Green Bay Press-Gazette from Green Bay, Wisconsin • Page 2

EDITION ERST A-2 Tuesday, October 24. 1995 Green Bay Press-Gazette From A-l Monfils Racidom tax audits halted IRS says program 'indefinitely postponed' Upcoming witnesses Today: Continuing testimony from Edward Geisel-man. a psychology professor from the University of California-Los Angeles, who will testify about interview techniques and their effect on memory. Geiselman is the last witness to be called in Dale Basten 's defense. Mike Johnson's lawyers will likely take up his defense later today.

WASH I NGTON AP) The IRS said Monday that it won't conduct exhaustive audits of randomly selected 1994 returns because of bud-pet cuts, indefinitely ending a program hated and feared by most taxpayers. Frank Keith, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, said the agency decided to "indefinitely postpone" the Taxpayer Compliance' Measurement Program, or TCMP. that was scheduled to start Dec. 1 for 153.000 taxpayers -marking what he said is an end to the 30-year-old program. The audits already had been delayed two months while Congress reviewed the IRS budget.

dits are intrusive, burdensome and expensive," Goldberg told a House Ways and Means subcommittee studying the program in July. "You must explain every bank deposit and every investment to show that you had no unreported income Your word and some reconstructed notes will be worth little." In defending the program, the IRS cited numerous revenue-raising innovations that came as a result of the TCMP audits, including requiring taxpayers to list Social Security numbers for dependents and get Social Security or taxpayer identification numbers from day-care providers. decision, but unfortunately a necessary one," he said. But taxpayers who underwent the random scrutiny, which required them to prove every item on their return even producing marriage and birth certificates have long decried the practice. The battle to end the random full audits was led by former IRS Commissioner Fred T.

Goldberg. Organizations representing tax professionals and the National Taxpayers Union Foundation also sought to end the audits. "No one doubts that TCMP au Press-Gazette A GANNETT NEWSPAPER Main office: 435-4411 or (800) 444-0007 435 E. Walnut P.O. Box 19430 Green Bay, Wl 54307-9430 Business Hours: Weekdays, 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

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If you don't receive your paper or would like to subscribe, call our Customer Service office daily 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Please leave a message after hours. WEEKLY SUBSCRIPTION RATES (daily): Carrier route $3.25 Motor route $3.50 SINGLE COPY RATES: Daily 50 cents Sunday $1.50 USA TODAY 431-8200 "I think." Basten said Monday.

"I said i Baston. Kutska. Mike Piaskow-ski. Rev Moore. Mike Hirn and Mike Johnson are accused of being party to homicide in the case.

Several witnesses have said they last saw Monfils at his No. 7 paper machine at about 7:35 a.m. That's close to the time Basten said he came out of the neighboring No. 9 control room with Kutska and Moore, but he said he never saw Monfils. That was only one item of dispute between Lasee and Basten Monday.

Lasee tried to show that Basten was lying, or that his actions often showed he knew more than he claimed. For example: Basten said he didn't know until the morning of Monfils' disappearance that Kutska had a tape of Monfils telling police that Kutska planned to steal an extension cord from the mill. However. Kutska had testified he told Basten about the tape the previous day. Basten said he was at the No.

9 machine for about an hour that morning because of a production problem the machine was having. However. Basten testified he turned a valve on the machine before he even checked any monitors indicating what would need to be adjusted. Turning the valve involved removing a valve cover that Basten removed probably only once in the last nine years, he said. Basten explained he just chose that valve as a starting point in determining what the machine's problem was.

Basten testified he was in the No. 9 control booth about 7:47 a.m. when Kutska walked in and announced Monfils was missing from the No. 7 machine. With no verification of Kutska's remarks and no effort to determine whether Monfils told anyone where he was going, Basten walked over to the No.

7 control booth and remarked to Piaskowski and Moore about Monfils' absence. Monday's Prosecutor Larry Lasee asked Dale Basten about the first time Basten learned Keith Kutska had a tape recording of Tom Monfils tipping police about Kutska's intended theft of an extension cord. Basten said he learned it when he tried to send Jim Counard to fix a problem on the No. 9 paper machine. Basten said Counard asked whether Mike Johnson could be sent instead, and Basten agreed.

Counard mentioned the tape briefly then, Basten said. However, Lasee said Counard refused three times to go to the No. 9 machine. "Isn't it a fact that Counard said the tape was there so he didn't want to go?" Lasee said. "Didn't he say he would rather go home than to the No.

9 coop?" "He never said that to me," Basten said. Basten told two police investi Monfils trial Prosecutors say: On Nov. 10, 1992, Tom Monfils, a James River paper millworker, called Green Bay police to report that coworker Keith Kutska planned to steal a mill extension cord. Kutska was suspended from work for five days after he refused to open his duffel bag for mill security guards alerted by police. Kutska got an audio tape copy of the police tip, identified the caller as Monfils and repeatedly played the tape for others at the mill.

Kutska and others confronted Monfils at work Nov. 21 1992, and one or more of them beat Monfils. His body was found the next day in a paper pulp vat. Defendants: Keith Kutska, Dale Basten, Mike Him, Mike Johnson, Rey Moore and Mike WASHINGTON (AP) A provision that would have allowed working Social Security recipients to keep more of their job income has been quietly dropped by House Republicans from budget legislation. The provision, a key plank in the "Contract With America," would have raised the limit on the money such retirees can earn without losing part of their benefits.

It was deleted from the House budget-balancing bill scheduled for action late this week because it faced a parliamentary roadblock in the Senate, House Ways and Means Committee spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday. Senate rules bar the inclusion of Social Se curity revisions in budget legislation. Sixtv senators can vote to waive the rule, but House lawmakers believed that was unlikelv. Thev feared the Senate would defeat the entire budget bill if the eventual House-Senate compromise version contained the Social Security provision. Fleischer said.

House Ways and Means Chair man Bill Archer. R-Texas, and So cial Security subcommittee chairman Jim Bunning, intend to reintroduce the provision as stand alone legislation, Fleischer said. The Senate Budget Committee Correction LOCALSTATE: The nirt.ure of the houses ready to be moved on page B-l Monday was at the southwest corner of West Mason and South Oneida streets. The location listed on the photo caption was wrong. Uwir -lit CLASSIFIED: 431-8300 Information about our classified advertisina classifications and Dolicies is on the first page of our daily classified section.

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MondayrFriday, delivery is in the evening; on weekends and holidays, delivery is in the morning. Member Associated Press and Audit Bureau ol Circulation. The comprehensive audits, which take up to 30 months, were designed to spot trends to help the IRS target regular audits to where they'll do the most good. But the Republican-run Congress is moving in a House-Senate conference committee to cut the IRS' 1996 budget from $8.2 billion to $7.4 billion, promoting the agency to cut back on its enforcement programs. Eliminating the TCMP audits will save the IRS $1.5 billion, according to Keith.

"From our point of view as tax administrators, it's a regrettable on Monday voted 12-10 along party lines to ratify the budget-balancing package, setting up a likely vote by the full Senate later this week. The House plans to vote on a similar bill Thursday. In another show of GOP strength, the Senate voted 51-40 to reject a non-binding measure urging elimination of tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 a year, and using the savings to reduce planned cuts in the growth of Medicare. The overall budget measure, which is intended to cut taxes by $245 billion and balance the budget in seven years, is the centerpiece of the Republicans' program. But the earnings-limit provision also was much promoted as crucial to help needy senior citizens who must work to supplement their retirement income.

Under current law. Social Security recipients aged 65 to 69 lose $1 in benefits for every $3 they earn above $11,280. "A lot of people work right up to that limit and stop working," said David Certner of the American Association for Retired Persons. "We should be encouraging people to work and earn the money. The reason they work in the first place is they can't afford to live on Social Security." The Press-Gazette corrects factual errors promptly and courteously.

If you have a correction or clarification, please call the metro desk at 431-8341. 3tJiwiit elt 5 i III I mjJN Jltf OFNURSIN8j 433 5803 1 "I hear you're making shorthand pay." he testified he said to them about 7:55 a.m. Basten then walked to an ice machine nearby and encountered a supervisor. He testified that his thought at the time was that the supervisor didn't know Monfils was missing. Basten told police to "keep an eye on" millworker David Wiener, even though Basten had only talked to Wiener once, asking him one question, after Monfils' death.

Wiener testified he saw Basten and Johnson carrying something presumably Monfils' body near the vat where Monfils' body eventually was found. Wiener also said Basten came around the vat area numerous times after Monfils' death to ask questions and try to intimidate him. Basten said he approached Wiener once to ask him whom he worked with that morning, and Wiener became frightened and left. Basten told a mill investigator in February 1993 he broke down twice because of the pressure the investigation was placing on his personal life. He said he broke down once in front of police and once at the mill.

Basten testified that was because his children were being teased and harassed in the neighborhood. However, in February 1993, no one would have known Basten was a suspect, and there should have been no pressure, Lasee said. highlights gators during questioning, "I didn't know (defendant Mike) Hirn didn't get along with Monfils." However, Basten said Monday he couldn't account for how he learned that information. "I heard it at the paper mill, that they didn't see eye to eye," he said. Basten said he never "met with" Johnson, a defendant in the case, after the weekend of Monfils' death.

However, he took Johnson out on a boat once, and Johnson had been to Basten's cottage a few times. Records indicate 12 phone calls from Basten's house to Johnson's from July 24 to Aug. 13 of 1993, and 11 calls from Johnson's to Basten's house in the same period, Lasee said. But Basten said the families' children play together, and they might have made those phone calls. at a glance Questions? Do you have questions about the Tom Monfils trial or how the court system works during a trial? Call 436-7838 Monday through Saturday, and we'll find the answers.

Piaskowski. Charge: First-degree intentional homicide. All six defendants are charged with being party to that crime, a provision covering those who aid and abet the commission of a crime or take part in a conspiracy to commit a crime. Penalty: Life imprisonment. Source.

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