Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 3

Star-Tribune, Casper, Wyo. A3 Wednesday, January 24, 1 990 ESC closure order blamed on 'bureaucratic ment fund taxes by Sept. 30, 1987, it was notified that in 1988 those taxes would be assessed at the delinquent rate of 9.75 percent of total employee compensation rather than at Bright Horizon's base rate of 2.65 percent, if i i IV By BILL LAZARUS Star-Tribune staff writer CASPER The owner of a Laramie child care center claims bureaucratic bungling by the Employment Security Commission staff ultimately resulted in a standing order requiring him to shut down his 20-employee facility for failure to pay unemployment tax penalties. At a hearing Tuesday in Casper before ESC commissioners, Lester Cole of Bright Horizons Child Care, Inc. asserted that some $12,000 in outstanding tax penalties never would have accrued had ESC staff bothered to inform him of a change in the law which enabled him to avoid further penalties by paying only about $1,500 in early 1988.

"Your own charter says you should do whatever you can to reduce unemployment. This (shut down order) flies in the face of that," Cole told the commission. Commission staff attorney Joe Scott insisted that Bright Horizons is operating illegally pending its appeal to the commissioners. "You are aware of the order (by a commission appeals examiner) forbidding Bright Horizons from doing business. Did you comply with that order?" Scott asked Cole at the hearing.

"I was supposed to cease doing business before I appear (before the commissioners)?" Cole asked. "Yes," said Scott. "At that point, why appeal it?" responded Cole. "At that point the business will be gone." After the hearing, the commissioners conferred privately and "decided to continue the hearing to the February meeting to give the staff the opportunity to see if we can work something out mutually agreeable' with Cole, Scott said. Meanwhile, he said, Bright Horizons cannot legally operate.

According to Bright Horizon's lawyer Carl Hildebrand, the day care center's problems began shortly after it opened in January 1987. Cole's partners, Hildebrand told commissioners Chuck Robinson' and Doran Lummis, "pulled out and left him holding the was really struggling to get this off the at fault here too. We did pull behind (on the tax tried to rob Peter to pay Paul as struggling businesses do." Because Bright Horizons could not pay its delinquent unemploy Hildebrand said. But, the commission failed to inform Cole of a law which took effect in May 1987, Cole and Hildebrand said. Under that law, once the delinquent rate is paid for just one quarter, the base rate again takes effect.

Under another law which took effect last July, the delinquent penalty rate is just two percent above the base rate. Cole said that early in 1988 Bright Horizons paid all the back unemployment compensation taxes and penalties which it owed for 1987. But he said the business was unable to afford the delinquent tax rate of 9.75 percent, although it probably could have done so if it had known the delinquent rate was just for one quarter. He said he was in touch with ESC staff and was never told of the May law limiting the deliquency rate to just three months. Staff lawyers did not question Cole's account of what happened but asked Cole why he had not examined the statutes themselves.

Cole said he relied on the ESC's "Employer Handbook" dated July 1, 1987. The law had already been changed by then, but the handbook indicated that delinquent tax rates would be assessed for the full year F7 I f. 3 Candidate Tollef son claims state needs accessible info on education bungling' rather than just three months. Such handbooks for 1988 and 1989 note the change in the law, "He is coming in here today and saying, 'I am such a small guy. You shouldn't permit me to go out of Scott told the commissioners.

"But he has failed to comply with the commission's order (to shut don't enjoin a whole lot of people. We have a lot of people who owe us We only enjoin when we reach the end of our rope." The order that Bright Horizons shut down was issued Nov. 15 by Harlan C. Kerr, chief appeals examiner for the commission. Cole appealed that order to the commission itself, which sits as judge of its staff orders.

Cole's lawyer noted that the total unemployment claims filed by Bright Horizons employees against the fund have totaled only $220 since the day care center serving 130 children started business, and that the enterprise is now meeting its monthly payroll of about $10,000. But Hildebrand said the business is unable to afford payment of the $12,000 in tax penalties at the rate of 1 ,000 a month for a year, as has been required by the commission staff. I 1 since April. Nalbone said the station currently has 12 employees and is not offering local news. "We will be doing a local newscast sometime, year," he said, which will be coordinated with the Rawlins and Riverton stations "when we get granted FCC licenses" for those stations.

WyoMedia is also waiting for FCC approval of different call letters, Nalbone said. Five different choices were submitted to the federal government for consideration. "Whichever is still available" will be used, Nalbone said. In the meantime, "we had no choice but to use KFNB to start with or wait a couple months to come back on the air," he said. The station once struggled financially, but now under its new ownership, "we have no debt," Nalbone said.

SAVE 15 LESTER COLE Decries shut down order But "if you just publish test data it would be dangerous," because competition amoung school districts in too narrow an area would be encouraged, Tollefson said in an interview. The state could disseminate information allowing comparison among districts on a wide variety of issues, Tollefson said, including the amount of planning time for teachers, class sizes, the age of textbooks in the district, and the extent that teachers are allowed into decision-making processes. Teachers get nervous when the subject of accountability arises, Tollefson said, because they fear they will be the only ones held accountable. But parents, administrators and school boards all need to be held accountable for the quality of education, she said. Good evaluation requires establishing "a process for every aspect," she said.

"We must as a state, in a dialog of parents, educators, business people, and the general public, answer several fundamental questions: Where exactly are we in education? Where do we want and need to go? How are we going to get there? How much will it cost? and are we willing to pay for it?" Tollefson said. year sentence in prison for earlier theft convictions. Police investigate sex assault report CASPER Casper police received and are investigating a report received this weekend that a juvenile female was sexually assaulted 2Vi years ago by two adult males, according to Lt. Jack Macy. Macy provided few details about the report because an investigation is being conducted, he said.

Sarah Phillips-JohnsonSiar-Tribune Greg FTadager works in the editing room at KFNB-TV Channel 20 resumed broadcasting Tuesday Offers ABC-TV programming SEN. AL SIMPSON Air bills can reverse damage Simpson says air law helps coal CHEYENNE (AP) Sen. Alan Simpson said Tuesday the latest package of clean air legislation can "reverse damage done to the en-' vironment and Wyoming coal in-' terests by amendments tacked onto the Clean Air Act in 1977. The Wyoming Republican, who helped craft the package as a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said one aspect of it would repeal the current "percentage reduction" requirement. That requirement, according to Simpson, is merely a "political gimmick" that requires coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions by a specific percentage, regardless of whether the coal burned is clean low-sulphur coal or dirty high- sulphur coal.

The requirement was among the amendments attached to the Clean Air Act in 1977, he said. "Billed as an attempt to clean up the environment, it was actually a blatant effort by the high-sulphur coal producers and organized labor to unfairly influence the nation's coal markets," the senator said in a release from his Washington office. "We have been fighting it for years, and I worked very hard to see that the percentage reduction provision was not in the Senate bill. Other items of the Senate legisla- tion Simpson considers important to Wyoming are: A 10-million-ton reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions that are causing acid rain across the coun-, try. Emission allowances that the 'senator said provide flexibility to industry and an incentive to ac-' complish emissions reductions in a cost-effective way.

Removal of language man- dating the use of "scrubbers" on utility smokestacks to reduce emissions. As presently drafted, utilities would be given full flexibility to determine the best way to reach regulated emission limits. And a provision that would allow Wyoming mining operations that generate "fugitive dust" to continue using monitors to comply with emission limits, rather than computer models that Simpson said were never designed for use on mining operations. Simpson said Tuesday that the same lobby of labor and high-sulphur coal interests that were on Capitol Hill in 1977 are still at work and he expects them to try to the clean air legislation in a way to "manipulate the markets or provide federal subsidies for high sulphur coal rather than protect the environment." "I shall also be very wary of proposals by Midwestern states that would have us abandon the 'polluter pays' principle of this bill," said the senator. "This is a sensible concept we have embraced in all other environmental laws.

Those states that have reaped the economic benefits of having low environmental standards should now be forced to pay the piper." Simpson said that when he takes the Senate floor to support the package he will not do so "to ped- die Wyoming coal." "The market works," he said. "Our state is already the No. 1 coal producing state in the country. A sensible and responsible clean air package that incorporates scientific common-sense flexibility and appropriate cost consideration will do the best job." Yule tree mulching program continues CASPER Christmas trees 'bound for mulching at the city landfill can be deposited behind Fire Station No. 2 on College Drive, City Manager Tom Forslund Friday.

Casper area residents have responded "overwhelmingly" to the city's call for recycling of Christmas trees, which are being 'ground up for later use by the Parks Department, the city manager said. Christmas trees can still be taken to the landfill, or through Feb. 28, may be deposited in a snowfenced rea behind the fire station that is marked with a sign that says 'Christmas trees," Forslund said. CASPER Channel 20 went back on the air Tuesday after a nine-month absence from local television screens. ABC network television "approved the affiliation agreement clearing the way" for KFNB-TV to resume broadcasting, according to a WyoMedia press release.

Station Manager Mark Nalbone said Tuesday that Channel 20 is broadcasting in Casper and Douglas from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Satellite stations in Rawlins and River-ton offering the same programming are expected to be added within a few weeks. KFNB will eventually employ 25 people with an annual payroll of more than $275,000, according to Nalbone. WyoMedia Corp.

puchased the station in June, according to a lawsuit filed in District Court over ownership of KFNB's assets. Channel 20 has been off the air 15 any sales tin. on any Reiner We you and the purchase of and said Sidi should "put his data where his mouth is." Recent results from the Wyoming Assessment of Educational Progress test shows students here progressing in reading and writing, and performing generally above national averages, Simons said. "He has not only insulted me," Simons said, "which can be taken for his usual political venom, but he has gratuitously insulted" other education leaders in the state as well. Simons has said she will probably seek a fourth term as superintendent in this year's elections.

Tollefson said in her release that the state Department of Education does not release enough specific information for the public to judge the merit of charges like Sidi's. She cited as an example the fact that the results of the Wyoming Association of Educational Progress tests were only "generally explained." It is Simons' responsibility to make sure that detailed information on school districts' performance is "widely published," Tollefson said. Making test scor.es public is a place to start, she said, because that would capture parents'- interest and they might begin looking more closely at their local schools. mer also have been charged in connection with the bombing. Madam sentenced on pimping charges CASPER A woman accused of promoting prostitution was sentenced to prison Tuesday in District Court, the district attorney reports.

Jerre Osborne, 47, was sentenced by Judge Dan Spangler to two to three years in the Wyoming Women's Center, suspended, for promoting prostitution on Nov. 15, according to the DA. However, Osborne will serve a two-to-four- GRAND PRIZE You could in a four-day dream cruise to the Bahamas aboard the fun ship Fantasy. Carnival Cruise line's newest Superliner. The Fantasy includes Naulica Spa.

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Sidi, a Republican, said earlier this month that Wyoming suffers from a lack of educational leadership, that the state's education is stagnant, and Wyoming must do "not some things, but everything different" in education. The state should institute merit pay for teachers, he said, should end tenure, and should install more flexible certification measures for teachers and principals. Simons, a Democrat, called the auditor's charges a "cheap shot," Trial of Casper lawyer continues CASPER The defense attorney for Casper lawyer Clifford Neilson Tuesday sharply questioned a prosecution witness who bargained away criminal charges against himself by agreeing to testify against Neilson. Neilson faces forgery and other charges for allegedly turning to illegal tactics to help a client keep property believed to be at risk in a divorce dispute. His trial continues today.

Neilson is accused of advising his client, Harold Spitzer, to create and file two backdated quitclaim deeds transfering ownership of property to his son, Michael Spitzer. Harold Spitzer pleaded guilty to three criminal charges he faced in connection with his participation in the scheme, and has not been sentenced. Meenan agreed to seek a prison term of no more than two years if Spitzer testified at Neilson's trial, according to testimony in court. Harold Spitzer took the stand Tuesday and was questioned by Neilson's lawyer, Ken Marken, about the deal he struck with Meenan. Man pleads guilty in Ford home bombing CASPER A man charged with bombing a Coffman Street residence last year pleaded guilty to arson Tuesday in District Court, according to the district attorney.

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