Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 21

NEW MEXICO Sunday, April 21, 198S Albuquerque Journal Page 1, Section State Lines iff H. (1 Tav rf 'OS. -i it' 1 li ER, CUT: After the Albuquerque Journal and two TV stations from Albuquerque 'and El Paso had finished getting pictures of an American Airlines jet engine that fell to the ground near Deming last week, a crew from a Tucson television station came zipping to the scene in a rented helicopter. Knowing they were a bit late, the TV boys scrambled around, setting up cameras and stringing cords. At last, they pointed the camera at the discombobulated engine and the reporter cleared his throat for a stand-up.

Nothing happened. Peering into the camera the verdict was fearsome: blown fuse. The Tucson crew sheepishly packed up, got back on the helicopter, and flew away. DOING THE DOWNHILL IN DEMING: Most of the hills around Deming are brown, and even in the depths of winter there is hardly ever a time when snow mantles the tops if indeed it ever snows at all. Yet a 14-year-old student from Deming Junior High School recently returned home from a sojourn to the Colorado mountains with gold and bronze ski medals from the International Winter Special Olympics.

Hernaldo Herrera won the medals in the giant slalom and the slalom in competition with athletes from all 50 states, plus Japan, China and Mexico. His coach, Charlie Kiehne, allows as how Hernaldo very well, beating competitors with better advantages, like snow. LtC 1, JOURNAL PHOTO DICK KETTLEWELL padlocked gates of the Light Corp. of New rrn lie Joint Drive To Revive Economy Turns Bitter for Grants, Acoma the ones the plant would manufacture. Acoma Pueblo Tribal Council voted its resolve to buy the unique flashlight plant from owner Jeffry Vale if he would relocate the $2.1 million business.

Funding applications proposed that the new factory would be subject to covenants requiring hiring preference for reservation and low income residents. Eventually, last faM, state Gov. Toney Anaya and the New Mexico Local Government Division of the Department of Finance Administration approved a $350,000 federal Community Development Block Grant to the Greater Grants Industrial Development Foundation. The money was designated for use as a low-interest city loan to help Vale transport his company's equipment to Grants. The interest would be used to spawn a continuous revolving city loan program.

But the city's stipulations in its January loan agreement with the company drew Acoma leaders' ire. The agreement required that any buyer must be approved by the city and that the flashlight factory loan would become payable in full anytime the company is sold. This cast uncertainty over Acoma's purchase plans and barred pueblo access to the low-interest loan. Acoma cannot receive the state-administered community block grant money directly because the pueblo is classified as an entitlement agency; as such it must apply directly to the federal government for assistance. Mark Lautman, director of the Greater Grants Industrial Development Foundation, says the loan terms were the city's way of protecting itself against legal complications which could arise if block grant loan money was channelled to Acoma.

But Acoma Gov. Merle Garcia responded, "I am amazed at how easily the city manager, the mayor of Grants and the city council have reneged on a good faith partnership effort." Acoma officials feel the city's use of the grant money violates both the letter and spirit of the funding application, which specifically alludes to Acoma's involvement in the deal. So last month the pueblo sent a letter to state block grant administrators requesting a review of the use of the money. The state attorney general responded that the issue is not a matter in which the state should interject itself. MORE: See DRIVE on PAGE C5 Mexico.

He's holding a flashlight like and mill workers throughout the Grants area had lost their jobs during the same time period. As the companies and their employees pulled out, the tax base withered, stunting school and community programs. Acoma, Cibola County, the City of Grants and the Village of Milan proceeded to cooperate on a series of federal grant applications for incentive money to interest a California entrepreneur in moving his closed flashlight factory to New Mexico. allied Grants Manager Frank King stands next to By Talli Nauman JOURNAL STATE NEWS WRITER When the mining companies pulled out and left a void in the Grants-area economy, everyone knew it was a tough job ahead; this business of trying to find another business. Electing to meet the problem head-on, the city of Grants and Acoma Pueblo joined forces and set out on the search.

What they found was a flashlight factory. It wasn't any giant of industry, but it promised a modest number of jobs and, at the very least, a psychological boost to the community. But after weathering a year of effort, squabbling suddenly arose this winter between the city and the pueblo. The conflict is focused on control of federal development grant money for the factory, and it not only threatens to jeopardize the project, it endangers fragile foundations for much-needed future joint development efforts. As administrator of the $350,000 grant, the city paced restrictions on how the grant can be used casting doubt over the pueblo's plans and provoking its leaders." Now Acoma Pueblo is threatening to sue Grants because of what has happened.

The soured aspirations have left community members in limbo. They're finding they have some old hostilities to overcome. In addition, they're discovering they still have a lot of technical details to learn about development. Nevertheless, the Light Corp. of New Mexico is expected to begin training in the coming month for the first of a total 21 employees.

Crates of manufacturing equipment have begun piling up at an idle Grants warehouse where flashlights will be molded and assembled. That gives promoters something positive to show for their work. Administrators in Grants say they hope they will be able to smooth things over to enable mutually satisfying joint efforts in the future. Officials of both Acoma and Grants recognize that the future of their area's redevelopment success rests in no small measure on their ability to work together. But pueblo leaders say they are embittered over the experience.

.4 -UJ DON'T MAKE NO NEVER MIND: Anyone who's been in Mexico long enough to buy new license plates should pick up on the redundancies of a bilingual state, little phrases that can sneak up on visitors. The uninitiated are usually forgiven, but an unpardonable sin has been committed by horrors! the New Mexico Highway Department. In the southbound lane of U.S. 85, just north of Radium Springs in Dona Ana County, the highwaymen have erected this sign. The sign on the other side of the river, in the northbound lane, is right; it says Rio Grande.

Most people headed south are probably insulted. Most people headed north are probably confused. OF ROPES AND HOTDOGS AND STUFF: Gov. Toney Anaya seemed to shed a few years last week while checking on sewer problems and crowded schools in southern Dona Ana County. He successfully jumped rope with two groups of children at the Sunland Park Elementary School, sat with students in their classroom, munched a cafeteria hotdog and dropped by a day-care center.

None of the smiling youngsters can vote yet, and the governor acknowledged that a lot of them probably had no idea who he was. However one helpful child came to his day-care center armed with a realistic toy pistol. "Let me borrow this," Anaya said to him. "I can use it to talk to some legislators." By State Editor Fritz Thompson with Joe Smith and Bill Diven. Rise Contrasts Mark Linda Chavez's Political Last spring in Grants, Acoma sponsored an economic development conference with cooperation from city and state officials.

Participants touted the three-day aff'fir as a new dawn for the common cause of vanquishing localized economic depression. The pueblo had been beset by a cutback of one-third in its federal funding over the past four years. It suffered a 30 percent unemployment rate, aggravated by uranium company layoffs. Nearly 8,000 mine She worked for the National Education Association and left to take a job with the rival American Federation of Teachers. She worked for the Democratic National Committee in 1972, but says she left when the party nominated Sen.

George McGovern for president because she is "very hard line on foreign policy issues" and McGovern was a leading critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. She worked in President Carter's Department of Health, Education and Welfare and then labored for the teachers' union when it was backing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's effort to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination away from Carter in 1980.

Miss Chavez, 37, declined to be interviewed for the record about her appointment but has said repeatedly that she believes her views have been consistent while those of civil rights advocates in Congress and elsewhere have changed. her registration from Democratic to Republican. "I don't see how you can explain traversing the course she has traversed other than by sheer personal ambition," said William Blakey, who was her boss as assistant secretary of HEW in charge of legislation on education and now is senior legislative assistant to Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill. Edwards, however, said he was "not prepared to say" that he agrees with such an assessment.

"All I am prepared to say is that she is a very competent administrator and I respect her. I am sorry she is on Reagan's side. I wish she were on our side," he said. Edwards also said that when Ms. Chavez was on his subcommittee's staff, from 1972 to 1974, "all my recollection is that she was totally on our side." MORE: See CONTRASTS on PAGE C3 Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, "She has not changed her views." He noted that the federation, while favoring affirmative action programs, as Miss Chavez says she does, is opposed to racial quotas, as she is.

Shanker said that while with his union, where she started in a low-level job and worked up to be assistant to the president, Miss Chavez "expressed herself quite openly" in opposition to the organization's endorsement of Kennedy. "She thought he was too soft on defense and foreign policy," he said. A source close to Miss Chavez, speaking on the condition of anonymity, quoted her as saying she did not vote for president in 1972 or 1976 and voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984. At the time her appointment was announced April 9, Miss Chavez said sle plans to switch By W. Dale Nelson ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER WASHINGTON From childhood in the Hispanic section of Albuquerque, to the White House, from the Democratic Party to the Repubbcan, from the Carter administration to the Reagan administration, Linda Chavez's story is a study in contrasts.

Like President Reagan, who picked her to be the new White House director of public liaison, she grew up poor and is now criticized by poor people's advocates who say the policies she favors are making it harder for others to escape poverty. She has worked as an aide to Rep. Don Edwards, chairman of the House subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, but for the last two years as staff director of the Civil Rights Commission she has steered it on a ne" course bitterly opposed by Edwards and otiier liberals..