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Show 7. ii.t "... , i w v t. ..i j jlx i m v J-J. Park City, Utah 250 Vol. VI, No. 28 Thursday, March 26, 1981 2 Sections, 14 P 11 -1 iij LL- - "Si Van ban made permanent Third District Court Judge Peter Leary has made permanent a restraining restrain-ing order preventing Sweetwater and Resortex Properties from running a free shuttle service in Park City. Leary's action came Friday in response re-sponse to -a lawsuit filed by Dave Novelle, owner of Park City Transportation. Transpor-tation. Novelle originally obtained a temporary restraining order March 6, charging that the two timeshare companies com-panies were operating as common carriers without a license. He claimed the two companies had cost him $75,000 in lost revenue. The restraining order prohibits Sweetwater and Resortex from soliciting solicit-ing or accepting passengers other than their own employees or people desiring transportation to the companies' sales offices. "We have no quarrel with them hauling their employees or hauling prospective customers going specifically specifical-ly to their place of business," Novelle said Tuesday. Novelle's suit asserts that the Resortex Resort-ex and Sweetwater shuttle service should, like his own company, be subject to the regulatory powers of the Utah Public Service Commission. He--charges that neither Resortex nor Sweetwater holds a "certificate of convenience and necessity" issued by the commission. Although the majority of Park City Transportation's business involves tak ing visitors to and from the Salt Lake International Airport, Novelle estimates esti-mates that about 10 percent involves transporting people around town. Although Sweetwater has operated a shuttle van for more than two years, Novelle said the biggest impact on his business has come since the opening of the Resortex office in January. "Both of them became very aggressive in the last two months," he charged. "It not only upset me, it upset my drivers. They work on commission. " He estimated that his local business has risen 300 percent since the temporary tem-porary restraining order was issued. He said he hopes the lawsuit can be brought to trial in the near future. Business licence change debated A plan to base business licenses on gross revenue rather than the number of employees is being considered by city government. According to City Manager Arlene Loble, the city is debating a change in the method of collection as a way to boost revenues, and may even propose that license fees be used to subsidize the municipal bus system. At the present time, each business is charged a flat fee of $50, plus $15 for each full-time employee and $7.50 for each part-time employee. Anticipated revenues from this system during the current fiscal year have been set at $50,000. She pointed out that the city could use the same figures now used to calculate sales tax as a way to establish business license fees. In running a check on the current business license procedures, Loble has found there may be an immediate way to increase revenues without any structural changes at all. By running a cross-reference check using the telephone tele-phone directory, a list of post office boxes, and membership lists provided by the Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Loble has concluded there may be as many as 171 unlicensed businesses now operating operat-ing in Park City, as estimated 42 percent of the total. She argued that the city could raise an additional $50,000 simply by enforcing the laws currently on the books. She said each of the unlicensed businesses would be notified. "I'm sending them a very polite letter saying, apparently there has been an oversight..." According to Loble, most of those businesses now on the books have been renewing their licenses faithfully. "But getting them on the list in the first place has been the problem. . . It hasn't always happened." Oops In a front-page story last week on a possible voted leeway election, elec-tion, The Newspaper printed an erroneous statement about the impact of a 10-mill levy on the owner of a $100,000 house. The sentence should have read: "A 10-mill levy would cost the owner of a $100,000 house an additional $200 a year. Will Matheson veto sales tax redistribution? Local government in Park City and about 40 other Utah communities will be watching with more than casual interest in-terest this week as Gov. Scott Matheson decides whether to veto' HB 228, the proposal to alter the formula for distributing sales tax revenue. Under the present system, the three-quarters three-quarters of one percent local option sales tax is returned to those communities com-munities where the tax is generated. Under the terms of HB 228, those communities com-munities would keep 90 percent of that revenue, while the other 10 percent would be distributed according to population. The version of the bill passed by the legislature would have much less im pact on Park City than the original proposal which called for a 5050 split, with half the local option revenue to be distributed according to population. However, Mayor Jack Green and officials of-ficials from many other hub cities including in-cluding Salt Lake City have continued to oppose the measure, arguing that the 9010 formula is simply the first step in taking away more and more sales tax revenue. According to Green, proponents of the measure freely admit that they plan to change the ratio during the next session of the legislature. He pointed out that sales tax revenue has become increasingly important to the city's coffers, cof-fers, rising from about $05,000 in 1975 to $383,000 in 1980. Last Thursday, Green and mayors from several other cities met in an marathon session with Matheson to convince him to veto the legislation. The affected cities also have discussed the possibility of joining in a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the measure if it becomes law. That challenge may not be necessary. Matheson said in a Tuesday press conference con-ference that he is considering a veto. However, he indicated he would meet with representatives of those communities com-munities which stand to benefit from the legislation before making a decision. Park City man killed in truck collision Park City resident Bob Barnum-Reece Barnum-Reece was killed late March 19 when the pickup truck he was driving collided with the back of a tractor trailer on Interstate 80. According to David Fowler of the Utah Highway Patrol, Barnum-Reece was driving westbound in the right lane of the freeway when his 1968 Ford pickup ran into the back of a flatbed trailer loaded with packaged clay. Fowler said the accident occurred at 11:55 p.m. about a half mile west of Parley's Summit. The driver of the semi, Wade Wardell of Emblem, Wyo., estimated that he was traveling about 40 miles per hour at th.: time of the accident. Fowler said the speed of Barnum-Reece's vehicle had yet to be computed, but that he was driving "well in excess of the speed limit." The road conditions were reported re-ported to have been dry at the time. Barnum-Reece, 33, was dead on arrival at the University Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Bob Barnum-Reece was a familiar face in Park City for a number of years. He was an avid skier, and worked in several different capacities at the Park City Area, most recently in the Snow Hut at the base of the Prospector Lift. He also has worked as a carpenter, as a Colorado River guide, and as a combat engineer in Vietnam. He was the younger brother of Richard Barnum-Reece, Barnum-Reece, who contributes regularly to these pages. Bob also is survived by Linda Beattie, his long-time friend and companion, and by brothers Brent Barnum, 29, and Scott Barnum, 27. His friends have asked that any donations on his behalf be made to KPCW, Park City's non-profit radio station, where Barnum-Reece volunteered volun-teered many hours of work. In accordance with Bob's wishes, his body was cremated and his ashes scattered from Jupiter Peak. j 7 1 - - - ... . ""jri W " , . I - ' f " "' " "9 , ., ,. j . ' v.' ? ",.w.,,.. --. AHM I ',., 5! f. 2 5' v., . a Bob Barnum-Reece Utah's legal aid protests abolition of national program About 3.000 low-income Utahns will go begging for legal assistance next year because of federal cut-backs. Residents will need help on matters such as spouse abuse, wills, disability payments, pay-ments, and consumer rip-offs. rip-offs. But no help will be coming. That's the bleak picture presented by Utah Legal Services (ULS, let's call it), a private non-profit corporation corpora-tion which faces extinction and is yelling for help. Ironically, Ironi-cally, the program seems to be doing nothing wrong. Spokesmen for Senators Jake Garn and Orrin Hatch do not fault the program either for its fiscal management manage-ment or its legal performance. perfor-mance. ULS is dying because most of its funds come from the National Legal Services Corporation, which is on Ronald Reagan's hit list because be-cause its lawyer have allegedly alleg-edly used the agency to promote their own liberal biases. But Patricia De-Michele, De-Michele, the executive director direc-tor of ULS, says that any abuses are "a reason to clean up the system, not dismantle dis-mantle it." There is the possibility, however, that Congress will provide bloc grants to the states. This money could, at the state's discretion, be used partly for low-income legal services, according to Lincoln Oliphant, Sen. Garn's legislative assistant. "This is both a way to dismantle Legal Services, and a way to reform the way you get service to poor people," peo-ple," he said. DeMichele said ULS annually an-nually applies to National Legal Services (NLS, a private, pri-vate, non-profit body set up by Congress in 1974) for grant money. These grants now make up 85 percent of ULS's budget. "The other 15 percent comes from Title III or V funds," she said, mostly grants to handle the problems prob-lems of the aged." For years, conservatives have claimed 'hat NLS is packed with 1: jral activists who are more interested -n their pet political cau s than the legitimate needs of the poor. Right-wing columnist colum-nist Pat Buchanan cites a number of examples, saying they are becoming the rule rather than the exception. In Hartford, Conn., he writes, a NLS lawyer sued the government govern-ment to pay $10,000 for a client's sex-change operation. opera-tion. And in Madera County, Calif., legal services lawyers challenged a school hair- length regulation and sued the county for refusing free contraceptives to a teen-aged teen-aged girl. Lincoln Oliphant recalled another case, where NLS sued a California university to stop research on a new tomato picker on the grounds it would put migrant farmers out of work. "In that case, you'd have to determine deter-mine what the government's policy was concerning mi-' grant workers and technology," tech-nology," he said. Writer Buchanan also points angrily to an NLS inter-office memo that calls on staffers to lobby against President Reagan's budget cuts, and endorses a policy of "aggressive advocacy." But Legal Services lawyers law-yers are required by law to be zealous advocates, said Pat DeMichele. "Sometimes you get in trouble, because the causes of the needy aren't always popular," she said. "And we are permitted under certain circumstances to pursue legislative advocacy." advo-cacy." There are three instances which allow legislative lobbying, lob-bying, she said. It can be done on behalf of clients-people, clients-people, for instance, who are concerned about cuts in a certain program's budget. Legal services staffers can appear at the request of the legislators. "This is the most common circumstance in Utah," she said. And finally, they can speak out if the legislation affects legal services. ser-vices. "In any organization, there are people who have their own axes to grind," she conceded. "But if any lawyer is pushing his own causes onto clients, Legal Services can clean its own house. I would do it, and any project director with integrity would do the same." Nevertheless, the report from the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources Re-sources concludes that NLS has seriously abused its power. According to Ed Dar-rell, Dar-rell, who is an aide for committee chairman Orrin Hatch, the pannel's report charges that legal service lawyers "have engaged in acts of social change rather than serving individual clients." "The attitude has been, 'Clean the bums out'," said Darrell. Hatch's committee did not say NLS should be abolished, but it recommended recom-mended cutting its budget by two-thirds. The committee suggested that states pool their resources to make up for the financial loss. The committee also said legal service money could be drawn from consolidated bloc grants given to the states. Which calls for a few definitions. Currently, the money for legal services has been earmarked ear-marked specifically for that purpose, which makes it a categorical grant. According to Oliphant, the administration administra-tion plans to take about 40 categorical grants in the social services area, including includ-ing legal aid, and throw it into one large lump a bloc grant that will be distributed dis-tributed to the states. The local lawmakers would have to use the money for social services, but they can decide how much money goes to what area legal service, aid to the handicapped, etc. The fight over how to cut the pie, said Oliphant, "would move from Washington to Salt Lake." All the categorical grants together amount to a social service lump of $9,334,000,000 said Oliphant. And the administration ad-ministration has trimmed that back to $6,794,000,000. Categorical money has been a more favored tool in the past than bloc grants, he said, in spite of the fact that they are less flexible and require more paperwork. DeMichele said there is very little red tape in her current state program. "I can only speak for us, but we have a 2 percent admintra-tive admintra-tive overhead and the rest goes for field services," she said. ULS has four offices-Salt offices-Salt Lake, Ogden, Provo, Cedar City and 22 lawyers in the field. "We've been very cautious about the bulk of our monies. Over 80 percent per-cent goes for the people who represent the clients. If we cut, we're cutting out attorneys." attor-neys." Legal aid first began in the mid-1960s. It was run by the Office of Economic Opportunity Oppor-tunity (OEO) under HEW. Two Utah agencies were set up in Salt Lake and Weber County, controlled through local governing boards. DeMichele De-Michele said an attempt to kill legal aid in the early '70s backfired and led to the creation of the Legal Services Ser-vices Corporation in 1974 by Congress. ULS, said DeMichele, handles a wide variety of problems. It helps clients with government benefit pro-grams; pro-grams; works with public utilities to establish fair shut-off procedures; and cracks down on fly-by-night merchandisers taking ad vantage of the poor. One of the worst problems, she said, is the elderly-citizens elderly-citizens who were once self-sufficient self-sufficient but are reduced to government assistance by rising rent or inflation. "These people are not third-generation third-generation welfare families. They are abused by the system, by their relatives, by public housing, by people pulling them in or pulling them out of nursing homes and by the nursing homes themselves!" Legal Services is allowed to represent clients whose income has been established, at maximum, as 125 percent of the poverty level. They serve in civil cases the indigent indi-gent are represented in criminal trials by legal defenders de-fenders associations. And in cases where two low-income clients oppose each other, legal services can only represent re-present one side. "It rarely happens except in divorce cases, and then the Legal Aid Society, which is mostly funded by United Way, represents re-presents the other client," said DeMichele. While Orrin Hatch's committee com-mittee recommends cuts in legal aid. Senator Garn's approves the cut as part of his commitment to President Reagan's budget-cut package. pack-age. "He respects the administration's admin-istration's judgement," said aide Curt Burnett, "and is very reluctant to open it up (for program-by-program analysis)." Some very meritorious meri-torious programs are being cut, Burnett added. And Utahns are swarming over his office arguing for this-or-that budget items. DeMichele said she thinks the axe will fall on next Oct. 1, if abolition of the program is approved. "People have come to us saying, 'I don't know what I would have done without you, and I don't know what I'll do in the future'," she said. Oliphant suggested that private lawyers might take up the slack by donating free (pro bono) services. "Some firms require a certain number num-ber of hours a week for such work," he said. DeMichele sees that as one more forlorn hope. Private attorneys are generous with their time, she said, but few of them have delved into much specialized, intricate legal areas as government benefits. "There's no way they can pick up over a million needy clients that will be left across the countrv." |