Louisiana: The State We're In; 448

Oh. Production funding for Louisiana the state we're in is made possible in part by grants from Kaiser Aluminum and Southern Research Company Incorporated. If desegregation of public schools wasn't one of the hottest stories in 1980 it will be in 1981 across Louisiana lawsuits aimed at promoting further desegregation of the schools are coming off the judicial back birders. I can understand very well people saying that we don't like to be told what to do. But when you abdicate your responsibility and don't do it yourself then that's when someone else steps in says you've got to do it. Louisiana the state will run with both George and Ron Blome.

Welcome to this edition of Louisiana the state we're in. This week we'll take a look at a new way the desegregation challenges facing public schools in Louisiana. And we'll have a record on yet another attempt to put a limit on the number of state employees. But first this update on the Bryant trial now under way in New Orleans. It was 10 months ago that the story first surface that the FBI had filmed and recorded an alleged bribery scheme that involved a top state official and a reputed mafia boss. Among those indicted were former commissioner of administration to Edwin Edwards Charles Romer and reputed underworld boss Carlos Marcello. This week is a trial for the men began defense attorneys tried to attack the credibility of the government's chief witness Joseph Houser. We have a report from Charles Zewe in New Orleans. Defense attorneys had tried for two days to prove Joseph Houser was so heavily medicated when he joined the investigation that he could not legally have consented to making the tape recordings for the government since those tapes were later used as the basis for numerous government wiretaps on Marcello and other defendants. The whole

prosecution's case probably would have collapsed if Judge seer had ruled them inadmissible. But Judge Sered denied a defense motion to quash those tape recordings made by informant Houser Houser and convicted insurance went as expected to be the government's key witness when the case goes to trial in February. A more important challenge to the government's case came in a defense motion of the wiretaps and electronic bugs placed in Marcello's office were put there illegally. Lawyers contended that the government misled the judge who originally signed the wiretap author in February of 1979 by not telling him that Houser was plea bargaining at the time on an insurance swindling conviction in Phoenix Arizona. Defense lawyers claim that Houser was given the option of helping out in the bilat investigation or going to jail. But on the stand this week Houser insisted that he participated freely with no threats from the government and that the medication he was taking at the time did not impair

his judgment. The hearings represented the last attempt by defense attorneys to kill the case before it goes to trial. While the lawyers argued in court newsmen covering the case were involved in a legal battle of their own. Judge Cyr at one point ordered newsmen and spectators from the court because material contained on the tape recordings was judged to be sensitive and might be ruled inadmissible during the trial. News organizations appealed that closure but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge in the most important phase of the pretrial hearing was conducted in secret. This is Charles Zewe in New Orleans. Federal Judge Maurice Syria is expected to rule on a number of defense motions today. All of those motions aimed at having the government's case dismissed. The train held his first press conference in nearly two months this week and among other things he said he now supports the idea of creating a state bureau of investigation a plan proposed last session by Representative Lloyd Weaver failed to pick up much support. But now Governor train says he will back

that concept in the upcoming legislative session. But the major reason for the governor calling his press conference however was to announce his plan to put a ceiling on the growth of state government. In particular the governor announced that he was placing a freeze on hiring that would eliminate a number of vacancies that remain open. Big government and government bureaucracy are two favorite phrases used by politicians in Louisiana to illustrate what is wrong with this country. More jobs in a healthy economy are two goals that fund universal appeal. But what if big government is a provider of those jobs. According to a recent report by the Public Affairs Research Council government in Louisiana is rapidly becoming a big employer this week Governor de train took the first steps toward halting that growth. At a press conference on Tuesday train said he was ordering a hiring freeze and a ceiling on funding for each state agency in the timeframe of 1969 to 1979 the state of Louisiana has grown from the 20 second

position among all the states to temp position in the number of government employees local and state per capita. I think we're fine 52 now. Five hundred fifty two local and state employees per 10000 people in Louisiana. And I don't want to be in 10th position to get us down closer to the middle if I can. Train's goal is to reduce employment to the level or below that on June 30th one thousand eighty. There are currently some seventy six thousand eight hundred eighty four authorized government jobs approximately 6000 positions are currently vacant and the governor proposes cutting funds for some 2400 of those positions. But putting a lid on government spending is not always that easy. Other governors have tried and I feel director of par says it takes commitment and strong leadership. It's growing like Topsy and has been for quite a few years. You may recall several years ago Governor Edwards put in a freeze but that thing thought in a real big

hurry. And so hopefully that will not happen again we do. We do need to have some sort of personnel control system. Now a phrase such as the governor has proposed is perhaps a good first step but that should not be the final step because you may cut out a lot of people a lot of positions that you rightly need and yet you have a number of other people that are in a capacity that you don't need them anymore. So this is one way to stop it. But if it is not followed up by a desire to set up a personnel system of some kind it's not very effective. And your studies did you get an indication. As to why Louisiana was growing at such rapid rate I think one of the reasons is that we do not have a system of personnel control in the budget for example an agency may be authorized let's say arbitrarily one hundred fifty people on the payroll. What kind of people. Nobody cares. They had 140 last year so maybe they ought to have a hundred fifty this year. So there's no way of evaluating the staffing of the agency to see whether they have the kinds of people

they need to carry out the service they're supposed to provide. So it's in this kind of an atmosphere that I think continues to grow because every year agencies come in they want more they want more that's normal. But without having some kind of a system to evaluate the kinds of people they're going to hire. You do not get to the point of trimming your staff down to those that you need in the kinds of people that you need. We always hear discussion certainly on the state level and on the national level also doing away with the bureaucracy of an agency that's created it then becomes self-sustaining and it's almost impossible to cut back. Do you see this being a philosophical problem to get around. Does an agency of itself generate its own existence. Well it does and it's going to do anything that it possibly can to promote itself and to get bigger that's the name of the game the more people you have the better off you are the more important. But again it depends upon the attitude of the governor and what he wants to do. If he does want to be sure that the agencies are not over staff if he does want to be sure that agencies need to be cut back

or eliminated if we don't need them he has to provide the leadership to do it. If he does not then I think we can expect that the agencies will continue to exist and continue to grow. Under the governor's plan for controlling growth each agency has been given a quota. The number of unfilled jobs to be eliminated ranging from a low of 3 for the Public Service Commission to a high of one thousand thirty one for the Department of Health and Human Resources. George Fisher who heads that department doesn't believe the cuts will have a serious impact on services. It will. Be. In our opinion. Cause us to step up the programs that we have going so far as evaluating and streamlining the operation. What impact it will have I don't know yet that will take me a week or two weeks to try to pin it down to get it in proper perspective. But when the governor set these limits. He wasn't looking at specific positions within your department and saying don't fill these.

No I think what he what he was saying is the executive order. Is that there are in this department a thousand thirty one hundred something like that given me as a pool. And then they have left it up to me to make a determination as to where it would come from that he also left the door open that if we could not meet it that we go back and discuss it with him. But is that really wise for a management standpoint to say eliminate these jobs before you know what you're eliminating. Well really before we do it because we have so many people very few people realize with 500 personal transactions and in this department. So there was a great turmoil there's only fifteen hundred or so people in the middle. We'll have to make a determination into the areas that we have not historically been able to fill. And then I understand that this is not in the bottom of physicians but a curtailment of filling.

If no one will lose their job because of the governor's plan he makes it clear that this is just the first step toward bringing the size of government under control. I don't know what new requirements are going to be placed upon us by program changes mandated by the legislature the federal government or whatever. So I can't predict to you that 3 years from now we're going to have less state employees or the same numbers we are going to endeavor to provide the programs and services of the state with the least number of employees. It will be a subject of constant review. This is only one executive order. We may find some other ways to control the number of employees this is just one step to cap the numbers. We hope through more careful analysis of our programs through the budget analysis. The capacity of the division administration and otherwise to try to determine if we can provide these services in lots of areas with less people that's an ongoing program. I'm going to be looking for new ways and I would guess that

they're probably going to be new executive orders over the period of the next several years. Some will be formalized. Some will be simply verbal instructions department heads to do with less people or what have you. As long as government has provided services the public has demanded accountability efficiency in government but along with eliminating government bureaucracy those pledges have been as elusive and as variable as the weather. Where as one observer put it everybody talks about it but nobody can do anything about it. Perhaps it's reassuring to know that someone is trying the best perhaps or rather all of the problems that we see at the governmental level seem so complex these days and nowhere does the problem seem more complicated more emotion packed in the area of school desegregation. Most everyone agrees it's something that needs to be done while few agree on the solutions needed to do the job. This week a look at the continuing story of desegregation in Louisiana. If desegregation of public schools wasn't one of the hottest stories in 1980 it will

be in 1981 across Louisiana. Lawsuits aimed at promoting further desegregation of the schools are coming off the judicial back burners. It's a kind of second wave of desegregation now facing the public schools as black attorneys in the federal government challenge school segregation created by one race housing patterns in Alexandria. The implementation of a desegregation plan this fall is captured statewide attention. The board there refused to draw a mixing plan. So the federal court did it for them. In Shreveport the Justice Department is negotiating with the school board for further desegregation. But it's unclear what each side will accept. In Lake Charles a 15 year old lawsuit has been reactivated to challenge one race schools and the plaintiffs are asking for a speedy hearing after the first of the year. In one role black attorneys want a common assignment plan to join the separate city and parish school systems in arguments on that case is scheduled before a federal appeals court in January. And in Baton Rouge the school board has just unveiled a tentative desegregation plan a response to a court order calling for quick action new in

segregation in the school system. There was no question about that that not only we should but we could do some things. I had hope that when Raymond Arbus enjoin the Baton Rouge school system as superintendent this year he knew he would be facing the sticky matter of engineering a desegregation plan acceptable to both the community and the federal court as a superintendent in California and Minnesota and he brought a certain amount of past experience in the matter to the Baton Rouge system and to the writing of a desegregation plan. Armisen plan relies heavily on the creation of magnet or specialty program schools in the redrawing of boundaries to achieve racial balance. In addition to the superintendent 20 staff members have worked on the plan for the past few months because his Armisen puts it if the school board couldn't come up with a plan. The federal judge would. Well the judge feels that it's important for the school board to take on the responsibility and he said some things in that memorandum opinion that make that very clear. He said I have no intention to be a super superintendent of a school system.

He thinks that the school board and the administration are the ones who best know what should happen in the school system then. And he's right he indicated that. And so he said I give you know details of the plan but I'm going to give you some guidelines to follow and he listed nine criteria. So I think it's a good order in many respects. It just had the tightness of time built into it. Now we did go back as you know and requested an extension of time and he gave us instead of October 15th as it was originally read and he gave us till our January 1981 which. Was a lot better and we just couldn't have completed any kind of a plan. By that made any sense by the October 15th timeline. Why is it better for the school board to write their own plan for desegregation What are some of the benefits that you get from having the board do it as opposed to having the court tell you what the plan will be primarily because we can look at it from a student

viewpoint and from parent viewpoint and trying to develop. Educational programs that meet interest to needs expand educational opportunities and these are not the primary considerations when they're drawn by outside experts quote outside experts. Their primary consideration is to bring about a certain kind of racial balance in the schools. So while we look at that. As something that we want to do we're still continually looking at the educational impact on students. And I think that's the advantage of having a local school board and school administration do the plan. It's more than just moving white chips and black chips for a mix. Oh it surely is. It's much more than that. It's. Being sure that you maintain a quality program for every student. Whether the school is changed or not changed and then hopefully adding some

additional educational opportunities for students. Armisen says that one of the lessons he's learned from his experience in desegregation in other cities is that the board must communicate with the public it serves if any plan is to work and to be accepted. But many in the public both black and white are wary of a plan in which they see little personal choice. That's been the problem in Alexandria where parents seized a school in Forest Hill rather than closed their school and submit to a court order. I can understand very well people saying that we don't like to be told what to do. But when you abdicate your responsibility and don't do it yourself. And that's when someone else steps in says you've got to do it. Press Robinson he is one of three blacks recently elected to the previously all white East Baton Rouge Parish School Board. He's been a professor at Southern University for 18 years and now works in private business. Like most board members Robinson says he didn't have much input into the drawing of the new parish desegregation plan. But he says it's time for the public to face the fact that desegregation is here to stay.

I believe that everyone who is going to be honest with themselves know that the only that's really going to happen is that we're going to have to have decent schools. OK I mean history has shown that the separate but equal just not going to work because the same kinds of funds and efforts and so on is not put into the minority schools as they are into the majority schools. So we've got to have a decent good system where everyone knows that. And I've I really can't quite understand why we just don't go ahead and fashion a school system where that's true and say to the parents and students now look this is what we've got to have is in the best interest of education. Now let's let's come together and do that and really come up with a solid plan to do it then it's not been done. Do you think that would be done without the federal court holding that hammer over the school board. Now I do not. Robinson agrees with Superintendent Iris and that community involvement is a key to making any plan work. Although he's less sure that our vision of the community has been brought into the decision making

process despite a number of public meetings held by officials across the parish community acceptance is something that has to be earned. But you see a lot of what the community will accept and will not accept depends climbing on to fact why and how fair Have you been in whatever it is you're trying to do. And then secondly how will you communicate to the people what you've done and convince them that you've been fair about it. If you know if you can present a plan of any kind and you fit with everyone then no one can then say well gee you know I'm the only one that's that's been subjected to this. And then you tell them that you've gotten you convinced him by talking to him by a back and forth and discussing it. You know when they understand and they feel like they've been treated fair I think people will accept what I will say almost anything but many things that they normally would not accept. Community acceptance of the plan will be a tremendous thrust for us. We need to have people that are willing to give the plan a

try. And we're going to try to get that message across and get people to cooperate and to work with us in every possible way that we can. That's why we're here. But one area where acceptance from the black community and possibly the courts won't come easy is on the retention of 18 one race schools in the desegregation plan. As we look at this we're. We're suggesting that someone a single race schools do remain. In this plan. And other federal courts have allowed this where there. Were those single race schools are not the responsibility of the school system by mandate. I think they ought to be allowed. And there's no question in my mind that we can. Offer an equally good education. We have to attend to that. And do that. There's nothing inherently wrong with a one race school. Well. You know there have been some court cases that have been separate saids the separate and equal is not

equal. And so we have to attend to that. But we also know that around this country there are places where. You can have nothing but a single race school. It's not possible to have anything else. And there are challenges them to create the best kind of a school program for those students they possibly can and I think it's possible. The separate but equal of course it's not it's not equal. You separate is not equal because and history has proven that that's what's wrong with it. And of course it's against the law now you know that was that was ruled out in 1954. To come up with one race schools we really I think define. The very court order that we're supposed to be following. If there is a common thread among parents generated by the writing of a new desegregation plan it is the fear that their child will pay the price. I'll have to ride the bus or see their neighborhood school closed. It is apprehension over a

change in perhaps the greatest debate among parents and administrators concerns the use of the schools in the children to effect those changes. If you look at the whole broader issue of desegregation in the public school system you're really talking about social engineering to an extent you're talking about trying to right some of the wrongs of the past by using the education system as a person whose primary responsibility is as an educator. Do you find that frustrating. Yes I must admit that I have some reactions along that line. I readily admit that education has a responsibility to correct what have been the faults or the wrongdoings of education where the state or where school boards have deliberately placed schools or assign students so that they would be segregated schools. I think that needs to be corrected than that. But school has become segregated simply because of the development of residential patterns over a

period of years and we have some of those situations. We have schools that. Were entirely white schools for example where the residential pattern has changed for people through the course of moving in and moving out. The school has been a come essentially a one race school with black students. Now I don't think that's the responsibility of the school board. The school board did not mandate people moving in or out of that school. They didn't change the school. They had the same kind of offerings. They've done what they could about changing the racial makeup of the teaching staff. And the other staff members. And so I think in good faith they've done many things and I think many ills are laid at the doorstep of the school board in the school system that should not be there. The federal government who is in the in some of its arms. Branches of government. The Justice Department for example is in the process of mandating these kinds of things and through their attorneys of

being interveners in the case at the same time in other branches of government they're setting up segregated housing areas that aggravate problems for school systems and I don't think school systems ought to be asked to correct those kinds of problems. I think there ought to be some joint responsibilities. In that case when you look at this whole process of desegregation do you feel to an extent that this is a bit of social engineering that we are making children cope with the realities and past realities of an adult world. Well I think maybe a byproduct of this thing will be that social engineering if you want to call it that. But that's not what this is really all about in terms of the desegregation. It's a matter of obeying the law. OK so metal band a lot I mean the law says that you should have a nice a good school system and his Baton Rouge has been told that they do not have a

unitary system. So in that sense of course the judge and the attorneys and so on are trying to deal with the law. But of course as always the result of this will indeed be social engineering. It's going to change some things. But the real were all situation is that you know we are here together on this on this on this earth. We have to live together. We need to work together. And we got to go about doing that. You know as I just think that we spend a lot of time trying to find ways of getting around cooperating with each other when we should be cooperating. I would certainly make life a lot easier. We are human beings and we all should be treated that way. What we're doing but in many cities across the country the public has not learned to live with court ordered school mixing. And the result has been a flight from the public schools leaving behind a system for the poor and the minorities. Whether that pattern will repeat itself in Louisiana now depends on how well the parents will accept this new wave

of desegregation. Well there's no doubt that that continuing story of desegregation is going to be one of the tough issues facing communities across the state and we will be following that is the new year progresses. And that's our program for this week. We'll be back again next week with another program and a story about adoption that has a happy ending. And we'll also have conversation with the Louisiana's first lady. We hope you'll join us then. I bet George somebody will. We're going to war look easy on those who think we're It gives me a possible war. Mike writes from Niger. Graham Southern Research go to the point.