Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page 20

A 8 THE HAITFOtD COW ANT: fcWsy, Ummy 20, 1995 Senate vote on pay raises leaves unsettled feelings on both sides ft i V. v-'--; II. II. in. III! I all how you define the issue." On thing the unions are happy about is that the 1199 contract maintains provisions for health and pension benefits, time off, and work rules that the unions want to maintain.

Union leaders say it will be difficult for Rowland to change those provisions if the new arbitrators maintain the partem set by the 1199 contract. Despite complaints by union members, the Democratic senators who provided the key votes to allow the 1 199 contract to take effect said that the overall agreement was good. "Quite frankly, the tone set by the 1199 settlement was a good tone with respect to where the state's going in terms of trying to control expenses," said Senate Democratic leader William A. DiBella. D-Hart-ford.

Sen. George Jepsen, the third Highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate and a traditional supporter of labor, said the 1199 award is "a very fair price" for taxpayers. "The increase is not great, but they get the job security," Jepsen said. "It's good for the public while protecting workers." Meanwhile. Secretary of the State Miles S.

Rapoport and AFL-CIO President John Olsen continued their calls for a bill prohibiting elected officials from appearing in television commercials such as the one that Rowland taped regarding the pay raises. The problem, they said, is that the advertisements were paid for by the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, which is a registered lobbying By CHRISTOPHER KEATING Capitol Bureau Chief The chief common ground that Gov. John G. Rowland and union leaders seem to share over the state Senate's rejection of eight of nine arbitrated pay raises for state employees is that no one is completely happy. One day after the Senate vote, both Rowland and union leaders were planning their next moves without being sure exactly where they would lead.

Rowland is still determining how the vote would affect his budget, while the unions are developing a strategy for how to deal with Rowland on negotiations for the first time. The rejected contracts must be renegotiated and could return to binding arbitration. Rowland was not completely happy because the Senate decided to let a contract for more than 7,000 full-time health care workers go into effect. That award, for District 1 199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union, could set a pattern for other union contracts that Rowland said would cost the state a projected $389 million over four yean. Union leaders were not happy, either, saying that the 1 1 99 contract provides no general wage increase for the first two years of a four-year contract They pointed out that arbitrators often study existing contracts, such as 1199's.

for a precedent and then award contracts with similar terms. Meanwhile, Rowland's budget director, Reginald Jones, would not predict the precise effect of the Senate vote on Rowland's plan to cut the income tax Under questioning about the income tax during his confirmation hearing Thursday at the Capitol, Jones said it was still too early to make any predictions about how much Rowland intends to cut it. "We're still finalizing the budget, and what we can do on the tax side depends on what we're able to do on the spending side and the fact that our revenues are shrinking," Jones told legislators. "The econo my is not as good as we thought it would be." Just as Rowland and the unions could not agree on the effect of rejecting arbitrated wage increase before the Senate vote, they still disagree. Rowland sticks with the projection of $389 million over four years.

Jerome P. Brown of District 1 199 still says that number is "inflated," but said his union has not yet compiled its own cost estimates. When the District 1199 contract was originally decided. Brown said he was "shocked and angered" by the arbitrator's decision to grant a four-year contract that had lower salary increases than a previous contract that was rejected last year by the state Senate. The rejected contract gave an 8 percent general wage increase over three years.

The new contract carries no increases for the first two years of the contract under the "general wage increase" category. The employees would receive general increases of 3 percent for each of the final two years of the contract. "We deserve more than zero, zero, three, three," Brown said. "We should have been able to get more money. But in the realm of what's possible, we just about hit it." Rowland rejected the view that the health care workers will not receive a pay increase for the first two years of the contract.

Even before the Senate's vote, Rowland said that the 1 199 contract would cost more than the union members were saying because of "annual increments" that 65 percent of 1199's members receive. Rowland noted that Brown consistently refers only to the general wage increase as opposed to the increments in the four-year contract. "You hear Jerry Brown stand up and say, 'We'll take zero, zero, three, three," Rowland said. "You've heard that reference, and I sit back as a lay person and say, 'Oh my gosh, they're going to take a zero increase. But zero, zero, three, three is really 2.2 percent with the annual increment and 2.2 percent with the (annual increment in the second year and 5.2 and 5.2.

So it's Rescue efforts continue in Kobe Continued from Page 1 woman at the shelter "Iff just meaningless words." Murayama told reporters the damage was "much worse than I had expected." and the government has more than doubled the number of troops first mobilized for the relief effort from 13,000 to 30,000. The prime minister noted that the 7.2 magnitude quake was the first in modern Japan to affect a highly developed urban area Early today, the official death toll stood at 4.048. In this century, only the "Great Kanto Earthquake" that leveled Tokyo seven decades ago took more lives an estimated 143.000. Swiss rescue dogs led search teams to more entombed bodies Thursday, and the bark of a pet dog led to one woman's rescue after more than two cold days in the wreckage of a Kobe neighborhood. Rescuers found Chiyoko Amakawa, 65, who had been buried for 53 hours, Kyodo News Service reported.

Doctors said she was badly bruised. "It was pitch dark and my leg hurt so much and I was thirsty, but I called to 'Pochi' and told him I was in pain and needed help," Amakawa told Kyodo. "I just wondered over and over again when I was going to die." Others rescued alive in Kobe included a 9-year-old boy and a 94-year-old man. New fires burst out around the shattered city of Kobe, and firefighters' efforts to douse them were stymied by crushed water mains. With government relief efforts falling far short of victims' needs, thousands more gave up hope of finding food and shelter and joined the stream of residents abandoning the city on foot.

Another 727 people were still unaccounted for, and freezing temperatures made relatives more desperate about finding missing friends or family members. More than 2 1 ,600 people were injured, and more than 30,400 homes and buildings were severely damaged or destroyed in and around Kobe, a once-vibrant port of 1.4 million people. Associated PrM A woman grieves as rcxt workers March for earthquake victims in hard-hit Kobe. Th quake hat resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 people. less local authorities request them, and he indirectly blamed those officials for failing to do so.

But Ishihara contended that the agency should have offered help to the local authorities "because they were in confusion" immediately after the quake struck in predawn darkness. As officials quarreled, thousands of residents in the affected areas bore their misfortune with remarkable stoicism, patiently waiting in long lines at supermarkets and Tugging heavy loads of food, water, toilet paper and other necessities to relatives and friends despite having to walk or bicycle for miles. "We can't rely completely on the government," said Kazuo Kal, a 31-year-old resident of one of Kobe's most devastated neighborhoods who pedaled his bike for four hours to an undamaged train line so he bring back two large bags of supplies from Osaka. "We have to do all we can to help ourselves and rely on our friends and relations," he said. "That's what most people are Rowland pays commissioners well Most fare better than Weicker appointees; labor unions cry foul Internet becomes quake-net Six U.S.

Air Force C-130 transport planes flew supplies to nearby Osaka, including 15,000 blankets for survivors huddled in emergency shelters. More flights were planned today. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said two Americans died in Kobe's quake, a female English teacher whose name was not released and another teacher Voni Lynn Wong, 24, of Los Angeles. Temporary shelters were jammed with 270,000 people, many of whom had fled homes they feared may yet collapse.

In Tokyo Thursday, high-ranking government officials began trading recriminations over the plodding relief effort. Nobuo Ishihara, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, told reporters that troops should have been mobilized much sooner than they were and that "the government was late in assessing damage and late in adopting measures." Defense Agency Director Toku-saburo Tamazawa responded that under Japanese law troops cannot be mobilized for such purposes un confirmed. Latest estimates put the toll from the earthquake at more than 4,000 dead and more than 21.000 injured. "Earthquake this morning!" wrote another. "I am living at the 10th floor and I really woke up shaken!" Another wrote to reassure friends: "It really was a big shake.

Fortunately, I and all my family members are all safe and there was no damage to my home except some glasses were broken." Even as news was flashing out over the 'Net, others were trying to get their concerns in. "I just heard of a major earthquake in the Kobe-Osaka region. How bad is it? All phone lines are jammed and I cannot access Japan," someone wrote. Others had more specific concerns. "Dear Steve, Just heard from Bonnie who's been trying to reach you to find out if you're OK in the face of the Please e-maU me or call or let me know if you're all right.

Bonnie would like to know, too. Love you a lot. Mom" In addition to the text messages, the Kobe information service has digital images of the devastation in the city. Overturned trucks, flaming buildings and rubble-strewn streets can be seen over the Internet with the click of a mouse burton via a new, graphical Internet software Continued from Page 1 come from the individual salaries of top appointees. Instead, the savings will have to come through the promised cutting of dozens of top posts.

Officials for state labor unions criticized the higher salaries Thursday, saying the administration was treating different job classes of state employees unequally. "If the frontline workers are asked to remain at salaries they've had for the past few years, then top-line executives ought to be brought in at salaries consistent with those of their predecessors," said Roy Oc-chiogrosso, a spokesman for the Connecticut State Federation of Teachers. Jerome P. Brown, president of District 1 199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union, laughed loudly when told of the salary figures, and called them "just one more small piece of evidence" that "goes to the question of the credibility of the Rowland program." But Rowland's spokesman, John Chapin, said the administration hopes to reduce overall costs in the category of top-echelon state em known as the World Wide Web. The Kobe information service on the Internet existed even before the earthquake, primarily as a means of sharing information among English-speaking visitors to the area.

Named "Kansai-Net" after the region where it is located, the computer stored transit schedules, weather reports, coming events and answers to such common questions as how to get a visa extension. Since the quake, however, the site has been taken over by news and information about the disaster. Emergency telephone numbers are posted, volunteers are solicited, information on the severity of the quake is updated regularly. Not long ago, the ready, worldwide availability of such information in the immediate aftermath of a major earthquake would have been unthinkable. Today, the design of the Internet makes that not only possible, but even likely.

"It was designed primarily to survive a number of incoming nuclear warheads," said Tony Rutkowski, executive director of the Internet Society, a network coordinating group. "It's continuing to function as planned." To reach Kansai-Net via the World Wide Web, point your web-browser to To see the Kobe City home page, point to ims is unpreceaentea, uisen said. "Whose governor is he? CBIA's or But Rowland's spokesman, John Chapin. said that "any such bill would go down in major names tor trying to prevent free speech. Cha- pin would not say that Rowland would veto the bill because he has not seen the final language of the proposal.

Staff Writers Stephen Matthew Daly and Jon Lender conmo-uted to this story. $75,500 compared with $80,620 for his Weicker predecessor. Gene Gavin, commissioner appointee of revenue services, would earn i $83,500 compared with $85,000 earned by his predecessor. i Hanley said that the new adminis- rat ion has established a policy that the new commissioners' salaries will be at the "midpoint" of the range set for each position in the -state's existing salary system. Many of Weicker's people were paid low-; er than the midpoint.

For example, the $95,000 salary set for Louis Goldberg, Rowland's appointee as commissioner of ad- -ministrative services, is halfway up the pay range of $84,000 to $106,000 for the highest of four ex- ecutive job categories. Two exceptions to the "midpoint policy are Rowland's appointees for secretary and deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Manage-; ment. Reginald Jones, who will get $98,000, and Lorraine M. Aron- son. who will get $95,000, said Han ley.

They were named before the policy was adopted, and their sala- lies are higher, she said. Staff Writer Larry Williams txmtrib-'. uted to this Story. porary storage basin. Solving the storage problem, Ciu tis said, "is of paramount import i tance." Curtis said Congress should' move quickly make $10 million! available to the department to ad-; dress the problem and safely store the spent fuel for four to seven years.

renovations to their town hall com- Elex will cost about $375,000 to' ring the buildings into compliance with the disabilities act. Budget Dt-. rector Rob Huestis said. Susan Eckerty, deputy director of economic policy for the Heritage! Foundation, said part of the pro- lem. and unpopularity, with mandates is the way states are forced to implement them.

In Ohio, for instance, they were initially required to test water supplies for traces of a pesticide used -only on pineapple crops in Hawaii, she said. The requirement has since been corrected. There are a variety of safety valves built into the proposed bill that allow Congress to sidestep federal funding if necessary. There is the $50 million threshold, for example, and certain exceptions such as civil rights. Congress also could waive the restriction, if deemed necessary The legislation's real value is that Congress would be forced to consider t.at legislation will mean financially to spates and towns "It forces them to discuss priorities." she said North Korea reactor fuel rods worry weapons inspectors ployees, which has not been possible among unionized employees.

Rowland has been talking recently of cutting about six commissioners of departments to be consolidated with other agencies. His legal counsel, Mary Ann Hanley, said Thursday that Rowland is asking his commissioners to "be sensitive to the economic difficulties of the state" by cutting the number of deputy commissioners from 45 to 22 for a 51 percent reduction, and by reducing the number of executive assistants from 41 to 17, a 59 percent cut. The administration has not yet arrived at an overall percentage or dollar amount by which all executive branch salaries will be reduced, said Chapin. Of 19 new executive salaries on Thursday's list directly comparable to jobs in the Weicker administration, most were higher among Rowland appointees. Some were lower, including the salaries of Chapin and banking commissioner appointee John P.

Burke. With a salary of $65,000, Chapin makes $8,150 less than did Weicker's spokeswoman, Avice Meehan. Burke would make worried about the condition of a storage tank for rods taken from a small reactor in Yongbyon, North Korea. Energy Undersecretary Charles Curtis told the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee that ITS. inspectors, in visits to the facility, found some of 8.000 spent fuel rods from the reactor corroding in a tem tioned the ability to accurately estimate the cost of mandates.

"It's a very heroic, ambitious notion. (But) how do you begin to make those calculations. It's a very tricky kind of enterprise." Nonetheless, opposition to unfunded mandates has grown steadily for years as their number and costs have increased, said Michael Brown, director of public affairs for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The report sponsored bv the conference found that in 1993 federal mandates cost cities nationwide (with populations of more than 30.000) an additional $5 5 billion.

The estimated cost from 198 to 1994 was $54 billion. The same report claims federal mandates swallow, on average, nearly 12 percent of a city's locally raised revenue. In Connecticut. 10 mandates (including the disabilites. clean mater and clean air acts) cost the ciry of Norwalk $6 4 million in 1993.

It reduced garbage collection from twice weekly to once a week as a result, the report said Manchester has no firm figures on the total effect of manda'es But i Continued from Page 1 any circumstances. The result is a kind of intelligent network that can reroute information around breaks in the system. That capability has been proved in catastrophes such as last year's Los Angeles earthquake and in the Persian Gulf War, where people on both sides of the fighting used the Internet to communicate long after telephones failed. "You can remove huge chunks of the network and it will eventually find a way to get through with what's left," said Bob Stratton, a senior engineer with UUNET Technologies, a leading Internet access provider. In some ways, the Internet is merely supplementing ham radio operators who traditionally have helped to broadcast information from the midst of a disaster area, said Stratton, himself an amateur radio hobbyist.

For many with friends and relatives near Kobe, the Internet has provided contact, reassurance and a way to help out Their messages, now compiled in lists and transcripts, trace the quake's aftermath. "This does not seem to be a minor event," wrote one Internet user. "Death toll is at least 100 and possibly up to 170. thinks that this is worse than the famous San Francisco quake several years ago." As it turns out, that early fear was Outcry by Continued from Page I Who pays to make sure those laws, and others like them, are enforced? They have become known notorious, in fact, under the House Republicans' "Contract With America" as "unfunded state mandates." Simply put. they are federal regulations imposed on rates or municipalities that include no funding to carry them out.

Despite the improvements many mandates have made in people's Uvea, the outcry against them has swelled. Many officials and taxpayers say they are too expensive and too burdensome, and that there are just too many of them. In the city of Tomngton. for example, unfunded mandates cost about $1 8 million in 1993. a study by the US.

Conference of Stay on says Tomngton said those funds could have been used for other things, such as restoring personnel cut from the public works, police and departments "We have roads that are in dire r.red of repair." Mayor Delia Dome lt's time that 'the federal government and she s'a'e governments officials, taxpayers against unfunded mandates swells Associated Press WASHLNGTON Uranium fuel rods at a reactor site in North Korea are rapidly corroding, making it more difficult to determine whether nuclear fuel is being diverted to make weapons, a U.S. official said Thursday. Energy Department officials are money is not available to pay for them. Agencies such as the Sierra Gub Legal Defense Fund, based in Washington, DC. said the pending mandate-reform act could have "dangerous consequences" for the environment.

"We think it is very illadvised." Suellen Lowry, a lobbyist for the defense fund, said of the bill. "We think the legislation will undermine (environmental protection." Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn said last week he would not support the bill in its current form. Although it seeks to protect government from increased costs, it fails to do the same for the private sector. A municipal school bus company, for example, could be exempt from child-safety standards or have the program paid for by the government.

Meanwhile, a private bus company would not be treated the same, he said. "It creates a two-track system," Lieberman said. But his amendment to protect business from mandates failed Thursday. Michael I ix, a research assooa'e with The Urban Institute, also ques The legislation, however, would not be retroactive and would not cover bills involving national security, civil and constitutional rights, emergencies and treaties. Unfunded mandates have been around for years, but their numbers increased rapidly during the 1980s.

Many have clearly been beneficial, said Kevin Maloney. a spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, with 130 member towns. The problem is funding. He cited the federal Clean Water Act. asbestos and lead-paint removal and the Americans With Disabilities Act as particularly burdensome financially.

"The feeling coming out now is don't pass them if you're not going to pay for them." he said. "People want less government." The proposed legislation will force Congress to find a middle ground between programs and costs "You have to be responsible and realistic in terms of expenditures." he said. The flip side for some is that future mandates targeted for the greater public good mscht get pushed aside, or delayed, if federal give a little more control back to the cities." In response, the Republican-controlled Congress has pushed the mandate issue to the top of its agenda. It has proposed legislation that curtails the practice of passing the federal buck to other levels of government "the first step in putting the power back in the states," Sen. Pete V.

Domenici. said. 'We've been telling the slates) what to do without any regard for the cost," said Domenici, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. "There has been no accountability. None." Two Senate committees approved the bill last week and the Senate began debate on the floor, a debate that continued Thursday in spite of Republican attempts to move for a vote on the lepslation The House began debate on a similar bill Thursday.

The Senate bill requires that any federal program imposed on stare, local or tnbal governments costing more than i jO million include not on! a cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, but mr.n-ev trorn Cor cress to pav for it I.