Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1981-11-04

              74th Year - No. 44 Good Morning! Its Wedneda. November 4. 1981 7 Section - 7 I las 25 Cents
City retains its deposit law By Paul Keep, Gordon Lee
and Jean Dubail ,
Missourian staff writers
Columbia Tuesday became the
first city in the country to pass a bev-erage
container deposit law twice.
On Jan. 5, Columbia will become the
first city m the country to enforce de-posit
law, assuming enforcement oc-curs
as scheduled.
An effort to repeal the law, first
approved in 1977, fell short by 226
votes. Although the ordinance sur-vived
the repeal attempt, its margin
of approval declined. In 1977 it was
approved 54 to 46 percent, while
Tuesday 51 percent voted against re-peal
and 49 percent opposed the law.
A total of 5,731 supported the law,
while 5,505 votes favored repealing
it
Turnout was greater than antic-ipated
because " both campaigns
were so enthusiastic," said Boone
County Clerk Chris Kelly. Despite
predictions of a 28 percent turnout,
38 percent of the city's registered
voters cast ballots.
David Thelen, who led the Colum-bians
Against Throwaways, express-ed
satisfaction with the outcome.
" The law will work well. It will take
a lot of cooperation on the part of all
Columbians Our group is eager to
help with the transition."
Bill Woodward, owner and general
manager of Devme Distributing Inc ,
expressed dissatisfaction with the
election's close outcome. " I wish it
had been a wider margin of victory
one way or the other so that one side
had a clear mandate.
" Compliance is still two months
away, so we still have some tune to
prepare for implementation of the
law," Woodward added.
Dick Dolan, whose " firm, Dolan &
Associates, handled repeal publicity,
said no legal or political actions are
contemplated to block implementa-tion
of the container law.
" I predicted a close contest, and
our polls showed last weekend it was
going to be very close," Dolan said.
Analyzing the result, Thelen spec-ulated
that Columbians resented
campaign methods used by the bot-tling
industry against the ordinance.
" Our votes were a lot cheaper than
their votes.
" The attempts by the beverage in-dustry
were unfair. A lot of voters
were angry about them. Those who
supported the law resented the mon-ey
and the delays that the beverage
interests brought onto the scene."
Thelen added that the Columbia
decision may make the city a " har-binger
of a nationwide movement"
toward container laws.
Those favoring the ordinance in- creased their 1977 vote margins sig-nificantly
m three precincts. Voters
m precinct ID, who voted at West
Boulevard School, and voters in pre-cinct
4E, who voted at St. Andrews
Lutheran Church, increased their
support for the ordinance by 7 per- cent Voters in precinct 4D, who
voted at Community Methodist
Church, increased their support 5
percent.
In two other precincts the ordi-nance
found increased support. Vot-ers
in precinct 3D, who voted at Sal-vation
Army Chapel, 602 N. Ann St.,
switched from 52 percent against the
ordinance in 1977 to 49 percent
against it Tuesday Voters in pre-cinct
4C, who voted at Russell Boule- -
vard School, upped their margin
from 54 for the law in 1977 to 57 per-( Se- e
FEWER, Page A20)
Tired of it all
Addie Wright Sapp of 107 W. Broadway was strolling toward
the polls on West Broadway Tuesday when she spotted a sign
supporting the deposit ordinance. Obviously displeased, she I
stopped, tore off the sign, and stomped on it before tossing it
into some bushes. " I'm sick of the way things are going around
here," she declared as she continued her walk to the polls.
Tim Wright photo
Clean Air Act issue
polluted by politics
By Philip Shabecoff
i- - New York Times
WASHINGTON - Until recently,
clean air and clean water legislation
tended to breeze through Capitol Hill
in a climate of pristine
bipartisanship.
This year, however, the debate
over the renewal of the Clean Air Act
is becoming increasingly obscured
by a smog of partisan politics.
The act is scheduled for reauthori--
Insight
zation this year, but with each new
knot in the political web now being
spun on Capitol Hill, it appears in-creasingly
unlikely that Congress
will be able to reach a decision in
1981.
Such a turn of events would be em-inently
satisfactory to many, if not
most, congressional Democrats.
They feel that environmental issues,
particularly clean air and clean wa-ter,
would work to their advantage
in next year's election. It would also
be pleasing to environmentalists,
who believe that the closer it gets to
election time, the tougher it would
be for legislators to vote to weaken
pollution law.
But the Reagan administration
and its allies in Congress, who want
the law changed to lighten the eco-nomic
and regulatory burdens they
say it imposes on industry, say they
want action this year. Moreover, Re-publicans
and a few Democrats
who want major changes in the law,
would rather not face a re- electi- on
campaign while, engaged in an emo-tionally
inflammatory debate over
clean air.
Polls of public opinion have uni-formly
shown that the great majori-ty
of the American people want con-tinued
strong protection of air and
water. Poll- take- r Louis Harris told a
congressional committee recently
that any member of Congress who
voted to weaken the Clean Air Act
did so at the risk of losing his seat.
President Reagan's own pollster,
Richard Wirthlin, told a group of Re-publican
Senate staff officials that
his own findings emphatically con-firmed
the Hams results.
The political contamination of con-gressional
debates over substantive
legislation is a familiar story in
Washington. But for many years
now. Congress has been approaching
( See DEMOS, Page A20)
In town
today
6: 45 pjn. State Attorney
General John Ashcroft will
speak in Memorial Union Au-ditorium.
8 p. m. Gregg Smith Singers,
a choral group, will perform in
Jesse Auditorium. Tickets are
available at Jesse Box Office
from 10 ajh. to 4 pjn. and be-fore
the show. General admis-sion
is ( 9, students $ 7 and
groups of 10 or more $ 7. For
more information call 882- 378- 1.
5: 30 pjn. to 9: 30 pan. Colum-bia
Board of Education Annual
Workshop at Columbia Public
Schools Administrative Of-fices,
1818 W. Worley St. The
board will discuss policies,
goals and priorities for the
coming year. The session is
open to the public.
For a listing of club meet-ings
Thursday through Sun-day,
see today's Up and Com-ing
column on Page 2B.
t Index
Business 19A
Classified 15- 1- 6A
Opinion.. . .4A
People 1-- 4A
Sports 12- 14- A
Weather .2A
Poll workers ask for ares
to fill gap in state records
Poll workers who asked some Co-lumbians
to give their date of birth
when voting Tuesday weren't just
being nosy. State law requires them
to ask the question.
Boone County election official
Wendy Noren says state law re-quires
voters to give their Dirth date
when registering to vote. This infor-mation
is necessary because regis--
tration files are used for such things
as making up lists for jury duty,
from which people younger than 21
and older than 65 are exempt
Noren says those voters who regis-tered
between 1958 and 1972, and
some who registered in other years,
were asked to give only their age.
Tuesday's inquiry was intended to
plug that gap.
Democrats
win election
in key city,
state races
United Press International
Democratic Lt Gov. Charles
Robb, son- in- la- w of Lyndon B. John-son,
broke the GOP stranglehold on
Virginia politics Tuesday night, de-feating
conservative Attorney Gen-eral
Marshall Coleman for governor.
Robb survived a bitter mudsling- m- g
campaign that saw his 11- poi- nt
lead of a month ago all but disappear
by election eve. President Reagan
put his political prestige on the line
with personal endorsements and the
national Republican Party pumped
money and technology into the race,
but they were not enough to salvage
Coleman's bid.
I From the start Coleman used ad--
veitlstauents attacking Sribb as a
carpetbagger who won lieutenant
governor his only political office
because of his ties to the Johnson
family.
In Virginia, with 70 perce- - of 1,- 9- 09
precincts reporting, Re b had
484,408 votes 54 percent, Cole-man's
414,609 46 percent.
In the New Jersey gubernatorial
race, with 83 percent of the vote
counted, it was Republican Thomas
Kean 936,332, Democratic Rep.
James Flono 926,147.
Overcoming charges he was an
outsider who capitalized on his John-son
family ties, Robb won by being
equally conservative as his oppo-nent.
He is the first Democrat to win
the governorship of Virginia since
1S65.
Coleman took the lead away from
Robb after the early counting, but
less than three hours after the polls
closed Robb moved into the lead for
good.
Across the nation, the majority of
incumbent mayors were being swept
back mto office.
Democrat Edward Koch easily
beat six opponents to become the
first mayor in New York City history
elected on both the Republican and
Democratic tickets.
Coleman Young of Detroit easily
( See KOCH, PaeeA20)
New plan saves Bailey's district
Kansas Citv would lose
district in realignment
By Tanya Barrientos
State capital bureau
JEFFERSON CITY Boone County would remain in
Republican Congressman Wendell Bailey's district un-der
a redistnctuig proposal issued Tuesday by Missouri
House Speaker Robert Griffin, D- Camer- on.
Gov. Christopher Bond, a Republican, has called a spe-cial
General Assembly session for Friday to redraw the
state's congressional districts. Missouri must eliminate
one of its 10 congressional districts because of the state's
relatively slow population growth over the past decade.
During the regular General Assembly session, Gnffin
failed to gain sufficient support for a plan that would
have eliminated Bailey's district and retained three
existing St. Louis area congressional districts.
Griffin's new proposal targets the district of 6th Dis-trict
Congressman Tom Coleman, R- Kan- sas City, for ex-tinction.
Griffin's plan would merge most of Coleman's predom-inantly
rural, northwest Missouri district with that of
Congressman Harold Volkmer, D- Hanni-bal.
Coleman would inherit most of retiring Democratic
Congressman Richard Boiling's heavily Democratic dis-trict
m Kansas City and would retain only Platte County
and his home county, Clay.
Griffin's latest plan answers complaints from many
Democrats who objected to another plan introduced dur-ing
the regular legislative session. That " Democratic
Unity plan" split Boone County between the proposed 5th
and 6th Districts, neither of which would have been Bai-ley's.
The proposal, which also would have split Pulaski
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23
County and eliminated a proposed separate district for
the Bootheel, lost the support of eight Democratic sen-ators,
enough to defeat it when coupled with Republican
opposition.
Although Columbia Senator Roger Wilson, a Demo-crat,
had not seen Griffin's plan, he said Tuesday it
sounds like one he might support.
" I would prefer to have a Democratic congressman,
but Wendell Bailey and I get along," he said. " I would
say that this sounds like one of the most logical plans
that has been forwarded. This is one plan I could possibly
go along with."
However, Gnffin's plan remains incomplete because
the House leadership has not yet devised boundaries for
( See PLAN, Page A20)