The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 34

FIRST B8 THE MORNING CALL, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1988 Municipal leaders endorse 'state-pay' measure Bill By NICHOLAS G. KATSARELAS Of the Associated Press requires state to pay for mandated programs on "We mav think twice ahnut the necessity or scone "We may think twice about the necessity or scope R-Union. Neither Franks nor Hardwick could estimate how much the program would cost. If approved in both houses by Aug. 6, the legislation would appear on the ballots in November's election.

Senate President John Russo, D-Ocean, supports the concept of the bill, said his spokesman, James Manion. A similar measure, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader John Lynch, D-Middlesex, is pending in the Senate. A number of local leaders attended a news conference called by Hardwick to generate support for the bill. Len Ruppert, executive director of the New Jersey Conference of Mayors, said: "We want the state to be prosperous, (but) not at the expense of municipalities." "This is a step in the right direction," added Kirk Connor, president of the New Jersey Association of Counties. TRENTON County and municipal leaders gave their strong endorsement yesterday to legislation that would require the state to pay for any programs it requires local governments to implement.

"This initiative will put into place a solution to a consistently mounting municipal problem," said William Barney Wahl, president of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities. "I think it's a common-sense approach, and we at the local level are very excited about it," added Camden Mayor Randy Primas. The legislation is sponsored by.Assembly Speaker Chuck Hardwick and Assemblyman Robert Franks, both of a program if we know that It will ultimately tap the state treasury," he said. Hardwick added the bill "will go a long way toward easing the strain of local property taxes." Franks said the state, with a surplus of about SI billion, is financially healthy enough to pay for such programs. "All too often, unfunded mandates result in fiscal crisis," he said.

"They require either a hike in local property taxes or a reduction in existing municipal or county services." There are exceptions to the bill, which is scheduled to be introduced today. The state mandate-state pay law would not apply to educational programs. That means if the Legislature approves an increase in mandatory teacher salaries, that cost would still be assumed by local taxpayers. The legislation also allows the Legislature to override the constitutional amendment by a two-thirds majority vote in each house. Hardwick said the proposal would force state lawmakers to grow more prudent when drafting bills creating or enlarging local programs.

1 Many protest parole for man who killed two police in 1 963 X' cz" he should be released March 15. The full board has decided to review the decision. Its options include postponing parole or canceling it altogether. A Parole Board official, citing board policy, declined to give a reason for the decision by the two-member panel. Trantino, 50, is in Riverfront State Prison, a medium-security lockup in Camden, and declined a request to be interviewed.

His family also declined comment on the case. Trantino works in the prison canteen storeroom and participates in an inmate program that tries to convince juvenile delinquents, in a "low key" way, to change their ways, said Department of Corrections spokesman James Stabile. Stabile said he did not know Trantino's full prison record, but that he hasn't been a disciplinary problem in recent years. From 1978-82, when he was at a minimum-security facility in Wharton State Forest, Trantino had regular furloughs. During a 14-hour furlough in 1980, he married an English professor who had edited his stream-of-consciousness prison writings into a book.

In a 1986 newspaper interview, Trantino said he believed his freedom was long overdue. He said he Kuklinski was set up, lawyer says Suspect incapable of murder, jury told By BOB McMAHON Of The Associated Press HACKENSACK Richard Kuklinski is a non-violent man who projected a tough-guy image to impress associates, including two men he is accused of killing, his defense attorney said in opening arguments yesterday. Neal Frank, the public defender representing Kuklinksi, told jurors his client has never shown violent tendencies, despite taped conversations in which Kuklinski told an undercover federal agent how he killed his victims. "There is no evidence to show that Richie Kuklinski was ever assaultive or violent in any way," said Frank. But Frank's portrait of Kuklinski, 52, contrasted sharply with the description given earlier in the day by Deputy Attorney General Robert Carroll, who is prosecuting the case.

Carroll described Kuklinski as the leader of a theft ring who killed Gary Smith, 42, and Daniel Deppner, 46, both of Highland Lakes, to avoid prosecution for other crimes. Authorities say the victims helped Kuklinski rob and kill three other men. Kuklinski will be tried separately for those slayings. All five victims were killed between 1980 and 1983. Kuklinski, labeled "the iceman" by prosecutors because he allegedly stored one victim's body in a refrigerated warehouse, has pleaded innocent to the murder charges.

He is being held on $2 million bail in the Bergen County Jail. Authorities allege Smith and Deppner were Kuklinski's accomplices in a scheme in which three other men were promised porno ui I it Associated Press Richard Kuklinski (left) is led in custody to his murder trial in a Hackensack courtroom. By JOEL SIEGEL Of The Associated Press LODI (AP) The letters, phone calls and telegrams come from across the nation, but the message to police and state Parole Board members is almost always the same: Thomas Trantino must not be released. From a Tea neck accountant: "The courts and the parole system should start to recognize the danger which these criminals present to society. If he killed in cold blood two police officers who were in uniform, how can those of us who are citizens in plain clothes be safe?" From a Connecticut woman: "I don't want to hear that he is a model prisoner who is now a writer, a painter They are forgetting he has one other glaring accomplishment, and that is that he committed a cold-blooded murder of two human beings." Nearly 25 years after Trantino and an accomplice shot Sgt.

Peter Voto and officer Gary Tedesco at point-blank range in a Lodi bar, emotions still run high in the case. The prospect that Trantino may be freed next month has sparked a petition drive, legislative proposals, a letter-writing campaign and a candlelight rally by more than 1,500 people to convince the Parole Board to keep Trantino behind bars. The case also has revived a debate in New Jersey over an old question: When has a murderer finally paid his debt to society? "The emotions are tremendously high because of the nature of the crime, and second, it seems the mood of the public is that they are totally fed up with the violence that is taking place and that the people who commit the violent acts aren't getting punishment that fits the crime," said Paramus Police Chief Joseph Delaney. "They want to see pure, unadulterated punishment," he added. "Don't say 'life in prison' for someone and then let him out 15, 20 or 25 years later." The shooting occurred on Aug.

26, 1963, in the Angel Lounge, a Route 46 nightclub in this blue-collar community in Bergen County. Trantino and Frank Falco were there celebrating a robbery they had committed. When Voto and Tedesco arrived to investigate a reported disturbance, Trantino and Falco surprised them, partially stripped them and shot them. Falco was killed the next day in New York by police trying to capture him. Trantino surrendered, went to trial and was sentenced to die in the electric chair.

The sentence was commuted to life behind bars when New Jersey's death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in 1972. In 1980, the full Parole Board voted to release Trantino, provided that he make restitution to the families of his victims. The decision sparked an outcry and a court dispute, and in 1982 the board voted to keep Trantino locked up 10 more years. The term was cut almost in half through credits for good behavior and work, and Trantino again has become eligible for parole. A two-member panel of the Parole Board decided last month that ty from possible murder charges if he testifies against Kuklinski, Frank said.

Mrs. Deppner is being told her children will be taken away from her by state officials if she does not take the stand, the defense attorney said. Frank added that both House and Mrs. Deppner have repeatedly lied to police. "There is a lot of speculation, surmise, conjecture and wrongful accusation in this case," said Frank.

During a court recess, prosecutors would not comment on the coercion charges. The case is being tried before Superior Court Judge Frederick W. Kuechenmeister. Frank has said the trial is expected to last about four weeks. strangled with a lamp cord by Deppner, Carroll charged.

Smith's body was found in late December 1982 stuffed under a platform bed in a North Bergen motel. The prosecutor charged that Kuklinski killed Deppner two months later. Deppner's badly decomposed body was found in May 1983 in a wooded area of West Milford. Carroll said Kuklinski then "made a classic mistake. Mr.

Kuklinski opened his mouth." He said Kuklinski was arrested after an undercover agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms gained his confidence by proposing to rob a fictitious drug dealer. Kuklinski was arrested in December 1986. Frank said Kuklinski's taped discussions with the federal agents were typical examples of the bravado he used on the streets. The defense attorney said Kuklinski came from a broken home, dropped out of school in the 8th grade, and adopted a tough-talking style to adapt to his work environment.

"By virtue of his background, he had to create an illusion to match his situation," Frank said. Frank said that Deppner was solely responsible for Smith's murder, and that no cause of death has ever been determined for Deppner. Frank also charged that prosecutors are coercing testimony from two key witnesses Percy House, a former Kuklinski accomplice, and Barbara Deppner, the slain man's ex-wife. House is being promised immuni graphic videotapes or drugs and then murdered and robbed of their money. Carroll said when warrants were issued in December 1982 for the arrest of Smith and Deppner, Kuklinski sheltered the two men and later killed them.

Kuklinski spread cyanide on a hamburger that Smith was eating and the victim then was Tobacco executive ignored health warnings, court told Thomas Trantino release is being reviewed had no recollection of the murders. Victims' rights organizations, Delaney and Lodi Police Chief Andrew P. Voto, the brother of one of Trantino's victims, have been at the forefront of the recent effort to block parole. Recently, Delaney and Voto appeared on the Morton Downey Jr. television show, a program which originates from a New Jersey station carried nationally by many cable systems.

Downey and audience members take sides on provocative issues, but in the case of Trantino, Downey told his listeners there was only one side because "they shouldn't let this animal out in the streets." The next day about 1,000 people called the parole board from across the country to argue against Trantino's release. Delaney and Voto say Trantino hasn't earned parole and that to even think of releasing him indicates serious problems in the criminal justice and parole systems. It was read in court yesterday by Edell and an actor playing the role of Harrington. The executive was a former semiprofessional baseball player who joined the company in 1934 and rose through the ranks until becoming president and chief operating officer in 1964. He retired in 1972.

Responding to Harrington's statements, Liggett spokesman Alan Hil-burg said the witness was "nearly 80 years old when he gave that testimony." "It wasn't unusual for people's memories to fade over that period of time," Hilburg said. He said he did not know when Harrington died. Cipollone charges that parent Ligget Group Philip Morris Co. and Lorillard makers of the brands Mrs. Cipollone smoked, neglected to do enough research on cigarettes, didn't reveal adequately what they did find and failed to put safer smokes on the market.

He said he read it as executive vice president, shortly before becoming president. Edell asked Harrington about the adequacy of federally mandated warnings on cigarette packs required in 1966. "We didn't care to warn the public about anything. We just had to put that warning on. It wasn't because we liked to.

It was just something we had to do. We weren't interested in warning the public about something," Harrington replied. Harrington, who has since died, was 76 when the testimony was taken by attorneys for Antonio Cipol-lone, 64, of Lakehurst, who is suing the companies for the death of his wife Rose. Harrington, under questioning by plaintiff's attorney Marc Z. Edell, said the 1964 report "was a concern to us as it was to other people in the industry." But Harrington said, "I didn't think anything about smoking and health other than smoking was not harmful to you in any way." Edell asked the basis for that opinion, and Harrington replied: "It didn't ever harm me." Edell pressed him for the facts he considered, and Harrington said it was "just my belief." Once the Surgeon General's report came out, Harrington said he didn't look further into the validity of its findings because "it wouldn't do any good anyway." NEWARK A former Liggett Myers president ignored the issue of smoking and health until the 1964 Surgeon General's report, and asserted smoking posed no hazard because it never harmed him, according to evidence released yesterday.

Milton E. Harrington said in testimony read for the jury that company officials "didn't even discuss a position about smoking and health as far as the corporation was concerned." Previous testimony in the trial, in which Liggett and two other cigarette-makers are being sued over a smoker's lung-cancer death, revealed that Liggett had a 25-year research program, starting in 1954, to develop a less-carcinogenic cigarette that was never marketed. NORML claims trend favors decriminalizing Autopsy shows drug overdose caused ballet dancer's death simple marijuana use The Associated Press from college students to aging hippies to middle-aged business people. But they all shared the immediate goal of keeping pot smokers out of jail. According to NORML's own poll, more than 77 percent of the people in the country are opposed to legalizing marijuana.

But Stillman said the state's tough new marijuana law and the pervasiveness of employee drug testing have aided his group by flushing out supporters. Under a state law that went into effect last summer, anyone convicted of having one marijuana cigarette faces a mandatory $580 fine and six-month suspension of driving privileges. The law is among the toughest in the nation; 10 states have decriminalized simple possession of marijuana. closed, however, because it was unlikely investigators could trace the source of the drugs. DePascale said in December that authorities suspected a drug overdose, but that an autopsy and toxicology tests would be needed to determine an official cause of Bissell's death.

Bissell's family said he was having trouble handling the pressures of the highly competitive dance world in New York City. Bissell, who was a principal performer for the theater company, had gone to the Betty Ford Clinic in California last summer and left the substance abuse program "dried out" in August, said his twin brother, William Bissell. JERSEY CITY (AP) American Ballet Theater star Patrick Walter Bissell died from an overdose of cocaine, codeine, methadone and other drugs, according to an autopsy report released yesterday. Bissell, 30, was found dead Dec. 29 in his Hoboken apartment.

Hudson County Prosecutor Paul M. DePas-cale said investigators found "significant quantities of dangerous substances" in Bissell's body. Among the substances were ethanol, painkillers and salicylate, a component of aspirin, the autopsy said. DePascale said that the case was being major at William Paterson College in Wayne helped create a state chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. NORML was born in the 1970s, but its membership and funding dwindled during the early years of this decade.

Since then, an organizing campaign has helped it rebound. About 20 prospective NORML members met with Stillman in Bloomfield last month to discuss issues and plan strategy, the newspaper said. The participants ranged A northern New Jersey group is working to decriminalize marijuana use, and members say they know they face a tough battle at a time when drug use is more maligned than ever. "We've been setting ourselves back 50 years with this drug hysteria," Mitch Stillman told The Record of Hackensack. "But some people are finally waking up and realizing that something should be done." The 21-year-old political science.