Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 1

ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL w'wyv-r swyy wyf mjmsm? wv sm" rwwwr- 14th Year, No. 19 52 Pages in Sections Wednesday Morning, January 19, 1994 Copyright0 1994, Journal Publishing Co. Daily 500 Made in USA GOP Applauds Kin Lawmakers Hungry For Budget Pork Speech Calls for Nickel Gas-Tax Cut legFsiAture 1 I -A A A -j. i King's speech marked the beginning of the 30-day legislative session, when issues are expected to center on an expanding state budget, a possible tax cut, education improvements and crime prevention. All House mem-; bers, one senator and all statewide officials, includ- ing the governor, are up for election this year.

By Jackie Jadmak JOURNAL CAPITOL BUREAU SANTA FE Talk of repealing gasoline taxes and locking up criminals brought Gov. Bruce King more Republican than Democratic applause in his State of the State speech Tuesday. But Senate Minority Leader Billy McKibben, R-Hobbs, for negotiations with legislators. The Legislative Finance Committee staff says a public works project budget of as much as $337.5 million is possible. Even with a budget that size, legislators still could increase government spending sharply in other areas and cut taxes.

That's because of growth in New Mexico's economy and resulting increases in tax revenues. "It's a very good position to be in," House Speaker Raymond Sanchez, D-Albuquerque, said with a smile. MORE: LEGISLATURE on PAGE A8 Surplus Could Mean Fight Over Projects By Thorn Cole JOURNAL CAPITOL BUREAU SANTA FE Forget the bacon. Legislators will be bringing home entire hogs at the end of the 30-day session that opened Tuesday. Gov.

Bruce King has proposed a 1994-95 "pork-barrel" budget of $229 million, an increase of $89 million over the current budget. It would be the largest such budget in more than a decade. And that's just a starting point More Legislative coverage, A9 Reactions to the governor's address, which was interrupted about 16 times by polite applause, were decidedly mixed. Even while McKibben was marveling" MORE: See KING on PAGE A8 had a ready explanation for the phenomenon. "During an election year, even Democratic liberals understand what the people want," he said.

"But after the election year, they don't give it to them." MARK HOLMJOURNAL Ten-year-old Micah Grau of Grady gets an autograph from Gov. Bruce King on Tuesday after his State of the State address. CALIFORNIA JAN. 1 7 4(3! A.M. Rough Days Ahead for L0A 0 Water, Power, Freeways Gone in an Instant t.twv 1 A -Mr-n f.

v-t. 0 feVw r. six OS. i SI '-'-H'fe i i i I 4iA-- p. hiiUA A v-A-fA- -r 0 9 1 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS This Pacific Palisades home is one of hundreds destroyed in Monday's Los Angeles earthquake.

INSIDE Highway engineers lost race against nature. A7. President Clinton to survey damage. A6. Quake shouldn't stop economic recovery.

B5. Mapping the earthquake's destruction. A6. By James Anderson THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LOS ANGELES Under skies as bright and blue as ever, Southern Californians confronted a changed world Tuesday. The defining features of this region's life water, power and freeways suddenly were uncertain.

In their place: long lines, hellish commutes and constant earthquake aftershocks. The county coroner's office raised the quake's death toll from 34 to 40 late Tuesday, with the office attributing most of the additional deaths to quake-related heart attacks. Earlier Tuesday, a 16th body was found inside a flattened apartment building in Northridge, the epicenter of the powerful earthquake that struck before dawn the day before. But that was only the worst toll paid by people in this battered city. Once again, the rhythms of life in Southern California were altered by disaster, much as they were after last fall's wildfires and the Los Angeles riots 21 months ago.

And the effects of this disaster on the day-to-day lives of residents were likely to reach farther and last longer. "The days ahead will also be rough for us," Mayor Richard Rior-dan warned Angelenos, even as he praised them for a cool-headed response to the crisis. "Let's all stick together." A snapshot of a region in crisis Tuesday: The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it expected to spend at least $1 billion on quake repairs. The 1989 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area cost an estimated $5.9 billion. More than 100 of the city's 750 public schools were damaged seriously.

Many offices and stores were ALEXANDRIA KINGJOURNAL Nadia Khoury waits as her husband, Selim, removes belongings and stacks them In front of their damaged place at the Superior Apartments In Northridge. Residents Salvage Bits of Their Lives Survivors Sift Debris For Usable Posessions By John Fleck closed, and workers were urged to stay home. But the closure of four of the nation's busiest freeways or highways made commuting a frustrating adventure. Aftershocks, some nearing 5 on the Richter scale, continued to jolt the region. About 100,000 homes remained without power, and between 50,000 and 100,000 were without water, almost all of them in the hard-hit San Fernando Valley.

The Department of Water and Power said it could be a week or more before MORE: See ROUGH on PAGE A6 much like the deadly Northridge Meadows, with the two top floors flattening the bottom floor. The difference was that in Taghgiri's apartment building, the ground floor was occupied only by parked cars. The floor of Taghgiri's bedroom buckled in the middle in the shape of his car. In the living room, the devastating earthquake. It was just a few blocks from the Northridge Meadows apartments, where 16 people died when the building collapsed.

Throughout Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, Taghgiri's struggle was repeated a thousand times as residents began sorting through what could be saved and what had to be discarded. JOURNAL STAFF WRITER Volunteers who appeared from nowhere grabbed the things a bundle of books hurriedly thrown into a blanket, a trash can full of cassettes and stacked them by the street. Taghgiri had no plan, he said, except to get as much as he could out of the apartment before the building was condemned. Taghgiri's apartment was near the epicenter of Monday morning's -NORTHRIDGE, Calif. Mohammed Taghgiri worked frantically through the morning, passing possessions out of his devastated apartment through an open Taghgiri's apartment looked MORE: See SURVIVORS on PAGE A6 jfjrw ik'j.

wwjj WEDNESDAY Missing Teen's Car Located Governor Wants Review Of Inmate Classifications Good Morning New Mexico's lawmakers approach a state budget surplus the old-fashioned way they spend it. Weather Mostly sunny with a high of 60. Fair this evening with low of 22. Mostly sunny Thursday. C1 1.

day. Jonathan was last seen in his family's 1978 Chevrolet Camaro Jan. 12 at a JB's Family Resturant in Albuquerque. That car was found on the Navajo Reservation about IS miles north of Flagstaff Monday afternoon by Navajo police, according to the FBI, which is investigating the case along with Arizona Unidentified Burned Body Found in Camaro's Trunk By Johanna King JOURNAL STAFF WRITER Larry Francia still had faith Tuesday that his 16-year-old son, Jonathan, would return home safely, even after police in Arizona found the charred remains of the missing teen's car with a badly burned body in the trunk. An autopsy on the body, which had not been identified late Tuesday, is scheduled this morning.

"We don't want to let down our faith, our hope," Francia said in a phone interview Tues- ed the game last Thursday in the Pit but said he was unaware until he returned home that inmate Barry Lee Foster and nine other minimum-security prisoners were in the crowd. Foster, 43, skipped out at halftime and remained at large Tuesday. He is the prime suspect in the slaying of Patsy Mahan of Albuquerque, a 56-year-old woman neighbors described as being like a second mother to Foster. MORE: See INMATE on PAGE A5 'Honor Farm' Fugitive Suspected in Slaying By Tamar Stieber JOURNAL NORTHERN BUREAU I Gov. Bruce King said Tuesday the escape of a Los Lunas "honor farm" inmate from a Lobo basketball game and the subsequent killing of a woman makes it necessary to rethink how the state classifies prisoners.

t. The governor also said he attend Francia: Disappeared Jan. 12 BRIDGE B2 DEAR ABBY B2 MOVIES D4 BUSINESS B5-8 DEATHS C11 NEW MEXICO C3 CLASSIFIED C4-10 EDITORIALS A10-11 SPORTS D1-8 COMICS C12 FOOD B1-3 STOCKS B6 CROSSWORD B2 HAPPENINGS C10 TV B4 DAILY RECORD C10 METROPOLITAN CI WEATHER C11 SPORTSLINE 621-1800 WEATHERLINE B21-1111 SF WEATHERLINE 988-5151 and Navajo police. FBI spokesman Doug Beldon said the case is being investigated by the FBI under its MORE: See BODY on PAGE A5 eh 'S..