The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 1

Cardinals Bomb Carlton and Phillies- 0 l-C 4 4 Partly Sunny Full Weather Report, 13-D Stocks Up 7 Points Full Market Report, 3-C Oldest Daily Newspaper in the United States Founded 1771 Tuesday, May 6, 1975 Vol. 292, No. 126 0 15 CENTS wmi Aid Plea Up to $5 07 Millioi 1 Si -f I -A Shi A j- i Yi -J P.J i I v- V' I 7 4 J. 1 Schools To Seek Tax Hike Council Approval Seen as Unlikely By STEVE TWOMEY Inauirer Education Wntrr The Philadelphia Board of Education decided in a closed session yesterday to ask the City Council for a 10-mill increase in the real estate tax rate to help reduce the board's projected $70 million deficit. If the council approves the request, which is considered highly unlikely, the tax bill for the owner of a home with a market value of $20,000, and an assessed value of $10,000, would jump by $100 next year to $577.

Board Vice President Dolores Ober-holtzer said that it is "absolutely ludicrous" to expect that the council will approve the increase. But she said that the board must make the request in order to convince the state Legislature, the other potential source of funds, that the board had tried to solve its money problems at the local level. Closed Session The board's decision was reached in an executive session that was closed to the public. The state Sunshine Law provides that meetings of public bodies at which decisions are made or policy is set must be open to the public, except when the meetings are held to discuss labor negotiations or personnel matters. "It was not intentionally done, but I feel it should have been done out in the open," said board member To-byann Boonin.

"We were discussing a personnel problem of a board member and before we knew it we were all discussing the taxes." Mrs. Boonin said that the board's legal counsel, Edward Soken. had insisted that the meeting was legal. Soken would not comment last night on the board's action. No announcement was made by board members at the board's regular, open meeting later in the day of the decision to ask the council for a tax hike.

However, the decision was made public when Soken responded to a question from the president of the Philadelphia Association of School Administrators, Daniel McGinley, during the period set aside for speakers at board meetings. Reasoning Seen Mrs. Boonin said she believed that board President Arthur W. Thomas wanted to inform the council of the request for the 10-mill increase before making the information public. Thomas could not be reached for comment last night.

The decision to ask for a 10-mill increase stunned the audience when it Has made known. A mill is a SI tax nn $1,000 of assessed property value. A 10-mill increase would generate about $50 million in additional tax revenue for the school district, leaving it in need of an additional $20 milium to balance the proposed 1975-76 budget. Mrs. Oberholtzer said that an alternative to the real estate tax increase woudl be an increase in the city wage tax.

Under that propsal, new revenue from the wag tax would go to the city while 10 mills worth of existing real estate tax revenue would be transferred from the city to the school district. The City Council, all of whose members are facing re-election campaigns this year, told board members last week that a tax increase was virtually out of the question. Council President George X. Schwartz told Thomas that Mayor Frank L. Rizzo, who had pledged to hold the line on taxes, probably would veto any tax hike.

The council does not have enough votes to overide a veto, Schwartz said. He urged the board to seek Rizzo's endorsement of a tax hike. He also said that, pending Rizzo's ((See SCHOOL TAX on 4-A) Ford Plan Not Tied To Troops By GARY BLONSTON nquirer Washington Bureau WASHINGTON-President Ford asked for more than a half-billion dollars yesterday to finance America's growing Indochina refugee progrm, but an edgy House subcommittee immediately raised questions about both the cost and some persons the money would benefit. Although the new request is 50 percent higher than one rejected by Congress only last Thursday, it is much more likely to be approved, for it does not contain a key element of the previous proposal a provision for possible military re-entry to South Vietnam. Still, members of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and International Law spent four hours yesterday pressing government witnesses on cost estimates, refugee-screening procedures and expectations about the resettlement of as many as 150,000 refugees in the United States.

L. Dean Brown, director of the Interagency Task Force handling the refugee problem, said that about 130,800 evacuees were either in the United States or on their way. But Dean asked for money sufficient to meet the needs of 150,000, including 20,000 who might want to( enter from third countries. He was met with challenges from several committee members who asked why some of the more well-to-do refugees should not be asked to pay their own way into the country, and why some with shady histories in Vietnam should not be excluded altogether. Rep.

Elizabeth Holtzman N.Y.), led that opposition. "In my opinion," she said, "persons engaged in stealing American funds, in corruption with American funds, who operated tiger cages and assassinated people, are undesirable. "God knows we have enough people who break the law here without importing them gratuitously." Gen. Leonard F. Chapman, commissioner of the U.

S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said there was no legal way to deny those people political asylum unless they had been convicted of serious crimes in their home country or had threatened U. S. security. "What you're saying," Ms.

Holtzman asked, "is that those people would automatically be paroled to this country?" "I think you're correct," Chapman answered. "There must be a conviction (to exclude them)." Ms. Holtzman, subcommittee chairman Joshua Eilberg and Rep. William Cohen Maine), also (See REFUGEE AID on 11-A) conference this evening, his first since meeting with reporters in-San Diego April 3. The conference, scheduled to be telecast by the three major networks, will begin at 7:30 p.

m. in the Executive Office Building next door to the White House. It will be carried live here on channels 3, 6 and 10. Sources indicated that Ford, concerned about the growing opposition to the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in the United States, would speak on that topic. Young refugee eating crackers Barlett (left) and Steele nquirer Pulitzer By CHAPIN A.

DAY Inauirer Matt Writer Inquirer investigative reporters Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele were awarded the Pultizer Prize yesterday for excellence in national reporting. Barlett and Steele, who have received 12 major journalism awards in the five years they have been with the Inquirer, won the Pulitzer for their seven-part series, "Auditing the Iner-nal Revenue Service," which was published in April, 1974. The Pulitzer Prizes, which are among the most prestigious awards in journalism, letters and music, have been awarded annually since 1917 by the trustees of Columbia University under an endowment established by Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World and the St.

Louis Post-Dispatch, who died in 1911. Other journalism winners announced yesterday includedThe Boston Globe, meritorious public service in its coverage of the Boston school desegregation crisis; Chicago Tribune staff members William Mullen and Ovie Carter for their reports on famines in Afircan and India; the Xenia (Ohio) Gazette, for its coverage of a tornado that destroyed much of Zenia in April, 1974; the Indianapolis Star, for a six-month investigation into local police corruption. after Thais Want U. S. to Go, Not Afraid of Dominoes Philadelphia Inquirer JAMES LINK JR.

winning Pulitzer Prize wins Prize AUDITING THE IRS In their prize-winning series, Bartlett and Steele detailed inadecies and inequities in the administration and enforcement of federal tax laws. Among the facts reported in the articles were: That the IRS fails to collect approximately $25 billion a year owed the government thereby adding to bundget deficits. That the higher a taxpayer's income, the more likely he is to understate his obligation to the government and the more errors his return is likely to contain. That the IRS nonetheless spends proportionately more time auditing returns of low and middle-income citizens than it does on the wealthy and big corporations. (See PULITZER on 2-A) for the food stamp program and J5 million more for the mlik program.

A family of four with a net income of $480 or more a month, for example, currently pays $130 in cash for a monthly food stamp allotment of $154 and thus gets a "stamp bonus" of $24. Beginning in July, the family will get the new $162 stamp allotment but will find its purchase cost increased $8 to $138, thus leaving no increase in its "bonus." The White House also announced yesterday that Ford would hold a news prise rivaled only by illegal gambling in the profit picture of organized crime, is one of the most difficult of all crimes to prosecute. Its victims traditionally gamblers, drug addicts and shady businessmen are coming increasingly from the ranks of workers and poor people hard hit by recession times. And the loan sharking racket, like the rest of the credit industry nowadays, is beset by soaring interest rates that in some places have replaced the Ford Asks More Food Stamp Funds Need For Additional $S90 Million Blamed on Recession United Press Inlernjlional gets smallpox vaccination on Guam Analysis over, if the Communists won in Indochina, as they have now. It has been considered the next potential threatened "domino" in the much-discussed "domino theory." But officials here do not believe that Thailand is under immediate military-threat from Communists in Indochina.

Instead, pressure on the United States to withdraw troops is coming from a (See THAILAND on 11-A) Inside DICK CLARK of "American Bandstand" fame was back in town, this time to jilm a Bandstand Special or television. Page l-C. SUPERMARKET PROFITS last year were at their highest level since 1971, but firms say earnings are below those of other industries. Page 3-C. SECRETARY KISSINGER denied he had anything to do with the CIA's domestic spying activities, but Defense Secretary James Schlesinger said the CIA did get its instructions from the White House.

Page 3-A. Action Line The Arts Business Classified Comics Crossword Editorials Features 15-D Horoscope 14-D Ann Landers 1S-D 3- Living l-C 4- Obituaries 4-B 14.D Puzzzles 13-D 14- Sports 1-D 11-A TVRadio S-B 15- Weather 13-D By JAMES McCARTNEY Inqmrer Washington Bureau WASHINGTON The Pentagon announced a 28 percent slash in U. S. troop strength in Thailand yesterday, raising new fears about tumbling "dominoes" in Southeast Asia. The announcement, made jointly with the Thai government, cut authorized troop levels from 27,000 to 19,500 by the end of June.

The announcement did not say how many of the 350 U. S. military planes remaining from the armada that bombed Cambodia and North and South Vietnam would be allowed to 'remain. The new figure represented a sharp increase in the speed of U. S.

troop withdrawals from Thailand, on the Indochina frontier, and could signal the beginning of the end of a U. S. military presence in Thailand. The announcement, forced by Thai officials who have publicly demanded a total U. S.

troop withdrawal by next March, could hardly have come at a more awkward time for the United States. It came only a week after a total U. S. pullout from nearby South Vietnam, at a time when President Ford, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and other top officials have been attempting to reassure the world tl.at U.

S. commitments remain unaltered. Thailand has long been considered the next major country that might be threatened with a Communist take- complaint I say I'm in the wrong business." Lelwica cited the case of a man who borrowed $5,000 in 1970 and by 1974 had paid back a total of $29,000, forcing him to sell his house and give up his business and he still owed when he went to authorities for help. "This problem," said Steven Kaub, a Brooklyn assistant district attorney who specializes in rackets, "is seeing an immense increase. People who are See LOAN SILRKS on 2-A) From, iwmrtr Wir Services WASHINGTON President Ford asked Congress yesterday to approve $890 million more for the federal food stamp and children's milk programs because, he said, the recession has increased need for such aid.

The number of households needing the food stamp and milk aid has jumped because of the recession, Press Secretary Ron Nessen said. Ford already had asked $3.9 billion this jear to fund the programs. His new request seeks $884.8 million more "She had no part in the loan," said an FBI agent familiar with the case, "other than they were aware that the boyfriend was very much in love with her and would do anything to protect her." The boyfriend, Richard Manning, had his arm broken in two places and it healed crookedly. The couple did not make a pretty picture on the witness stand in U. S.

District Court in Newark, yet only one of the four men indicated for the offense was convicted. Loan sharking, an underworld enter Loan Sharks Are Getting New Clients At 25fo a Week By ROD NORDLAND Inauirtr Siqtt Writer Last spring an underworld "enforcer" knocked on the door of Mary Ann Bocchi in Secaucus, N. wearing what looked like a large hockey glove on his right hand. It was filled with sand and coated with lye. When he left, many of the bones of Miss Bocchi's face were broken and her skin was permanently disfigured.

Miss Bocchi's offense: her boyfriend owed a small sum of money to a loan shark. old "six-for-five" with an even more usurious "Five-for-four." "Six-for-five" is loan sharking at its most basic level; the borrower takes five dollars and pays back six at the end of the week 20 percent interest per week, or more than 1,000 percent a year. In northern New Jersey, according to John A. Lelwica, the FBI's organized-crime expert, the going rate has become five-for-four, or 25 percent a week. "The profit rate is unbelievable," he said.

"Every time I get a.