Louisiana: The State We're In; 307

Production assistance for the following program was provided in part through contributions to Friends of LPB. U.S. Energy Secretary Charles Duncan came to New Orleans this week to make peace with the Southern Governors for the Carter administration. He talked of a new effective partnership with the oil and gas producing states, but not everyone was buying it. If you want to get some attention nationally, let's just adopt the resolution. I'll see how many want to stand up and say it. If you abolish the Department of Energy, you could cut the price of gasoline 10 cents a gallon. And Governor. By just taking in the same money and applying it to the cost of the gasoline. Louisiana: The State We're In, with Beth George and Ron Blome.

Good evening. Welcome to this edition of Louisiana: The State We're In. This week, we'll look at a meeting of Southern Governors in New Orleans and hear what the new Secretary of Energy had to say to them. But first, this week's capitol highlights. Well, Jefferson Parish schoolteachers went back to work this week. A settlement between the teachers and the school board was reached after a strike that lasted five and a half weeks. Under a new agreement, the teachers will get a 10 percent pay raise and amnesty for the strike. The striking bus drivers were left on the line by the teachers and were forced by events to go back to work without a contract. The former head of the Louisiana Real Estate Commission Stanley Passman and his secretary Kathy Breaux were indicted this week on charges of malfeasance in office. The Baton Rouge grand jury returned the indictments after hearing evidence that passing grades for license exams were given out as political favors. Those charges were the subject of public hearings last month as we see in this report. The House Commerce Committee began hearings into alleged mismanagement in the Louisiana Real Estate Commission last month, after waiting two months for a Baton Rouge grand jury probe that finally came this

week. But with an okay from the state attorney general's office, the committee began its own public hearing on charges of mismanagement, expense account abuse, and test fraud. It was the testimony about test fraud that captured the attention of the committee members as three former committee employees explained how Commission Director Stanley Passman would issue a guaranteed pass list. Did Mr. Passman ever advise you that anyone had requested him that a particular person be passed? Yes, it was on some of his notes. I not only received the 8 1/2 by 11 categorized list of cities, but the supplemental list came on memo. On memo pad? Right, it would be John Doe, per senator so-and-so, such-and-such a date. I averaged the months, it was five months that I had been there. Right. The average that I had been ordered to make sure were

passing grades were, was 55 a month. That was at one point, like in one month it was 79, but the average was 55 per month. When we received the exams from the exam centers, we would go through and pull out the names that were on the list and we would take the punched out answer sheet and place it over the answer sheet and make sure they had enough correct answers to pass and if they didn't, we would change enough so that they would pass and then run them through the machine so then the passing grade would be stamped on there. The commission workers' testimony covered the two-year period when former Commerce and Industry chief Stanley Passman ran the Real Estate Commission. Passman resigned last May after a New Orleans newspaper ran stories detailing the abuse in his office. In testimony last month, those news accounts were publicly confirmed by witness Joyce Mazzarello (?) who said State Representative Francis Thompson was among those failing the test, but getting a real estate

license. And Mr. Thompson, Representative Thompson, I passed him. Passed him as you passed Mr. Dempsey? Yes, sir. In other words, he failed and then it was changed and so... Yes, sir. He was passed, okay. Are there any further questions? Committee members said they were shocked and saddened at the wholesale test fraud and made it clear they'd be calling Mr. Passman and others before the committee. And Representative Walter Champagne said that legislative action against the Real Estate Commission might be forthcoming next year. I don't know if it's that bad off. We probably have to introduce legislation to abolish the Commission. That's how bad I think it is. You know smell that bad. We'd better either straighten it out or abolish it and let's set it up again. With the state's open primary now just two weeks away, things are finally starting to heat up in the race for governor. This week Republican Dave Treen, the front runner of the nine-man race, leveled a verbal

blast at Louis Lambert who trails in the number four spot in the polls. Treen said that recent attacks on his congressional voting record by Lambert are the desperate tactics of a man whose campaign is floundering. Well, Ron, by week's end State Democratic Chairman Jesse Bankston has joined the fray, he said that even a quick review of Treen's voting record shows that he lacks the compassion to be governor. Bankston's been trying to unite the Democratic candidates in the attack on the Republican front runner. Some months ago, Governor Edwards promised not to take sides in the governor's race, at least officially. But this week he offered a veiled and humorous endorsement to Sonny Mouton when he said he would personally vote for the ugliest man in the race. Also this week Jimmy Fitzmorris' TV commercials popped up in which Edwards was on speaking in praise of the lieutenant governor's record. Well, Ron, the election for a new governor is just around the corner. But this week Governor Edwards, chairman of the Southern Governor's Conference, hosted a meeting and a round of parties that may have shown his fellow governors how to go out of office in style. Welcome to New Orleans and Louisiana. It is the 45th annual meeting of the Southern Governor's Conference and this week it was Edwin Edwards' chance to command center stage in what turned out to be a gripe session on national energy policy. Now, I said it on national television and I'll say it again to you - the Department of Energy was created to do something about this problem and it has done nothing but make it worse. Not all of the fireworks this week were confined to the Southern Governor's Conference table. This show was the finale to just one night's whirlwind social event, a cruise on the Mississippi River boat, the Natchez. There was a party for every night of the conference starting with a fais-do-do at San Francisco Plantation owned by the Marathon Oil Company. Only 10 of the 19 Governors at the conference showed up, but for those who did the entertainment was first class and expensive. But the tab for most of this was not picked up by the taxpayers, but by Louisiana's petrochemical industry whose executives earned the chance to rub elbows with the Governors and the national press. On day one of the conference, most national reporters were more

interested in presidential politics rather than any conference topic. They came to confirm what most suspect: that Jimmy Carter's solid South has crumbled and speculation is centered on a possible Carter - Kennedy confrontation. Judge Edmund Reggie, Edwards' legal counsel and chairman of Louisianians for Kennedy, told any who asked that Ted Kennedy's chances in Louisiana were good. Well, I first ask them what they think about Kennedy in their area and it's all very encouraging for Kennedy, I might say. Surprisingly so and much much stronger than I thought it was going to be and, of course, I tell them, you know, what our latest poll shows: 53 for Kennedy and 30 for Carter and 17 undecided or still not sure. And there is a tremendous interest in the Kennedy candidacy. Are they surprised that Louisiana is so strongly for Kennedy? Well they pick it up, I think. Most of them by now have just got it, gotten it from people they talk to. They tell me they talk to the bellmen here in the hotel. They talk to cab drivers. They talk to people on the street. And so you've noticed in the last couple days more of them now

realize that Kennedy's strength in Louisiana is really something to be reckoned with and that is real. Judge Reggie, what are you going to do to promote that candidacy? Well, I'm the chairman of the Louisiana Committee for Kennedy and I'm going to do everything that I can to line support up for our first presidential primary which takes place on April 5th. Judge Reggie, here at this conference among southern governors, formerly Jimmy Carter's peers, have you gotten a sense that Jimmy Carter is in deep trouble in the South? There's no question but that the solid south for Jimmy Carter as it was in 1976 no longer exists. That's a fiction. And you think that you're hoping that Kennedy will be the one to pick that up. Well, I think he's the only candidate who really stands a viable chance to absorb that negative vote that Carter is getting. Governor Edwards has been an outspoken critic of the president. Nevertheless, at this conference, he tried to stem any presidential speculation. It's easy for a person in private life to speculate about a candidate. But most of us who are in public life are practical enough to know that it is senseless for

us to speculate about it until it becomes a reality. We stick our foot in our mouths too many times, say too many things that turn out not to be right, make too many judgments and prophecies that ultimately are proven to be wrong when we have to. And therefore I hope you will understand we try to avoid it when we don't have to. But while Edwards wasn't talking, other governors were. Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee was promoting the presidential candidacy of Republican Howard Baker and other Democrats like Kentucky's Julian Carroll were willing to talk about Carter's crumbling base in the South. Well, let me say this. I think a fight between Kennedy and Carter would be bloody. Let me make it that bad. It would be bad. But again I don't really see any major problem for the party. I really am one to believe that in the Democratic ranks, we do better by having our fights in our primaries rather than brawling off on the sidelines somewhere and taking it out on our candidate in the fall campaign. So I have no problem at all with the

Carter - Kennedy confrontation and, as a matter of fact, I think it would be healthy. Because under those circumstances, we would clearly choose our nominee presidential preference primary procedure and indeed give us an opportunity to be strong for our candidate in November. But if the formal sessions of the conference didn't cover the political maneuvering in Washington, they did reflect a concern that Washington should listen to the southern energy. Take any category of specific actions that we outlined for ourselves during the administration of President Carter and tell me what we have really done. The only thing I know that we've done is that we're now twice is dependent on OPEC as we were five years ago. And tomorrow, depending on what the President of the United States says tonight, we may not have any oil from the OPEC countries.

We don't have any time. We can't wait for the president's program pn gasification liquefaction although I totally support it. We can't wait for further stories, studies and permits. We need extra energy in America and we need it today. It's a different accent, but it's exactly what I said in 1975 and '76 and I'll be back as Governor in '84, saying the same thing again, I'm afraid. (Applause) I'm not one of those that's going out of office this year, but I want to echo the sentiments of the Governor of Kentucky. We need the federal bureaucracy to get moving and give us some power plant conversions and get the energy moving that we've been hearing about for the last several years. The gentleman from the coal industry seemingly indicated the federal,

the gentleman from the federal government indicated that the federal government was a help. Well, if I understood him correctly, they were stating diametrically opposing viewpoints or really inventory sheets as to what each was doing for the other and vice versa. If you direct a question to me, I will equivocate by saying the government has done nothing. Now going from that minor position, let me expand. Now, I said it on national television, and I say again to you, that the Department of Energy was created to do something about this problem and it has done nothing but make it worse. They spend $11 billion a year. They have 20,000 employees, I'm sure all of whom are fine men and women. But the net result has been merely to impede rather than to

get something going in this industry. I don't think there's any question but that Mr. Bagley is right. The coal industry has been intimidated. The oil and gas industry has been intimidated. The nuclear power industry has been intimidated. The electrical industry has been intimidated because nobody knows what they can do tomorrow or what they will be able to do day after tomorrow or a year from now. And the only thing that the Department of Energy could possibly do to help solve the problem would be to take some of the money that has been allocated to it and try to develop some alternate sources of energy. But in so far as oil and gas, nuclear power generation and coal, the only people in America who know anything about it are those who have been in it for many years, and we should simply tell them to get at it and do what they need to do to produce and make it available to the American people. And somebody has to be wise enough or dumb enough or courageous enough to tell the unreasoning, unreasonable environmentalists around this country that they are wrong and that it's

possible to produce and use energy without running this country down the drain. (applause) We need the initiative to be in the federal bureaucracy helping us, not and, of course, finding red tape to slow us down. Indeed, that is the essential question of finding more oil. That doesn't solve all of our problems, but it's an excellent start. I think that some of the things that we talked about this morning in the Resolutions Committee, Governor Dalton, we still have open resolutions on the energy question, and I would like for us to reconsider the resolution that is proposed and see if we cannot indeed make it stronger and more properly reflect what has been said around this table, like Governor Carroll and I know how Governor Nigh feels. And let's let our voice be heard through a proper

resolution of this organization and not have some namby pamby, willy nilly resolution that doesn't really mean anything. Let's say what we want to say. If you want to get some attention nationally, let's just adopt the resolution. I'll see how many are willing to stand up and say it. If you abolish the Department of Energy, you could cut the price of gasoline 10 cents a gallon by just taking the same money and applying it to the cost of the gasoline. And Governor Clements, while you're doing all of this and I hope you'll follow through Wednesday morning. Eleven billion dollars a year may not be much out in Texas, but in Alabama that's a goodly sum of money. [Laughter] It is in Texas, too. I just wanted to add, just for the information sake, we produce coal in Oklahoma also and you talk about the frustration of bringing Wyoming coal into Louisiana and then shipping your natural gas out. In Oklahoma, we not only send some of our gas out, but we ship our coal out. We bring in Wyoming coal

to create electricity in Oklahoma and we ship the Oklahoma coal to Kansas City so they can make electricity. Join the club. Governor, I think what you need is a federal study. [Laughter] For four years I'd like for it to be during my term. If we could find a way to burn the federal studies, we could heat up enough water to (interrupted by laughter) Just make it like that. Don't be worried about getting it passed because it's not going to happen. They wouldn't abolish it, but I'll tell you what, it might get some attention. And it really, in all seriousness, is not too dramatic or drastic a step to take at this point in the history of the Department of Energy. Apparently Governor Clements of Texas thought that such a step was too dramatic because a resolution he proposed and passed stopped short of abolishing the Department of Energy.

I personally think that it's improper at this time for us to call for the abolishment of the Department of Energy. That's not the real world in which we live. The Department of Energy was, as you know, enacted through legislation by the Congress and is a part of the policy of the Carter administration. And so what I'd like to do is to the contrary, charge them with a mission to reorient their priorities and quit talking about the insignificant things that they have been discussing and their lack of action on various programs and to the contrary really accelerate and implement the production of energy. Governor, there's certainly been disillusionment though that there hasn't been quicker action taken by the Department of Energy. What if they don't take your heed? Is there going to be any other kind of action taken? Then I would and our resolution will say this. That if they in, in a proper time frame do not move forward and assist

in the production of energy...now I'm talking about all kinds of energy now, not just petroleum, but nuclear and coal conversion, coal liquidification, synthetics, the exotics like solar and geothermal and so forth, move forward on all those fronts and vigorously help us in cutting the red tape in the various government agencies. Now if they don't do that then and properly, we can talk about abolishing them and starting off on another track. What sort of time frame are you talking about? I think if they could show us a real change in management and policy within 90 days. The attitude on Monday towards Washington and the federal bureaucracy was clearly hostile, but it did not interfere with a cordial reception offered on Tuesday to the new secretary of the Department of Energy, Charles Duncan. The former president of Coca-Cola came to the conference to make peace with the governors of the oil and gas producing states, telling them in a private meeting that he wanted to forge a new effective partnership. And, after a 90-minute working luncheon,

Duncan met reporters to talk about the meeting and his plans for the future. Well we had a very general discussion of all energy issues. It would be very difficult to isolate on, on just a few. We talked about the issue of simplifying the regulatory impediment to getting various energy facilities started. We talked about the process of coal conversion. We talked about nuclear power. We talked about the necessity of limiting dependence on foreign oil imports. We talked about the necessity of increasing, increasing domestic production of oil and also I would emphasize gas. We talked about gas a lot. So we talked about a whole range of energy subjects. We spent considerable time on conservation and the importance of conservation. We touched on gasohol and the importance of renewables. So it's very hard to isolate just any two or three subjects. We went across the whole broad spectrum of the subjects.

In response to the suggestion made just a day earlier that the Energy Department be abolished, Duncan said that neither the problems faced nor the agency's vast role as mandated by Congress can be so simply corrected or changed. Although he did concede there have been problems in getting the agency off the ground. I've never been involved in any activity that I thought that that activity had been managed as perfectly as it should have been, or managed as well as it should have been. I think there's always an opportunity to do better. And I don't want to stand here and suggest that the Department of Energy is being managed efficiently or it's being managed perfectly or that there's no room for improvement. I say that I have all the frailties of anyone else. But I think that we are doing the job. We're trying very hard to work on a national problem that's crucially important. And I think we're making good progress. I think we have good people in the Department of Energy. Everyone's entitled to their own view. I've given my view. I think that the Department of Energy has got an enormously important responsibility. We're working with many

diverse groups around the country that run the whole spectrum of opinion. When you get with consumer groups or when you get with producer groups or with environmental groups or with other special interest groups, they held, they hold very strong opinions about what national policy should be in their respective area of interest. I think where you have that kind of situation, and we're still in the process of gelling a national energy policy, I think it's important that we have a single organization through which we can focus those activities. I think there are negative views on many departments of government. There are negative views on the institution of government. There are negative views on the Congress. There are negative views on the federal bureaucracy. Those views exist. I don't suggest that they don't exist. But the overriding issue is that we have got to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. We have to have a national energy policy that addresses the crucial need of using energy

more efficiently than we have in the past. I think one of the most important things we have to do is to have a de-linkage of energy growth and economic growth. We've got to preserve economic growth using energy more efficiently. The southern governors said they were impressed by the new energy secretary and his understanding of their problems. Governor Edwards said it would not be fair to blame Duncan for the problems of the past. However, he said he was only cautiously optimistic that Duncan could turn things around without a major shift in presidential policy. You cannot, and I say it without any fear of contradiction, you cannot from Washington -- by regulation and edict -- reduce energy, and to the extent that the Department of Energy or any federal agency continues to interfere with the operations of states and persons and firms and companies that have the technology and the desire to use energy to the extent that that interference continues and is is accelerated, it will further inhibit

production of energy rather than help. I believe that he has the knowledge to know what needs to be done. I do not know whether he wishes to make trade-offs that would be required, couch them in language that this is a complex country and there are many voices out there and we have to serve the needs and philosophies and ideas of many people in all spectrums. And what in fact he was telling us, I believe as I read him, and this is an inference -- he may not have implied it or meant to imply it and other governors may not have drawn this inference. But I see in him a further accommodation to the same voices that have brought us to the deplorable conditions we're in today. I hope I'm wrong. While the Duncan visit may have produced a little optimism among some governors, it did not diffuse any of the basic anti-Washington feeling. Six of the 14 substantive resolutions passed by the Southern Governors Association called for changes in the federal government's Energy and Environmental Policy. The Clements - Edwards resolution calling

for the abolishment of the Department of Energy if it does not resolve the disputes blocking increased domestic energy production passed unanimously. Something the governors hope will catch the attention of a politically embattled president, a president who was once a member of the same Southern Governors Association. Well, Ron, officials of the Department of Energy were obviously nervous about Secretary Duncan's appearance before this conference. He's a new secretary. He hasn't been out in the field very much and this was obviously a potentially hostile audience. The formal reception, however, was very cordial even though only cautiously optimistic. And it looks as if the White House hasn't given up on wooing Governor Edwards. He's been invited to spend the night there this weekend and meet with Pope John Paul II during his visit to Washington. That's our show for this week. We hope you'll join us next week as we continue our coverage of campaign '79. I'm Beth George for Ron Blome. Good evening. The preceding has been an LPB production.

Production assistance for the preceding program was provided in part through contributions to Friends of LPB.