Monday the 13th day of my tragic 78 that's the program's producers martial arts engineers Michael garrison that I'm Bill Katniss have a madcap Monday. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.