Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 1

Md Md LS I IV NEWSPAPER 3U0U 110th Year, No. 200 48 Pages In 4 Sections Thursday Morning, July 19, 1990 Copyright 0 1990, Journal Publishing Co. Daily 350 Sunday $1 All ROUE 0URNA1 GAO Says 01 Plans Contract To Produce 400 Jobs Martin Marietta Gets Postal Service Project By Sherry Robinson ASSISTANT BUSINESS EDITOR Til) rrema I i -'A I 'Vj 4. M' "I i in i Slack Management, Poor Testing Cited By Mark Thompson KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS 1 ilf NEIL JACOBS JOURNAL Martin Marietta Corp. has won a second contract with the U.S.

Postal Service, this time for $138 million, to build letter sorting machines in Albuquerque. The offices of Sens. Pete Domeni-ci and Jeff Bingaman confirmed the award Wednesday, and the official announcement will be made today. The contract calls for 614 units of, a delivery bar-code sorter and will mean 400 new jobs plus additional work for Albuquerque subcontractors, said Domenici's aide Ari Fleischer. Bingaman said, "The expectation is they will need substantially more than that.

It's the first stage of a multistage contract," although there is no assurance the company will get succeeding contracts. "These are 400 additional jobs in manufacturing," he added. "It's an area of our economy we've been trying to grow. These are good jobs, and it's not tied to defense." Rod Cooper, Martin Marietta's production manager in Albuquerque, could say only, "Wow!" Then he added, "I'm just delighted." The Maryland-based company announced last November a $38.2 million contract with the postal service to build 267 flat-sorting machines here. That first project will ultimately employ 140 people, and 400 more will be hired to fulfill the second contract.

Presently, Martin Marietta employs 70 people, who have prepared a plant and are now assembling the first operating model, which the company calls the pathfinder. That machine is an 82-foot mons- MORE: See MARTIN on PAGE A3 Lisa Wilburn welcomes Gia back with a hug. Furry Helper Returns Home WASHINGTON Because of lax management and inadequate testing of the Pentagon's Star Wars missile shield, President Bush's planned 1993 decision on whether to build the system will be "premature and fraught with unacceptable risk," government auditors reported Wednesday. The General Accounting Office report recommends that any decision to deploy the system be delayed until adequate testing is completed. The report is the latest in a series of blows to Star Wars, formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The program has been plagued by technological difficulties, budget cuts and faltering political support because of warming superpower relations. The GAO study concludes that the Pentagon's recent decision to utilize "brilliant pebbles" technology to destroy enemy warheads has thrown the Star Wars program into disarray. In January, the Pentagon discarded the idea of stationing dozens of space-based "garages" containing missiles to shoot down enemy warheads. Instead, it decided to use orbiting swarms of tiny autonomous missiles, known as brilliant pebbles, to destroy enemy missiles. The Pentagon contended such a change could cut the cost of the first phase of the Star Wars program from $87 billion to $69.6 billion.

The military is spending $3.8 billion on the program this year and requested $4.7 billion for 1991. The Senate Armed Services Committee cut that figure by $1 billion last week. The late change in the system's design makes much of the previous testing worthless and raises new questions about how brilliant pebbles technology will mesh with other elements of the system, the GAO report said. The research being done at White Sands Missile Range, mainly directed at energy weapons such as lasers, was competing with brilliant pebbles technology for funding. By Nancy Baca had been hit by a car, scaring the dog so that it ran off and hadn't been found.

Wilburn said she searched for Gia every day, even camping in the area 1 where the dog was last seen. "For 17 days we didn't have a clue where she was," Wilburn said. "Groups of about 30 people went out looking for her." People offered Wilburn other dogs but she continued the search for Gia. "We were putting in about 10 hours a day," said Wilburn, who put about 500 miles on her new car in the search for Gia. "I trained her," she said.

"She can MORE: See SEARCH on PAGE A3 Search Turns Up Woman's 'Ears' ended when Wilburn and Gia were reunited Tuesday. Wilburn's mother, Marilyn Mueller, was looking for the missing dog when she spotted it near a trap the family had set. Another family dog, Tas, "just kept nudging Gia until she came into my arms," Mueller said. Wilburn's search began when she returned from vacation earlier this, month. She had let some friends in La Tierra take care of the dog while she was away.

When she returned she learned Gia OF THE JOURNAL'S NORTHERN BUREAU SANTA FE Lisa Wilburn has her alarm clock back. Once again she knows when the telephone rings or someone knocks at the door. The 27-year-old Santa Fe woman hears these common household sounds through her dog, Wilburn, who is deaf in one ear and can hear partially in the other, trained the dog to let her know when the phone rings or the alarm buzzes. But 17 days ago the dog became lost near the La Tierra subdivision northwest of Santa Fe. A search that involved residents of La Tierra and city animal-control officers Amity may expand C1 1 MORE: See GAO on PAGE A2 Special Interest Money Enriches Representatives State-of-City Report Cites Continued Hard Times By Richard Parker By Jim Martin JOURNAL STAFF WRITER OF THE JOURNAL'S WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON Special interest money is swelling the campaign coffers of two members of the House from New Mexico, giving them a comfortable fund-raising lead over their challengers in this fall's election.

Rep. Bill Richardson, has raised $94,546 in theast three months and more than half that has come from special interest groups, according to federal campaign finance reports filed this week. Political action committees gave Richardson $58,450 in the past three months. His GOP opponent for the 1st District seat Ojo Caliente businessman Phil Archuletta has raised $2,783, all from individual contributors. Richardson has raised $192,934 this year, $65,866 of which came from PACs.

Archuletta has raised $8,860. MORE: See SPECIAL on PAGE A3 AARON WILSON 'JOURNAL Solar Flight Echpsed cian, after an aborted takeoff Wednesday at the Lordsburg Flying Service Air Field. An attempt to fly across the country will be delayed. Story on D2. Pilot Eric Raymond, left, and his wife, Aida, trail the solar-powered aircraft "Sun-Seeker" being hauled away by David Freund, the plane's structural techni THURSDAY Albuquerqueans will have to ride out more hard economic times before things begin to gradually improve, Mayor Louis Saavedra said in his first state-of-the-city report distributed Wednesday.

"The major blot on an otherwise optimistic view of Albuquerque's present and future prospects is a persistent economic slowdown, which has both affected city revenues and cast a pall over private enterprise initiatives," Saavedra said in the three-page report. "The slowdown is particularly evident since Albuquerque outperformed the national economy between 1983 and 1987," the report goes on to say. As part of his strategy for turning things around, Saavedra announced at a news conference that Sandia National Laboratories' executive Kevin Murphy will be on loan for up to two years to serve as the city's economic development officer. "Having a loaned executive from Sandia on staff will provide the city with a much-needed connection between government, private enterprise and the lab's own technology transfer program," Saavedra said. One of Saavedra's campaign promises was to look outside "City Hall for help in getting Albuquerque's economy back on track.

Murphy, who was a budget specialist at Sandia, said he plans to spend the next three or four months analyzing City Hall's economic development strategy and tapping private businesses for ideas. Murphy holds a master's degree in business administration from the University of New Mexico, and has worked for Sandia 16 years in areas such as nuclear waste management and the advanced storage battery program. Murphy also will help unsnarl the city's bureaucratic approach to economic development, Saavedra said, by providing a MORE: See STATE-OF-CITY on PAGE A3 APD Used Excessive Force, Jury Rules Good Morning Another report seeks to shoot down Star Wars. Looks like the sky is falling on that Pentagon project. Weather Mostly sunny this morning, becoming partly cloudy this afternoon with scattered thunderstorms.

High around 92. Mostly clear tonight, low around 65. D9. By Scott Sandlin JOURNAL STAFF WRITER semiautomatic weapons threw diversionary "flash-bang" grenades through the windows of the home at 2207 Arno SE, according to Hill's complaint. Hill, who had a record of assault and parole violations, was not named in the warrant and said he was visiting the house at the time of the APD raid.

As the startled occupants, including Hill, fled from the house, officers fired. An unarmed Hill was struck twice in the chest and once in the hand by bullets from Stott's 9mm PS submachine gun. Hill said he had made no threatening gestures to officers and did not pose any risk to the officer when he was shot. Stott argued that Hill had tried to wrest the gun from him and that Hill had been MOPE: See APD on PAGE A3 SWAT Member Shot Man in 'No-Knock' Drug Raid tion. "We didn't like coming to the conclusion we came to," he said.

Fraser said he feels there is a public perception which he disagrees with that police have too much authority. Hill had sought S2.3 million in damages, but the amount of money awarded to Hill was not decided by the jury. Instead, the two sides reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount Fraser said the amount the jury would have awarded would have been small. In the process of executing a "no-knock" warrant in March 1986, police officers dressed in black clothes and armed with The Albuquerque Police Department and a former member of its SWAT team used excessive force and battery on a man shot in the chest during a 1986 drug federal jury has decided. The six-person federal jury in Santa iFe heard a week of testimony before reluctantly deciding Tuesday that former APD officer Patrick Stott violated the rights of Jimmy Hill, 38.

Hill was shot in the chest when the police SWAT unit conducted an early morning, "no-knock" search of a home where police believed narcotics were being kept. "The whole thing was just very difficult," jury foreman George Fraser said of the verdict, reached after six hours of delibera- ACTION LINE B2 HAPPENINGS C10 BRIDGE B2 HOROSCOPE B2 BUSINESS C11-14 METROPOLITAN D1 CLASSIFIED D4-8 MOVIES B8 COMICS D10 NEW MEXICO D3 CROSSWORD B2 SPORTS C1-9 DEAR ABBY B2 FOOD B1-9 DEATHS 09 TV B9 EDITORIALS A12-13 WEATHER D9 SPORTSLINE 821-1800 WEATHERLINE 621-1111.