How Things Really Work

Is not voting a civic sin or a rational decision? Is low voter turnout an indication of apathy–or satisfaction? There’s more than one view about those questions.

Only about nine per cent of Texas voters came out last November 4, despite such interesting issues on the ballot as the Houston ban on affirmative action and the amendment allowing us to borrow against our homes.

We have devoted a great deal of energy in this country to making it simple and convenient to vote. We have made up for the elitist past. Our founding fathers thought only white male landed gentry should vote. We have made up for our sexist past. Texas passed its own women’s suffrage amendment before the feds did– when my father was governor. We have tried to make up for our racist past. Poll taxes and literacy tests are no longer necessary to register for voting. We have lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Felons are the only adults who can’t vote now. But every time we expand the electorate voter participation, measured by percentage turnout, goes down.

It’s easy to vote.

There are voter registration postcards in post offices, libraries and state offices. You can get an application on-line by pulling up the Secretary of State’s website (www.sos.state.tx.us) Mail it in, and within 30 days, you’re eligible to vote. You can vote at the grocery store or shopping mall. There is lots of time to get it done. Polls are open for nearly three weeks before the election, in addition to election day. County commissioners may set up early voting places all over, and must have at least one per commissioners’ precinct.

Texas has tried to create knowledgeable, responsible voters by starting with children in the public schools. Project V.O. T.E., an excellent project of Secretary of State Antonio Garza, has instruction in 38 school districts, including Houston and Klein. This pre-kindergarten through high school program teaches the relationship between democracy and decision-making.

None of these efforts has increased voter turnout. So, if you don’t vote are you mad? Apathetic? Alienated?

Two political scientists in Houston don’t think so: Bob Stein, Dean of Social Sciences at Rice University, and Dick Murray, director of the Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston.

They believe that not voting is a reflection of an effective, efficient and satisfactory system of governance.

According to the Stein-Murray hypothesis, some individuals participate in the political process because they have a specific need that some level of government can fulfill-they want the potholes repaired so they vote for a city council candidate. They’re concerned about the economy so they replace President Bush with President Clinton.

Most people do not participate at all levels of government because they don’t see all government as relevant to their needs at the moment. Those who do participate are thought to be sufficiently interested and engaged to become informed and make rational choices among candidates.

When you try to increase turnout and bring in people without a strong interest in the business of government, you get random voting–not necessarily a good thing.

Stein and Murray point out that while only a third of eligible voters participate in any election, about 90 percent of voters ballot in at least one election during a four-year presidential cycle. People vote where they think it’s important to fix a problem or fulfill a need.

So far, they say, studies of non-voters and voters fail to confirm that non-voters are apathetic, alienated from government, or more dissatisfied with government than voters.

The Murray-Stein hypothesis makes good sense. We don’t repair the car when it’s not broken. We don’t run to the polls when we don’t see big problems with government. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

We waste a lot of time telling people what they need to do, forgetting that the American public uses very good judgment most of the time. It wasn’t the Wall Street experts who saved stock prices a few weeks ago. They were busy panicking something happening in Hong Kong. We owe our strong stock market to sensible Main Street investors. They didn’t think it was broke.

Texas has a new telescope, a 10-meter giant light bucket that this month started peering into the dark skies of west Texas.

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope, officially dedicated and open for business at the University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, is a scientific landmark, a milestone in engineering. This telescope should help unlock the mysteries of black holes and dark matter, providing more clues to the origin of our universe.

It has already been a finalist for Discover Magazine’s Aviation and Aerospace Award because it does for $13.5 million much of what the Keck Telescope in Hawaii does for $100 million. In fact, the new telescope is a classic example of what American scientists can accomplish when asked to do more for less.

The HET saves money three ways. Its giant mirror was built for about one-seventh the cost of the other 10-meter telescope because it is constructed of many one-meter mirrors rigged to catch approximately as much light as one. It tracks only one way across the sky, which is less flexible than other instruments that revolve in two directions, but perfectly adequate for following stars and other objects in their nightly trajectory.

And since its data goes into computers rather than the eyes of astronomers, scientists can observe from their home bases in Germany, California or Pennsylvania and save travel expenses.

It is also an excellent example of cost-effective collaboration. The telescope is located at the University of Texas at Austin’s observatory, but four universities shared construction costs and will share viewing time.

It is a magnificent achievement, but as McDonald Observatory Director Frank Bash says, “The observatory does not produce research. People do.”

And it was people who produced the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, starting with the visionary, Harlan Smith. Before his death in 1991, Harlan directed McDonald Observatory. Harlan wanted to land men on Mars by 2003 in ships powered with ice found on the moon. He saw a 10-meter telescope for McDonald Observatory at a time when most Texans were totally preoccupied in figuring out where the oil boom had gone.

Harlan’s great gift was not that he saw visions but that he could make others see the visions. He taught many of us astronomy on bright clear nights on Mount Locke, without the aid of any telescope.

But Harlan’s vision would still be a dream without Larry Ramsey and his partner Daniel Weedman, Penn State astronomers who figured out how to build a really big telescope for a bargain basement price. At the time when Harlan wanted to build his 10-meter telescope, the idea of building a $60 to $100 million telescope in Texas was preposterous.

But Larry Ramsey and Daniel Weedman had an idea that could get you 70 percent of the sky for 15 percent of the cost. Don’t build one 10-meter mirror. Build lots of one-meter mirrors and mount them on a lattice in a way that will catch most of the light at a fraction of the cost. Building their mirrors at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania, they demonstrated American ingenuity at its finest.

But Harlan’s vision and Larry Ramsey’s idea would still be nice drawings without Frank Bash, the endlessly patient, tireless, doggedly persistent fundraiser and dealmaker who now directs McDonald Observatory, made the spectroscopic survey telescope a reality. Frank forged partnerships with Penn State University, Stanford University, Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich and Georg-August University in Goettingen.

But even with Harlan’s dream, Larry’s brilliant idea and Frank’s partnerships, we wouldn’t have a telescope with Tom Sebring. It took a world class project director to translate drawings and ideas into steel, glass and concrete on time and on budget. And remember that this was a case of first impression, a one of a kind, finely tuned instrument with a near-zero tolerance for mistakes.

This telescope is a magnificent achievement. Thanks to the people who did it.

Foxhunting in Ireland is a jewel with many facets–humor, beauty, thrills.  And, as a fine jewel shimmers in the light, the recollections of an Irish foxhunting holiday shimmer in the memory.

Nothing in the literature of foxhunting really prepares the visitor for the incredible beauty of hounds in full cry sweeping toward the ruins of an ancient castle skylined in the fading light of a November afternoon.  Or for the sheer terror of looking between a horses ears at a ten-foot drop on the far side of a double bank with a six-foot ditch at the bottom.

There are other things the literature does not prepare you for.  Remember the pictures you have seen of a meticulously attired hunt field sweeping toward a beautifully turfed Irish bank?  What those pictures don’t show is that, on the top of that bank, is a thick hedge that, chances are, you are going to have to make a hole in.  Here, a machete would be a much more appropriate hunting appointment than wire-cutters.

Lacking the machete, the next most effective means you have of making a hole in that hedge (besides a stout heart, that is) is your hard hat.  So, spurring the while, you lower your head and bull through.  Of course, your head down, you don’t know just what is on the other side of the hedge, or even where the other side of the bank drops off.

Having more or less gotten through the hedge, and having some natural curiosity about where the other edge of the bank is, you look up to see what’s coming.

A tree limb is, that’s what.  About a foot in front of your face.

Aside from the hedge you never see in the pictures, there is another unexplainable mystery about Irish banks.  Invariably, after your trusty hireling has launched himself (and you) off the top of the bank, you see that the level of the field you are jumping into is three feet lower than the one you just jumped out of.

It takes a better geographer than I to understand the undoubted fact that one spends the day jumping drop fences, yet the hack back to the trailer at the end of the day is not the uphill Alpine scramble you somehow expect.

One last word about Irish banks:  If you’ve never jumped them before, there will doubtless be a self-congratulatory moment during that long-awaited first run when you check your mount briefly, jam your hat more securely back on your head, and say “Whew!  That’s the biggest drop I’ve ever ridden.”

Don’t worry.  In just a few minutes it will be the second biggest.

All this talk of banks, ditches, and hedges raises the question in the prudent fox-hunter’s mind:  “Fine.  But where am I going to find the Pegasus it would obviously take to carry me, no better rider than I should be, over these Himalayan obstacles?”

The answer is that Pegasus is readily available for about $25 a day, including his transportation to and from the meet.  Some of the hirelings are, of course, better than others.  But the hired horse you have obtained through a reliable stable that won’t get you through the day is rare.  The tack supplied you may be something else again.  Even if you are indifferent to the discomfort of the straight-forked, straight-skirted saddle with which Pegasus likely comes equipped, have a look at the condition of the billets before you blithely step aboard.  Forewarned is forearmed.

One of the first things a visitor to an Irish pack will notice is that, by American standards, Irish hounds run virtually mute.  Only when they are actually closing for the kill does their full cry produce the kind of hound music that is such a joy to American foxhunters.

An American pack with so little voice would have been irretrievably lost in the woods fifteen minutes after the first run started.  But, when all is done and when, homeward bound, you are likely to be reflecting that the most valuable things you bring back with you are not listed on the manifest you will hand the friendly Stateside customs officer, and take up no room in your hopelessly overstuffed luggage.

They are the vignettes stored up in mind’s eye:  The vine-grown castle ruin atop a furze-covered knoll near Adare, which, on a memorable day, produced no less than three foxes for Lord Daresbury’s fine Limerick hounds.

The fallen-down gazebo which spoke mutely of grander days in County Meath, and around which foxes seem to run in concentric but ever-widening circles.

The day with the Galway Blazers when the four o’clock fox obligingly took you on an unforgettable run, through fields of Emerald green in the fading brilliance of the sunset of a stormy day, your Pegasus rising to the stone walls of Galway with an ease and rhythm that put joy in your heart.

And, finally, the day with the Scarteen Black and Tans that ended with the Master, silhouetted against the sunset, crawling about atop a castle wall overgrown with an impenetrable thicket of bush and briar where, hounds testified, the fox had returned to his lair.

Foxhunting in Ireland is a jewel with many facets–humor, beauty, thrills. And, as a fine jewel shimmers in the light, the recollections of an Irish foxhunting holiday shimmer in the memory.

Nothing in the literature of foxhunting really prepares the visitor for the incredible beauty of hounds in full cry sweeping toward the ruins of an ancient castle skylined in the fading light of a November afternoon. Or for the sheer terror of looking between a horses ears at a ten-foot drop on the far side of a double bank with a six-foot ditch at the bottom.

There are other things the literature does not prepare you for. Remember the pictures you have seen of a meticulously attired hunt field sweeping toward a beautifully turfed Irish bank? What those pictures don’t show is that, on the top of that bank, is a thick hedge that, chances are, you are going to have to make a hole in. Here, a machete would be a much more appropriate hunting appointment than wire-cutters.

Lacking the machete, the next most effective means you have of making a hole in that hedge (besides a stout heart, that is) is your hard hat. So, spurring the while, you lower your head and bull through. Of course, your head down, you don’t know just what is on the other side of the hedge, or even where the other side of the bank drops off.

Having more or less gotten through the hedge, and having some natural curiosity about where the other edge of the bank is, you look up to see what’s coming.

A tree limb is, that’s what. About a foot in front of your face.

Aside from the hedge you never see in the pictures, there is another unexplainable mystery about Irish banks. Invariably, after your trusty hireling has launched himself (and you) off the top of the bank, you see that the level of the field you are jumping into is three feet lower than the one you just jumped out of.

It takes a better geographer than I to understand the undoubted fact that one spends the day jumping drop fences, yet the hack back to the trailer at the end of the day is not the uphill Alpine scramble you somehow expect.

One last word about Irish banks: If you’ve never jumped them before, there will doubtless be a self-congratulatory moment during that long-awaited first run when you check your mount briefly, jam your hat more securely back on your head, and say “Whew! That’s the biggest drop I’ve ever ridden.”

Don’t worry. In just a few minutes it will be the second biggest.

All this talk of banks, ditches, and hedges raises the question in the prudent fox-hunter’s mind: “Fine. But where am I going to find the Pegasus it would obviously take to carry me, no better rider than I should be, over these Himalayan obstacles?”

The answer is that Pegasus is readily available for about $25 a day, including his transportation to and from the meet. Some of the hirelings are, of course, better than others. But the hired horse you have obtained through a reliable stable that won’t get you through the day is rare. The tack supplied you may be something else again. Even if you are indifferent to the discomfort of the straight-forked, straight-skirted saddle with which Pegasus likely comes equipped, have a look at the condition of the billets before you blithely step aboard. Forewarned is forearmed.

One of the first things a visitor to an Irish pack will notice is that, by American standards, Irish hounds run virtually mute. Only when they are actually closing for the kill does their full cry produce the kind of hound music that is such a joy to American foxhunters.

An American pack with so little voice would have been irretrievably lost in the woods fifteen minutes after the first run started. But, when all is done and when, homeward bound, you are likely to be reflecting that the most valuable things you bring back with you are not listed on the manifest you will hand the friendly Stateside customs officer, and take up no room in your hopelessly overstuffed luggage.

They are the vignettes stored up in mind’s eye: The vine-grown castle ruin atop a furze-covered knoll near Adare, which, on a memorable day, produced no less than three foxes for Lord Daresbury’s fine Limerick hounds.

The fallen-down gazebo which spoke mutely of grander days in County Meath, and around which foxes seem to run in concentric but ever-widening circles.

The day with the Galway Blazers when the four o’clock fox obligingly took you on an unforgettable run, through fields of Emerald green in the fading brilliance of the sunset of a stormy day, your Pegasus rising to the stone walls of Galway with an ease and rhythm that put joy in your heart.

And, finally, the day with the Scarteen Black and Tans that ended with the Master, silhouetted against the sunset, crawling about atop a castle wall overgrown with an impenetrable thicket of bush and briar where, hounds testified, the fox had returned to his lair.

We are looking into the future and the view is enlightening.

One of the interesting enterprises we have under way at the University of Houston System is a Vision Commission. We have asked 19 national and local leaders in education, business and the community to tell us what higher education will look like in 20 years.

After two meetings, we don’t have the answer, but the fog is lifting.

At a recent session we listened to three men whose job it is to be on the cutting edge of higher education: Peter Magrath, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges; Aimes McGuinness, senior associate at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems; and Frank Newman, president of the Education Commission of the States.

These are concerns about universities in the last years of the 20th century:

• The outlook for public financing is gloomy.

• As the cost of a degree escalates so do questions about cost and quality.

• Demographic trends and the needs of an information society are placing new demands on universities.

• There is a growing disconnect between the internal priorities of universities and the external demands of employers, students and political leaders.

If we don’t watch it, we’re going to have an Edsel, Magrath said. A nice, very expensive antique.

Magrath and the others warned that higher education, one of the most successful American enterprises, may be too slow in recognizing the change that has shaken corporations, government and many other institutions in society.

Too often, universities have been resistant to technology and slow to forge bonds with their communities, they said.

Too often, they have been unfriendly to part-time and non-traditional students. Research has been keenly interesting to academics but not readily useful or transferable to the community.

We’re selling the ticket of admission to success in our society and that ticket is valuable, said Frank Newman. But there are more questions about the cost.

Those of us in urban education have seen the future coming for a long time. Fewer and fewer of our students are the traditional 18-to-22-year-old full-time variety. Many are older — the average age of students at the University of Houston-Clear Lake is 32. Many transfer from community colleges — the UH spring headcount showed 6,942 freshmen and sophomores compared to 15,423 juniors and seniors.

With an average of five careers and 10 to 12 jobs projected for the average Texan, many of our students are seeking another skill or earning a master’s degree, retooling for their next career.

Our experts told us that the successful universities will be those that connect best to the community. That means that research must be readily useful and transferable to the community. Research in education may be the most important because the failures in public education are a major urban dilemma.

Education is the central avenue to upward mobility, Newman said. We know better ways to teach different kinds of people.

The University of Houston institutions, like most Texas universities, have successful public school partnerships. But many of these programs, which bring the fruits of research to the elementary schools, are privately funded and done as an add-on to faculty duties.

That highlights another problem our experts noted: the route to success for an academician lies through published research, not community service.

Our policies, processes and leadership skills do not match today’s rhetoric of connection, teamwork, partnerships and collaboration, McGuinness said.

What does all this mean to those of us in higher education? It means we need to focus more on meeting the needs of the future.

It’s ironic that while many state and land grant universities are trying to be more like Harvard, Harvard is trying to be more like them, Magrath said, explaining that Harvard is working at creating the community links that other universities already have.

It means that changes are necessary, but they’re not impossible, not even too difficult.

In other words, I have seen the future, and we can get there from here.

We’ve read a lot about job training programs that don’t work. This is about one that does.

With manufacturing jobs migrating offshore at a rapid rate, structural unemployment has become one of the most difficult barriers to economic prosperity. For many Americans once able to earn a good wage at a relatively low-skilled job, the future looks grim.

In 1990, San Antonio faced the closing of the Levi-Strauss apparel plant on the South Side, leaving 1,000 employees out of work. Similar dislocations occurred at other major employers, including the Roeglein meat packing plant, San Antonio Shoe, and Kelly Air Force Base.

In the past decade, that city lost approximately 14,000 jobs in manufacturing, textiles, transportation, and construction, while gaining about 19,000 jobs that required higher skills, from health care to legal research.

That triggered the creation of Project QUEST. QUEST is the child of grassroots community organizations guided by the formidable brainpower of Ernesto Cortes, the Southwest Regional Director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

“We could hear the pain. We could hear people asking how they would support their families,” said Virginia Ramirez, job training chair of Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), the San Antonio community group which has tirelessly pursued better streets, better schools, and a better life for the people of low-income neighborhoods.

Joined by another IAF group, Metro Alliance, COPS set about gaining access to higher quality, better-paying jobs through training programs that matched industry needs.

Nearly 300 neighborhood house meetings identified problems with existing programs:

• Some were expensive–many students attending proprietary schools took out large loans.

• Some provided training only for minimum wage jobs.

• Some were inaccessible to families who needed an income to support their families.

The QUEST project was built on interviews with employers, who committed to provide jobs to 650 QUEST participants. The employers helped design training curriculum and forecast future needs. The program was intended to produce long-term employment at family wages with $7.50 an hour jobs as the benchmark.

The first group of 126 QUEST participants enrolled in January, 1993. COPS and Metro Alliance volunteers did the intake interviews. Marcia Welch of Metro Alliance explained, “We want people who will take this very seriously. It’s a long-term project and it needs commitment.”

The community organizations also served as the support group for participants, providing motivation and help as problems developed.

Training was demanding, because the occupations included such high-technology areas as electronics, biomedicine, medical records, physical therapy, radiology, medical laboratories, environmental technology, diesel mechanics, accounting and information systems.

Financial support came from the State of Texas, the City of San Antonio, the Ford Foundation and private corporations.

There are now 833 participants in QUEST training. These are some results:

• 486 have graduated.

• 396 have been placed in jobs. Thirty-six are continuing their education, some seeking bachelor’s degrees. Four have entered the military. About 50 have not been placed.

• The average salary earned is $7.83 an hour.

A 1996 report to the Ford Foundation said Project QUEST stands out as a potentially important model because it aims at institutional change. Rush Limbaugh has attacked it as for costing too much and taking too long.

QUEST costs money, about $10,000 a student. It is lengthy – one year to 18 months – compared to some job training programs. It is intended to achieve lasting results, not a temporary, minimum-wage job.

Limbaugh has not computed what it costs to support a family on welfare or the loss to the tax base from unemployment. He evidently hadn’t heard of the federal job training program in Puerto Rico that spent $305,000 per worker placed in a job that lasted for longer than three months.

QUEST is successful and cheap at the price. It is the kind of result we have learned to expect from Ernie Cortes.

Barbara Jordan was the most revered public official I have ever known. She had a presence that permeated the classroom in which she taught the most popular course at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

That same aura actually hushed the rowdy Democratic National Convention in 1976. Barbara made one of the two keynote speeches that year. Her speech was hardly a partisan call to arms. It was an anthem to the Constitution and a call for a balanced budget. (The other keynoter was Senator John Glenn. Senator Glenn learned the hard way what people in Texas politics had known for a long time: Don’t follow Barbara Jordan on a program.)

At a Congressional dinner in 1978, chaired my then-Majority Leader Jim Wright, Barbara ended the evening’s program by singing, without any musical accompaniment, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. By the time she finished, the audience was standing in silent tribute to her.

In less formal settings, she was a pretty fair hand with a guitar. Her repertoire of folk music was legendary.

Barbara is remembered for her eloquence, and eloquent she was. God gave her a voice that sounded like it was coming from the mountain top. But it was not the voice that made her eloquent. Her eloquence came from her head, not her throat. Barbara did not speak unless she had something to say. When she had something to say, she said it without a wasted word.

Barbara was the conscience of whatever group she was associated with: the Texas Senate, the United States Congress, the LBJ School of Public Affairs, the Ann Richards administration. But she was a conscience with a sense of humor. Several years ago, Barbara was asked to lecture on ethics to employees of the Lower Colorado River Authority. The LCRA had been attacked for some pretty inconsequential stuff: some employees were accused of going on a hunting trip sponsored by a contractor. Barbara’s lecture series was condensed to one fifteen-minute lecture.

“By Texas standards you don’t have a scandal,” Barbara told the assembled and delighted employees. “You’ll just have to try harder.”

Barbara was born 59 years ago in Houston and raised in the Fifth Ward. Her father was a preacher. He lived to see Barbara become president pro tem of the Texas Senate and receive the traditional honor of being “Governor for a day.” He died within hours of seeing his daughter add another footnote to history by becoming the first black woman so honored.

Barbara was “the first black woman who….”

— was elected to the Texas Senate;

— was elected to the United States Congress from a former Confederate state.

— (fill in the blank with almost any political honor that comes to mind).

The acclaim did not come instantaneously or immediately. She ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature twice before she was elected to the Texas Senate in 1966. When she was finally elected she was instantly recognized as a leader.

Barbara first came to national notice as a member of the House Judiciary Committee that considered impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal in 1974. Her scholarship that was the basis of her eloquence brought her instant recognition.

Ironically, that very recognition became part of the reason she did not run for re-election to Congress in 1976. Shelby Hearon, the author with whom Barbara wrote her autobiography published in 1979, reports that Barbara could not walk down the halls of the Capitol without having people trying to snatch clothing or jewelry from her as mementos. She was even harassed in the rest rooms, Hearon reports.

Barbara represented me in the Texas Senate and Congress. I once introduced her to a group as “my Congressperson,” mouthing what I thought was the politically correct jargon of the time. Barbara snapped back, letting me know that she was no Congressperson, but a Congresswoman.

I never used that ridiculous expression again.

We are in the midst of a national debate about responsibility for health care. Congress has vowed to give states more responsibility, more flexibility and less money to provide care for those without health insurance.

It provides more evidence that the problems we deal with in government rarely change and are never solved.

In the early 1980’s we were in the midst of a similar debate. President Reagan called it the New Federalism, but the gist of it was that states were to get more responsibility, more flexibility and less money.

Since Texas then, as now, led the nation in the percentage of people without health insurance, this was a serious matter. In fact, it scared Texas counties to death.

Our quaint state constitution gives counties responsibility for indigents, paupers and lunatics. A decade ago, health care costs were rising, and public hospitals were getting more aggressive about collecting on the bills run up by uninsured people from other counties. The poor we have always with us.

Parkland Hospital in Dallas had filed lawsuits against some nearby counties. County judges worried about a federal court decision that would saddle them with the cost of health care.

Private hospitals, then as now, were worried about their bottom line. That caused some fairly spectacular cases of patient dumping. This occurs when a very ill patient arrives at a hospital, in one case a gentleman with a knife in his back. A biopsy is performed on his or her wallet, and should it be short of cash or proof of insurance, the patient is sent on his or her way, often with catastrophic results.

So the time was right for a look at indigent health care. Counties wanted to limit their liability. Basic humanity demanded a more reasonable system of caring for the poor.

The Task Force on Indigent Health Care was assembled in December, 1983, headed by the late Helen Farabee, and staffed by Bryan Sperry, who now heads the Texas Association of Children’s Hospitals.

After 13 hearings and site visits, this task force of 71 people produced a package of bills which included:

• The county responsibility bill which defined a county’s responsibility for indigent care and set up a mechanism for state payments when the county had paid its share.

• The Maternal and Infant Health Improvement Act which allowed Texas to participate in the federal program, later covered by Medicaid, and greatly expanded prenatal and postnatal care for low-income women and children.

• The Primary Care Act which set the foundation for primary care clinics which are recognized still as the keystone of preventive care.

• The Patient Dumping Act which requires a hospital to stabilize a person whose life is in danger, regardless of the condition of his or her wallet, before transferring the patient to a tax-supported public hospital.

Enacting this rather modest package into Texas law became a suspense story, complete with last minute about-faces, frenzied staff work, high tragedy, tragic blunders, acts of political cowardice and acts of political courage.

The County Responsibility Act required about $70 million to reimburse counties for indigent care. An eleventh hour change in the funding mechanism caused a major redrafting of the bill the day before the end of the 140-day legislative session. In 1985, the end of the session was pandemonium with hundreds of bills and conference committee reports still waiting for consideration.

The redrafted bill, pulled together by health care policy expert DeAnn Friedholm, came to the floor of the House and Senate with only hours to spare. The Senate passed it quickly. In the House, a point of order was raised. The bill had not laid out the requisite two hours.

Maybe it was malicious. Maybe it was a mistake. It was critical. Under House rules, the bill could not come to the floor until three minutes to midnight with the Legislature adjourning sine die at that hour. A Republican from Richardson, Rep. Frank Ceverha, easily talked it to death.

The galleries were packed with members of Valley Interfaith and Communities Organized for Public Service. These organizations, now known for their political power in the Valley and San Antonio, had lobbied for days for the bill.

They blamed Gov. Mark White for the funding fiasco and demanded that he call a special session. He did, but the drama wasn’t over.

The Senate convened, passed the bill and adjourned in 38 minutes. The House Conservative Coalition proposed a crippling substitute. U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm called House members asking them to vote against the bill. The issue wasn’t as much about health care as about the next election. Sound familiar?

The vote to table the watered-down substitute came up 73 to 71. House members vote by pushing buttons at their desk. Any member can request a verification to see if buttons were pushed for absent members. The verification came up a tie, 71 to 71.

Speaker Gib Lewis took a stand. He said, “Show the Chair voting Aye.” The rest was easy.

This rather modest package set important precedents. The indigent health care package set up the system of disproportionate share which Texas later used very successfully to capture more federal Medicaid dollars. It began some important Medicaid expansions which greatly improved care for pregnant women and children. It created the first state legislation against patient dumping which is still a national model. It affirmed the primary care model.

It is still in use and helps Texas counties provide some care for those who don t have health insurance and don’t qualify for Medicaid.

It also illustrates the difficulty states have in dealing with the ongoing challenge of health care reform. Many states have looked at it, as Texas did in 1992. Few have taken action. There are just too many pieces decided at the federal level, such as tax code treatment of health benefits,

Medicare, the Veterans’ Administration, medical research and graduate medical education.

So it’s great to hear how creative states can be when they have more responsibility and more flexibility. It’s just hard to figure out how it can be accomplished.

Like a good steward, the state of Texas has been cautious with debt. Until the mid-1980’s, the state paid cash. Most of the bonds issued were self-supporting—like the veterans land loan programs–and didn’t require taxpayer dollars for payment.

That was before the great prison construction extravaganza. In the past eight years, fed by more than $2 billion in prison bonds, outstanding debt increased 56 percent, from $6.4 billion to $10 billion.

Texas still ranks among the most conservative states. A constitutional amendment is still required to issue general obligation bonds, as evidenced by four of the amendments on the ballot this month.

The state ranks 10th out of 10 among the most populous states in outstanding debt and 33rd among the 50 states in debt as a percentage of personal income.

Nevertheless, the increase in debt has been rapid and has come mostly in the area of non-self-supporting debt, the kind where taxpayers foot the bills. That is because most of that debt has been incurred for prison beds and inmates do not pay room and board to pay off the bonds.

Between 1987 and 1995, Texas built 110,000 prison beds. Texas is testing the case for more incarceration, as Tony Fabelo, director of the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council, said in a recent report. No western democracy and no other state has an incarceration rate that matches Texas’ rate of 636 offenders per 100,000.

The bills are coming due, and we are witnessing some interesting spectacles.

There are $40 million worth of taxpayer constructed corrections facilities in Harris County now empty or due to be partly or completely closed. There are as many as eight new state jails standing empty and costing taxpayers nearly $1.5 million a month in debt service. Texas counties are now actually importing prisoners from other states–that is, renting out their jails to, for example, North Carolina.

The reasons are complicated. The Harris County buildings are in financial trouble because they were built by the county adult probation department with money paid by the state to house prisoners. When the new state prisons were completed the state had plenty of room for prisoners and transferred them out of county facilities, thus drying up one source of revenue. One might have thought the county, which brought the Alberti lawsuit to force the state to house its prisoners, might have foreseen that outcome and not used a temporary source of funds for buildings that need permanent operation.

The Alberti order was lifted in August by U.S. District Judge Norman Black. The state promptly stopped paying counties for alternative sentencing programs.

The state jails are on mothball status because the demand for jail cells now is less than the supply. State jails were intended to provide a cheaper alternative to prisons by housing nonviolent offenders who commit drug and property crimes. The maximum sentence for state jail offenders is two years. Many juries still prefer to hand down longer sentences for those crimes and send the offenders to state prisons.

Sentencing practices may change, but don’t count on it. It’s more likely that the maximum penalties will be increased in keeping with the Texas tradition of creating new crimes and longer sentences with each legislative session.

Gov. Ann Richards clamped down hard on paroles and Gov. Bush has continued that policy so offenders are serving more of their sentences.

It’s not a great price to pay, of course, if the strategy works. If more prisons, longer sentences and higher incarceration rates reduce crimes, it’s money well spent. The answer is complicated. As every political campaign demonstrates, crime rates are up or down depending on whom you believe.

The Criminal Justice Policy Council finds that increased imprisonment and a lower crime rate have a correlation, but it’s not a one-to-one relationship. Between 1989 and 1993, Texas experienced a 1 percent decrease in the crime rate for every 4 percent increase in the incarceration rate.

The big factor in decreased crime is the crime-prone age group, ages 13 to 24. Since 1983, this demographic group has been declining, causing some downswing in crime just as it caused a decline in higher education enrollments. Another likely factor is a booming state economy. Between 1989 and 1993, Texas jobs increased 9.4 percent and property crimes decreased 17 percent.

It is clear that Texans and their political leaders have a very low tolerance for crime. Dr. Fabelo puts it in terms we can all understand: “If Texans were as worried about traffic accidents as they are about crime, Interstate 35 would be 110 lanes wide with speed bumps every 50 feet.”

This is a story about what one person has done to change the world.

Jim Ketelsen was chairman of the Board of Tenneco Inc., from 1978 to 1992, when he retired. He is a director of several major corporations and many civic groups.

His passion is Project GRAD.

Name intractable problems facing the nation, and the education of inner-city youth will come out very high on the list. We’ve watched the future of our young people compromised by mediocre schools, high dropout rates and a failure to acquire survival skills for a high-technology world.

Ketelsen tackled this problem head on.

The first step was taken in 1989 when Tenneco formed a partnership with Jefferson Davis High School and the University of Houston Downtown. The idea was to encourage minority high school students to go to college. Jeff Davis is located just north of Houston’s central business district. Students are 88 percent Hispanic, 10 percent African American, and 2 percent Anglo.

Tenneco committed to provide a $1,000 college scholarship per year for four years to every Jeff Davis student who graduated on time, maintained a 2.5 grade point average in core courses, completed a mathematics sequence through algebra II and participated in two summer academic institutes at UH Downtown.

The summer institutes, named for Jesse Jones, are sponsored by Houston Endowment. For four weeks high school students receive intensive training in reading, study skills, time management, critical thinking and analytical skills, as well as mathematics and natural sciences.

This year, 500 Davis students attended these classes. More important is the success rate. Before the program started, about 20 of the 200 or more graduating from Jeff Davis attended college. This year, the number is more like 140.

The Tenneco/Houston Endowment program proved that low-income, minority, inner-city students could, with adequate support, be motivated toward higher achievements.

Ketelsen wasn’t satisfied. Too many students were being lost between first grade and high school graduation. The process had to start sooner.

His plan was to reach back into the seven elementary schools and one middle school that feed Jeff Davis High School. Project GRAD began in the fall of 1993, aimed at increasing parental involvement and upgrading student skills.

As part of the program, Communities in Schools-Houston, a year-round dropout prevention program, added a staff person to each elementary school. Their job is to connect families with social services available in the community.

Teachers in all of the schools volunteered some of their time to learn a new method, called Consistency Management, which helps create a supportive, but firm and orderly classroom environment. In these sessions, teachers are encouraged to hold high expectations for student behavior, and to increase student participation and pride.

Another part of the teacher training involves new math skills. “Move It Math” is a program developed at the University of Houston Victoria. Students of teachers who take this training have higher test scores and a better attitude about math.

Teachers also learn better ways to teach reading, writing and language through a program called “Success for All” developed at Johns Hopkins University.

It is an ambitious program. It requires great commitment from teachers and the school district. Almost all the training is complete–30,000 hours–and the new methods are in use.

It will take some time before results are clear, but the early signals are very good. The percentage of third graders meeting math minimum expectations increased 50 percent in the feeder schools on the May 1995 Texas Assessment of Academic Skills tests.

In Jefferson Elementary School, where teachers were trained first in Move It Math, about 70 percent of children in all grades passed the TAAS test. At Ryan Elementary, where scores were lowest in 1994 with only 27 percent of students meeting the minimum expectations, 78 percent more passed the test.

Reading scores have also improved, even though teachers completed their training in the “Success for All” program more recently.

Ketelsen isn’t finished. Next year, teachers will learn a science program in addition to math and reading. A new math curriculum developed at the University of Chicago would allow students to start algebra and geometry in middle school and calculus in high school. He would like to see more full-day pre-school and partnerships with health clinics.

He wants to replicate the program. His next target is Yates High School, 88 percent African American, where 82 percent of students are considered at risk.

The amazing thing about Project GRAD is that it is accomplished largely with private donations. Contributors include Houston Endowment, the Brown Foundation, the Cullen Foundation, John and Becky Moores, GTE, the McNair Foundation and the Shell Foundation..

Jim Ketelsen is a businessman. He takes a bottom line approach. Project GRAD costs less than $200 per student for the 6,500 students in the feeder schools.

The cost of failure is dramatically higher. An IBM study estimates that if the dropout rate continues unabated through 2010, Texas will need an additional $1.8 billion in tax dollars to provide welfare and other human services.

And that $1.8 billion is just the dollar cost. It doesn’t begin to measure the blighted human lives.

Recently I was asked to become interim chancellor of the University of Houston System, and I shall do so on September 1.

Why did I take the job? The University of Houston has had its share of problems in the past few years. Turnover among administrators has been unusual. Chancellors, presidents of the campuses, provosts, deans, vice-presidents have come and gone at a great rate. The old joke about “When the boss calls, find out who he is,” could have been written about the University of Houston.

The dust kicked up by the comings and goings obscures the greatness and vitality of the institution. Its greatest asset and virtue is that it is in Houston, a dynamic, growing city that I have called home for 63 years. Houston is the world center of the energy industry, and a great international port with a powerful sense of entrepreneurship. Its economy is as diverse as its citizenry. It is blessed with extraordinary political leadership in Mayor Bob Lanier, whose wife Elyse is a UH regent.

Few institutions of higher education boast the community support UH has. Houstonians may not want to see the Cougars play football but they are willing to speak with their pocketbooks. Last year UH ranked second in the nation, behind Harvard University, in private foundation support. This year it is 31st in the nation, outranking all Texas institutions except the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.

The main campus is a nationally recognized research institution with world class programs in creative writing, drama, law, physical sciences and hotel management. The main campus is the home of the superconductivity lab run by Dr. Paul Chu, who has discovered techniques of moving electricity through ceramics at temperatures far above those ever thought possible a decade ago.

It has a renowned Creative Writing Program where students, many of whom go on to win national prizes, sit at the feet of the masters. Its School of Theatre, where Dennis and Randy Quaid learned their trade, now has Pulitzer prize-winner Edward Albee and Tony award winner Stuart Ostrow both in residence.

UH has an Honors College of 1,200 selected students who explore western civilization and a Scholars’ Community which deepens the university experience for commuting students.

UH Downtown (UHD) is an open-admission university. It offers classes at night and on weekends and electronically. UHD is entirely an undergraduate institution. But next semester professors from another UH campus – Clear Lake – will begin offering a Master’s Degree in Finance. UH Downtown takes students where they are, whether they are high school students with little hope of attending college or young urban professionals looking for another degree, and moves them where they want to go.

UH Clear Lake (UHCL) is a model for upper-level institutions, catering to adult professional students who want education in business, science, education or the humanities. UHCL will soon begin offering a Master’s in Business Administration for doctors at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Unlike upper-level institutions elsewhere in Texas, it has stayed true to its role as a senior institution and never sought to become a four-year university. It seems to thrive, even without a football team.

UH Victoria (UHV) expands the system’s reach to serve South Central Texas. UHV has pioneered a program called Move It Math. Move It Math teaches elementary and junior high school teachers how to teach math. UHV not only teaches this skill in South Texas, but in Dallas, where they really need it.

The UH institutions believe in going to the customer. UH faculty members teach all over the greater Houston area: in the Texas Medical Center, the Woodlands, West Houston, at Compaq Computer. All four of the UH institutions are working together to teach courses in Fort Bend County, holding classes in a Wharton County Junior College building and in Clements High School.

Higher education is responsible for Texas’ economic shift from a Third World state – dependent on minerals and vegetables that come out of the ground – to a technological power – dependent on things that come out of people’s heads.

The world has changed. No longer do we go to school, train for a career, find a job and work until we retire. Not many of our children will follow that traditional pattern.

The opportunity in the new economy is for the knowledge worker – the person who can acquire complex new skills quickly as the needs of the economy shift. The knowledge worker may have three or more careers. The knowledge worker goes to school all his life and rarely has the luxury of taking several years off from earning a living.

That is why I thought it was so insightful that UH student Dominic Corva described UH as “exactly what this city needs: a continuing opportunity rather than a one-time shot.”

UH is adapting to the needs of our customers who need to be able to acquire education at times and places convenient to them. A new weekend college will be started at the UH main campus. Downtown already offers many courses on Friday nights and Saturdays, and response has been excellent.

New telecommunications technology holds great promise. The UH system is moving quickly down that path. We are breaking down the barriers that make it annoyingly inconvenient for students to take courses from more than one of the UH components.

What is emerging, as our perceptive student pointed out in The Daily Cougar, is not a UCLA or a University of Chicago but an education system matched to Houston’s needs. It will specialize in part-time students. It specializes in diversity. It combines excellence with access.

More than any other university I know about, the University of Houston institutions are prepared for the task of educating people for the future. Since its beginning 58 years ago, the University of Houston has helped shape Houston and has itself been shaped by the city I call home.