Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 1

1 I -r I 1 1: LECISt ATPj5Fj Pipeline update Irrrill sports 1 1'J I Gathers I Jf eulogized t' WEATHER Mostly cloudy i and colder -A2 NewHaitian leader chosen as Senate concurs with House on King bill Sullivan promises to sign 0 4 r.fsu.' 1 -A From staff and wire reports CHEYENNE After years of debate, Wyoming's Legislature Monday approved a bill honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. with a holiday. Gov. Mike Sullivan said Monday he won't hesitate to sign the bill even though the measure eliminates another state holiday. With no debate, the Senate voted 21-9 to concur with House changes to the proposal, calling the holiday Martin Luther King Jr.

Wyoming Equality Day and celebrating it on the third Monday in January. The Senate also agreed with the House to drop Columbus Day from Wyoming's list of legal paid holidays. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Liz School bill gets initial approval from Senate ByTOMREA Star-Tribune capital bureau CHEYENNE The Senate Monday gave its initial approval to the main school finance bill, adding a number of amendments that left its major provisions unchanged. But Sen.

Charles Scott, R-Natrona, said after Monday's debate that he will introduce an amendment later this week that would provide a significant hike in the basic state allocation for schools. Scott said he will introduce an amendment that will boost the classroom unit value (CRU) by nearly 3 percent above its current level. The CRU is the basic unit by which most state funds are redistributed to schools. The bill as endorsed so far by the Senate would raise the CRU by 1.6 percent. The House earlier approved raising it by 1 .5 percent.

The Senate Monday also agreed to make up a projected $60 million shortfall for the coming biennium by tapping funds in the Budget Reserve Account, as the House had done. Monday's amendments on the Senate floor included one that deleted a $2.5 million grant for a new high school in Clearmont, and another that cut out state reimbursements to schools for teaching children labeled as behaviorally disordered. But in a separate action Monday, the House gave its initial approval to adding the Clearmont grant to a Please see SCHOOLS, A12 Moscow vows not to use force on Lithuania Zbigniew BzdakStar-Tribune King holiday approved Support from Sen. Liz Byrd, D-Laramie, for House changes to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday legislation helped secure final passage of the bill by the Legislature on Monday.

Byrd, supported the changes. The Laramie County Democrat did not refer to the holiday's new title in urging her colleagues to concur with the House changes, but she did point out that dropping Columbus Day means the new holiday won't cost the state any more. Byrd, who for years has doggedly sought the recognition for the slain civil rights leader, said Saturday she was hesitant to concur with the exchange in holidays. But on Monday she said she believed that if she had urged the Senate not to concur, the bill would have been lost in a conference committee. "We only have this week left in the session," she said.

"They Please see KING, A3 KGB. Little had changed in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, the day after Sunday's vote, and jubilation was tempered with recognition that hard work was ahead. "Hope and joy must dissolve into determination to work for Lithuania," the republic's new president, Vytautas Landsbergis, told the Supreme Council legislature Monday. "We must work very hard." Tass said Lithuanian legislators declared that their sons no longer need serve in the Red Army. They appealed to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to ensure the welfare of Lithuanian soldiers until negotiations start on mustering them out.

In the draft of a separate Please see LITHUANIA, A12 approval to government If the government falls, elections would be likely. The last two elections were indecisive and tenuous Likud-Labor coalitions resulted. In Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater was asked whether the United States was concerned about Israel's failure to. accept the peace proposals of Secretary of State James Baker. He replied: "Well, the process is still continuing.

We're still talking and we're still hopeful. The process of peace talks is a long and arduous one." Peres told the 1,300 mem-Please see ISRAEL, A2 Senate alters captive coal valuation Move could cost state $3 million in revenues MOSCOW (AP) Soviet leaders pledged Monday not to use force to crush Lithuania's newly proclaimed independence, and the Baltic republic's leaders raised the ante for talks by demanding Kremlin compensation for economic ruin and political repression. Neither side gave any ground a day after Lithuania's legislature formally declared a restoration of the independence lost in 1940 to Stalin's army. But they set the tone for a long dispute over Lithuania's drive to turn a political declaration into reality that must encompass questions of territory, compensation, the status of thousands of Soviet soldiers, ownership of factories and land, and control of the police and Peres wins bring down JERUSALEM (AP) Shimon Peres got Labor Party approval Monday to bring down the government, after accusing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of leading Israel into "the desert of indecision" about peace talks with Palestinians. The decision by Labor, which is in a "national unity" coalition with Shamir's conservative Likud bloc, set the stage for a showdown.

Peres leads the Labor Party and is vice premier. Reports said Shamir might dismiss Labor ministers from the Cabinet. By JOAN BARRON Star-Tribune capital bureau CHEYENNE The Wyoming Senate Monday restored a restriction backed by the House on the method used by the Wyoming Department of Revenue and Taxation to value captive coal, a move opponents say will cost the state $2.3 million to $3 million in taxes per year. The Senate, in a 17 to 12 standing vote, decided to limit the depart ment's review of long term con-1 tracts to only those negotiated in the past 12 months, along with spot coal sales. The Senate Revenue Committee last week had taken that limit out of the bill approved by the House.

The captive mine valuation issue was the only one to surface as the Senate approved with little debate the Joint Revenue Committee's package of 5 bills. The bills set the point of tax and method of valuation for coal, ura MIKHAIL GORBACHEV Opposed by maverick republics Gorbachev presidency plan meets opposition MOSCOW (AP) -Mikhail Gorbachev's plan for a powerful presidency to hold the Soviet Union together ran into a wall of opposition Monday, one day after Lithuania fractured the union by declaring its independence. 1 Parliamentarians from other independence-minded republics took the floor of the Congress of People's Deputies to assail the proposed presidency as far too strong for the loose federation of sovereign countries they envision as the future Soviet Union. "The fact that the U.S.S.R. is a union of sovereign states is hardly taken into account," said Givi Gumbaridze, Communist Party chief of the southern republic of Georgia, where the parliament voted Friday to reject the presidency proposal and to demand' immediate negotiations With Moscow on independence.

'This draft does not give enough consideration to the sad traditions of our state," he said, referring to decades of dictatorship and its terrible toll of mass murder. Lithuanians were so dismayed by Gorbachev's proposed strengthening of the presidency that they rushed to declare independence before it passed. "Tomorrow, Mr. Gorbachev will get dictatorial powers with the right to overrun any republican parliament," said Algimantas Chekuolis, a Lithuanian who with his republic's declaration of in-Please see SOVIETS, A12 Casper Area A3 Classifieds B9-12 Comics B7 Community A7 Crossword B3 Landers, Omarr B3 Legislature A4 Letters A9-11 Markets A6 Movies B3 Obituaries, Diary B2 Opinion A8 Sports B4-6 Wyoming Bl Old Grouch Free (from the Legislature) at last. RESULTS If you are a business, or small, even an individual with a special trade, the Business Card Page may be perfect for you! We will reproduce your business card each Tuesday in the Star-Tribune for just $8.25 per week? (If you don't have business card, we would be happy to make one just for you at no additional charge!) Deadline: Noon Fridays.

Cal today! 266-0555 or 1-600-442-691 6 (toll-free.) Anti-drug bill leaves Senate committee nium, bentonite, sand and gravel and oil and gas. They are supposed to give the state and industry a predictable tax policy. In deriving the value of captive coal, the department must use comparable sales because that coal is owned and used by power plants. The department wanted to be able to look at all long term coal contracts to set a value on coal mined at Wyoming's three captive mines: Jim Bridger in Sweetwater Please see MINERALS, A12 Sweetwater, opposed. Sen.

Charles Scott, R-Natrona, said he liked the idea of tougher drug laws, but said the proposal "falls into the smoke and mirrors category." Requiring that police simply be "more vigorous enforcing drug laws near schools" would be "a more rational policy," Scott said. Sen. Lisa Kinney, D-Albany, said heavier drug penalities should be included in a "comprehensive drug policy act" rather than in piecemeal legislation. But both she and Scott voted to send the bill to the floor. Committee Chairman Sen.

John Please see DRUG BILL, A12 SCOTT REESE By PAUL KRZA Star-Tribune capital bureau CHEYENNE -A bill that is one of two surviving elements of a five-part anti-drug package proposed by the governor before the Legislature's budget session moved out of a Senate committee Monday. But the Senate Judiciary Committee shrunk the size of a proposed "drug-free school zone" before recommending passage of the bill pushed by Gov. Mike Sullivan. Under the bill, "enhanced penalties" would be imposed on persons convicted of "manufacture, delivery or possession with in- Task force unveils state wetlands plan I Zr j'rT I I Li. Ac I j7 A u- -v" tNV ICv t- 1-1III1I1IIH l.inilLHLLLl AP tent to deliver or manufacture" controlled substances in the close proximity of schools Two members of the Judiciary Committee, both Democrats, said they only reluctantly supported the drug-free school zone bill.

The committee voted 3-1 to approve the measure, with Sen. Bob Reese, D- The task force also said that the state should develop its own wetlands position, "rather than having a policy dictated to the state by the federal government." But the task force has not discussed the possibility or need for funding a state wetlands preservation program, according to State Planning Corrdinator Rod Miller. "Too early to tell," Miller said when asked whether the program will require state investment. Instead, wetlands banking is the "mitigation method of choice." Wetlands preservation has become an issue of national scope in recent years and President Bush has advocated a policy of "no net From staff and wire reports CHEYENNE Wyoming should develop a Wetlands Banking Program to help protect and preserve its wetlands, according to a draft policy released Monday by Gov. Mike Sullivan's Wetlands Policy Task Force.

"Wetlands are a source considerable value to the state of Wyoming" including providing wildlife habitat, aquifer recharge, sediment and erosion control, and flood abatement, the draft policy says. "The goal of this policy is no net loss of wetlands in Wyoming," it adds. loss." The Environmental Protection Agency has questioned state plans to build the Sandstone Dam. The EPA expressed concern about the elimination of wetlands in the Little Snake River Valley if the dam is built. State, water development officials have vowed to move ahead with project.

Miller also noted that the state program would affect only state agencies and mentioned the Highway Department as one that might have to offer some kind of mitigation effort to replace wetlands lost to road development. Please see WETLANDS, A12 Greyhound shooting A Jacksonville sheriff's officer inspects the interior of a Greyhound bus that was struck by gunfire Sunday evening in south Jacksonville, Fla. See story on B8..