Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 12

star Opinion A1 2 Star-Tribune, Casper, Wyo. Sunday, Feb. 24, 1985 tar-Cribune BMeffl deferred pay program study can give state employees a much bunch of commission money off been program coordinator for Wyoming's plan, meaning the staff 170 Star lane, Casper, Wyoming 82601 307-266-0500 The Casper Daily Tribune Est. Oct. 9, 1916byJ.E.Hanway The Casper Star Est.

in 1 949 USPS 092-660 Published daily. Second Class Paid at Casper. Wyo. 82601 by Howard Publications, Inc. CHEYENNE Freshman Democratic Rep.

Lynn Birleffi of Cheyenne is petitioning the legislative management council for a study of the state's deferred compensation program. Begun in 1979 to allow state employees to delay paying tax on part of their salaries until retirement, the program now has about 2,500 active accounts. Birleffi, a 40-year-old marketing director for the Hitching Post Inn, began receiving complaints about the program during her campaign last fall. -Capital Beat Joan Barron She is concerned that the plan has not been bringing the maximum amount of benefits to state employees and that selling of the plan and investments should be opened up to competitive bids. Birleffi said it is important to assure state employees the plan is sound since once they join they can only withdraw if they retire, die, are fired or can prove severe financial hardship.

Otherwise, they must pay a 4 percent penalty. State Treasurer Stan Smith blames the complaints on Wyoming securities firms which have been left out of the action. "They are dissatisfied we're not running things for the benefit of the securities people but for the benefit of state employees," Smith said. A variety of conversations with employees who have left the program and a Wyoming investment broker who claims his company Robin Hurless Publisher Richard G. High Editor Herschler, on gas bill backed by most Natrona legislators'.

Once in the Legislature, numerous attempts were made to kill the reform movement. Northern and other gas utilities hired a respected former legislator and lawyer -as their agent. They flooded everyone with questions: "What if this goes wrong?" "What if that goes wrong?" That dreary litany drew support from of all people the Wyoming Public Service Commission, which actively lobbied against the reform bill. Fortunately, Gov. Herschler was one of the big reasons the main reform bill finally passed.

He lent his support at key points in the legislative process, and undoubtedly swayed enough votes to make the difference. We are still a long way from cheaper natural gas. Cities and counties will need to organize themselves to seek low-priced, long-term, reliable supplies. Meanwhile, the various gas companies will be thrown into a competitive arena. For some, competition will require difficult adjustments.

For others it will be a dream come true. For everyone, much work remains. With the new competitive system, with a public mandate to succeed, and with some luck, gas prices can fall in most Wyoming communities, especially those served by the Northern companies. Many thanks to the Legislature, Gov. Herschler and all those involved in this historic Wyoming consumer victory.

It is worth celebrating. everyone Legislature State Editor Dan Neal and Assistant State Editor Carol Hegna put in long hours in the Casper office editing legislative stories and laying out the special legislative pages, while somehow managing to maintain the usual pattern of statewide coverage. A number of other people helped in the Legislative effort, including Star-Tribune writers, editors and printers in Casper, and Associated Press writers in Cheyenne. Together, Joan and her hard-working crew made possible the newspaper's best legislative coverage yet. We applaud their work.

Thanks to Legislature The Wyoming Legislature and Gov. Ed Herschler made history by moving quickly and decisively to allow lower natural gas prices in this gas-producing state. It is a classic case of what can happen when good economics, good politics and legitimate consumer interests are aligned. The basic problem was obvious to most people. Wyoming is a gas producing state and about one fourth of its gas is not being sold.

There is little market for it. It is cheap. At the same time, people and businesses in a number of Wyoming communities especially in the central part of the state served by the Northern companies have been paying comparatively high prices for gas. The existing system of state-regulated monopolies prevented the cheap local gas from reaching the local customers. But most people could see no good reason to deny local people access to the cheaper gas.

The Casper City Council was the first to dig into the problem at the urging of Councilman Larry Clapp. The Council studied, held hearings, and eventually unanimously decided to hire gas consultants. The experts soon found there were opportunities for big price reductions and millions, of dollars in annual savings. Other cities joined. So did the Wyoming Association of Municipalities.

A package of bills was drawn up by Sens. Charles Scott and Tom Stroock, R-Natrona, in consultation with the Casper City Council. The bills were They brought the Wyoming As the 48th Wyoming Legislature grinds toward adjournment, it is fitting to give credit to the five exhausted members of the Star-Tribune staff most involved in covering the session. Capitol Bureau Chief Joan Barron, who reported and directed the extensive coverage and generally held the operation together deserves special credit. Joan relied on good reporting from Cheyenne Bureau reporter Erich Kirshner and Assistant Managing Editor Anne MacKinnon, who moved to Cheyenne from Casper for the session.

better deal lend credence to Birlef-fi's request. First, some background: When the state's five-year contract with Nationwide Life Insurance Co. of Ohio, expired June I last year, three other companies were chosen to take over the deferred compensation program. Deputy State Treasurer Earl Kabeiseman said there had been many problems with Nationwide such as statements that were too complicated or never even arrived. But, under the contract with Nationwide, state employees, could not withdraw their funds from the company in a lump sum without paying the 4 percent penalty.

Kabeiseman said the treasurer's office is still trying to negotiate release of the employees' $20 million controlled by Nationwide. Although the money is safe, needless to say the state employees fretted about the development. Wyoming Public Employee Association Executive Secretary Dennis Smyth said his office has received complaints all along about problems with Nationwide at the helm but they escalated during the big switch. "People didn't understand," Smyth said. "They still don't understand." So how did the state get locked into the contract with Nationwide that did not allow transfer of funds without penalty upon termination of the agreement? Kabeiseman explained that five years ago deferred compensation was a new field and there was little competition.

This is not the case today. During the past five years, Wyoming Benefits, the local arm of a Minnesota company, has ply cannot put up with a Brezhnev doctrine" in Central America. Maybe Shultz was only trying to disprove the charges of the departing and unlamented U.S. ambassador to France that there's something about the State Department and the Foreign Service that "takes the guts out of people." But surely Americans have a right to expect something better from their secretary of state if not from their president than this kind of imprecise reference and inflammatory discourse. The Iron Curtain" is a phrase that since its renowned use by Winston Churchill in 1946 has referred to direct Soviet control of other countries, such as those in Eastern Europe.

China is a Communist country, but it is not considered "behind the Iron Curtain" because it is not dominated by the Soviet Union. Nor is there a shred of evidence that Nicaragua, however Marxist its government and pro-Soviet its leanings, is controlled from Moscow. The Brezhnev doctrine holding, in effect, that once a country has gone Communist other Communist countries have a right to keep it that way was put the state program. Kabeiseman said he doesn't know. The new arrangement, he said, is "an experiment." Herein comes the rub.

Why wasn't the deal with the local company let for bid? Kabeiseman said the treasurer's office never had a problem with the local sales organization and therefore felt no need to bid out the work again. He also said the office had not been approached with a request to make a change in the plan's coordinator. Birleffi also questioned Wayne Case's qualifications for the coordinator's job. Wayne Case, however, said that for the past 15 months he's been in training, taking tests and getting licensed for the DC business. "I'll be truthful," Case said.

"1 was scared to death when I started out. But I think it will be a beneficial plan." There is still another facet to this complicated situation. Birleffi also said the recommendations of the DC advisory board seem to be ignored. One advisory board member, Dean Borthwick of Cheyenne, is no longer. Borthwick said, first of allj he had been on the board long enough.

But he added, "I think that the advisory board ceased to function as an adviser. That means when you ask the board for an opinion or seek advice and if you don't follow it, it's not an advisory board anymore." A study is in order if only to be sure the state employees are getting the best possible deal for their money. Nicaragua? congressional approval of a new $14 million in military aid for the contras, he called them "freedom fighters" and "our brothers." Shultz, telling Congress the Sandinistas are a "bad news government," put it frankly: "Now how can that get changed? We'd like to see them change." And his red herrings talk about the Iron Curtain and the Brezhnev doctrine were well calculated to milk anti-Sandinista sentiment from the anti-Communist passions of Americans. All this puts an end to the specious claim Ithat in aiding the contras the Reagan administration only sought to stop an alleged never proven flow of arms from Nicaragua to the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador. And any further pretense about "covert action" would now be ludicpus.

If Congress approves the $14 million, therefore, Ronald Reagan will have persuaded it to declare war at second-hand on a government he does not like, one which has many faults but which is legal and recognized throughout the hemisphere and around the world. If that's a moral duty, a lot of Americans won't recognize it. presented and sold investment options to employees on commission. On Feb. 1 the state terminated its contract with Wyoming Benefits.

The reason, Kabeiseman said, was that the company, which once served only Wyoming and Montana, got big and expanded into four other states. As a result, the Wyoming treasurer's office was doing a lot of the day-to-day business, Kabeiseman said. "We decided the state treasurer's office could make a lot of decisions in-house," Kabeiseman said. "So we had them relinquish their position but kept the sales force intact." Meanwhile, a new company was formed, Wyoming Deferred Compensation headed by Wayne Case, who formerly worked as an agent for his father, Les Case, in Wyoming Benefits. Les Case, a former state employee and former WPEA executive secretary, lobbied for the deferred compensation program during the 1977 Legislature.

Treasurer Smith negotiated a three-month agreement with the new company to handle the DC sales program. Henceforth, Kabeiseman explained, the company's commissions will be paid into a trust account. The sales force will submit a budget and will be paid from the trust account. If income exceeds expenditures, the plan is to give a dividend to the participating state employees, Kabeiseman said. The obvious question is whether Wyoming Benefits was making a concerning forward in 1968 alter Warsaw Pact nations intervened in Czechoslovakia, where the doctrine could be enforced.

But Moscow never has offered the slightest hint that it extends such protection to Nicaragua, or intends to; the Brezhnev doctrine probably doesn't even cover Cuba, since the Soviets know they couldn't enforce it in the Western Hemisphere. And that "moral duty" Shultz gratuitously declared for the rest of us is in sharp conflict with some clearer American obligations to observe international law, to oppose the kind of state-sponsored terrorism that some of the activities of the anti-Sandinista "contras" too closely resemble, and to respect the self-determination of peoples (there's little to suggest that Nicaraguans, for all the authoritai lunism oi ii.e Sandinistas, are generally eager for their removal). But at least the president and Shultz are no longer trying to hide their purpose in Nicaragua; they now make it clear that they want a change in government in Managua. When Reagan, for instance, called in a radio speech for What's Shultz's excuse By TOM WICKER N. Y.

Times News Service NEW YORK It can no longer be doubted that Nicaragua is the bone in Ronald Reagan's throat, or that he intends to change its Marxist government. So it's perhaps expectable that his remarks on the subject should include so much exaggeration, disinformation, and demagoguery. But what excuse is there for George Shultz, the secretary of state the nation's chief diplomat, supposedly the steady man of the Reagan administration, the official who ought to be most concerned that his boss's worst nightmares not direct U.S. foreign policy? Actually, it was Shultz not some politician on the stump who declared roundly that the people of Nicaragua are now "behind the Iron Curtain" and that the United States has a "moral duty" to help those trying to "bring about the freedom" of that country. In congressional testimony supporting aid to the U.S.

-backed "contras" operating against the Sandinista regime, he added that "the democracies sim "SSL. 1 r- t. vJ Star-TribuneMike McClure Legislative pro Joan Barron in the Capitol.