North Adams Transcript from North Adams, Massachusetts • 17

Zke Zmcript 18-Wednesday, October 2, 1996 Kerasiotes trimming cushy lifestyle at 'pike Authority entire authority. The three-member board, which now has a two-member Weld majority, also voted to allow people to call their own tow trucks when they break down on the turnpike, though the turnpike will maintain contracts with tow companies. Kerasiotes estimated there were about 100 top managers at the authority, but that 65 people, most of them managers, had quit since he took over the board on July 1. Kerasiotes has remained the transportation secretary, collect- ing a salary of about $70,000 and passing up the turnpike chairmans pay of $116,000. Ann Hershfang, the only holdover on the board from the days of former Democratic Gov.

Michael Dukakis, said, By and large, I think its a good review of employee policies. Weve been doing it for eight years. She participated in the meeting by phone but was out of town and couldnt be reached fa further comment Tuesday, her secretary said. The home phone number for Allan R. McKinnon, the previous chairman, is BOSTON (AP) Rubies, emeralds, and diamonds Massachusetts Turnpike Authority wakers could get small gifts studded with those gems fa la-boring on the toll road for 15, 20 a 25 years.

But the turnpike board moved Tuesday to stop that practice, along with a number of others they consider wasteful, die chairman said. This place has been mismanaged as much as it probably could be because its been run by people who are arrogant, said James Kerasiotes, the new chairman of the board, who is also the states transportation secretary. Its time to think about the people who drop their money in the bucket, said Kerasiotes, who has been shaking up the authority since his appointment by Gov. William F. Weld.

Kerasiotes said the board had ended policies that allowed top managers to take their raises in a lump sum at the beginning of the year, gave them annual physicals, and ensured them that they had a years contract if they were working with the authority on Jan. 1 of each year. The board also voted to end policies that gave the chairman 10 weeks of vacation annually and a life insurance policy equal to four times the chairmans salary, he said. The policy will Jbe reduced to two times the salary. Were clearing out all the stuff that we know doesnt make any sense, said Kerasiotes.

He said he didnt have an estimate on how much money could be saved. Every turnpike employee was eligible for the gifts if they stuck with the authority fa the requisite length of time, Kerasiotes said. Kerasiotes staff said the small items might include tie bars and bracelets with stones on them. Employees were eligible for a ruby after 15 years, an emerald after 20 years, and a diamond after 25 years. The board also voted to change the policy on employing relatives.

Under the old policy, members of the same family could be employed at the autha-ity as long as they didnt work in the same department. Under the new policy, no more than one person within the same family can be employed in the Harshbarger: Support growing for electric deregulation plan BOSTON (AP) Attorney General Scott Harshbargers blueprint fa deregulating the electric industry has gained new supporters, Harshbargers office said as it filed documents at the state Department of Public Utilities. Harshbarger filed a proposed settlement with Massachusetts Electric the states largest retail electric company. Harshbarger wants all customers of the seven investa-owned utilities in Massachusetts to choose their own power supplier on Jan. 1, 1998.

Under his proposal, those who dont want to jump into the market could take advantage of a E1OTC reuived in EuficjEi ssGuqqBs BOSTON (AP) When the high school ROTC program was restaed in the seaside town of Gloucester, it was' with modest expectations. But one in seven students signed up, mirroring a dramatic national resurgence in programs once considered unhip and unwanted. I didnt think todays youth would want the regimentatiot of ROTC, and I was wrong, said Tom Witham, principal of Gloucester High School. Ill tell you, Ive never been called sir so much in my life as I have in the last four weeks. The number of Junia ROTC programs has risen by mae than 60 percent since 1992, from 1,481 to about 2,400.

Enrollment grew from 200,000 to more than 300,000 during that same time. Adult officers say students want to build their leadership skills, get some discipline that may be missing from their lives and boost the starting pay they would receive if they decide to join the military. We doit learn how to kill people, said Esther Nunez, 16, a Gloucester High School senior and the highest-ranking student in the schools new ROTC unit. Its all about self-discipline and responsibility and how to respect people. At a time when an increasing number of students live with single parents, a with parents who both wak, ROTC units also provide a sense of belonging, according to proponents of the programs.

It becomes that feeling of family, a feeling of camaraderie," said Marine Col. Russ Eggleston, who runs the ROTC program at A. L. Brown High School in Kannapolis, N.C. And even if they dont go into the military and it isnt fa everybody they can take some of the skills with them.

Of about 1,000 students at Brown High, 130 belong to JROTC. Congress began to increase JROTC funding in 1992 at the urging of then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell. The program currently costs taxpayers about $160 million a year, or $500 per student. Members of' JROTC take classes in leadership, physical fitness and health, drills and ceremonies, marksmanship and military organization.

Most perform community service and learn Whitewater rafting, rock climbing and other activities on the weekends. About half end up serving in the military; their ROTC service lets them start two pay grades ahead of everybody else in most of the military branches. In Gloucester, the Army ran an ROTC class and an earlier version of a military training program for 100 years until it was canceled 10 years ago because of low enrollment. The Marine Corps re-established ROTC at the high school last month, when 97 students signed up. Now there are 130 cadets in the program, out of a total student body of Some people say its fa the uniform, said Nunez.

Not at all. But when you wear that uniform, its pride. Its like a privilege. She and the others in the Gloucester program have helped run. a community soapbox derby, cleaned local beaches, served as guides on parents nights and raised the flag at football games.

We set an example for everybody else," she said. Nunez, whose older sister was in Navy ROTC at a high school in New York, plans to enter the military after attending Vavel school after graduation. We teach leadership, good citizenship, we want to build their character and self-esteem and make these students realize they can be successful, said Marine Col. Donald Welsh, the senia instructor. I In KrieS New editor of Village Voice NEW YORK (AP) Donald Fast, former New York Newsday editor, has been named editor of The Village Voice.

Forst, 64, succeeds Karen Durbin, who resigned last month after 212 years as editor of the Voice, the weekly newspaper said TEEs-day. Forst edited New York Newsday from 1985 until the paper closed last year. Under his leadership, the paper won two Pulitzer Prizes and was named Best Paper three times by the New York State Publishers Association. After New York Newsday shut down, Forst worked briefly for the papers Queens edition and as a metropolitan editor for the Daily News. In his 40-year career, Forst has waked as an editor at Boston magazine, the Boston Herald American, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Newsday, The New York Times and the Herald Tribune.

Durbins exit followed public battles with publisher David Schneiderman over his decision to cut the Voices literary supplement from 10 editions a year to four. In April, the Voice switched to free distribution in Manhattan to boost readership. New trial ordered for teacher HOLYOKE, Mass. (AP) A Superior Court judge has ordered a new trial fa a Holyoke High School math teacher coivicted of stealing $13,300 in gate receipts from high school basketball games. Judge Daniel Fad ruled that Mark Pananos, 41 didnt get a fair trial last month because a prosecutor improperly questioned him about a prior gaming conviction in the presence of the jury.

During her cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Judith Pietras asked: Mr. Pananos, youre a gambler arent you? Defense lawyers immediately objected and Ford, ruling that a gaming conviction in the late 1980s was too long ago to be used in establishing motive, directed the jury to disregard the question. But in ordering a new trial he said that such an instruction is not always sufficient. Prosecutors contended the city treasurers office never received money Pananos was supposed to deposit from several games in 1993 and in 1995 and that he falsified receipts. His lawyers coitended the teacher was being used as a scapegoat Environmental official grilled BOSTON (AP) The states environmental protection commissioner was put oi the defensive during a legislative grilling about his departments efforts to keep Massachusetts clean.

Environmental enforcement in Massachusetts has never been stronger, David Struhs told the Natural Resources Committee. But the committee chairwoman, Sen. Lois Pines, D-Newton, said Struhs headed an agency that had allowed the number of penalties to drop by 25 percent in the past five years and the average amount of each penalty to drop by 54 percent during the same period. I recognize bean counting is not the best way to analyze public policy, said Pines. However, the long-term trend does show that penalty assessments are down.

I worry that the little penalties you hand out are little more than slaps on the wrist and will na prevent future polluting. Struhs said the Department of Environmental Protection is taking a different approach. Instead of assessing huge penalties and making headlines, the DEP is focusing on penalty collection, Struhs said. Trial for icing of graffiti' BOSTON (AP) The trial of a Suffolk University student from the suburbs charged with painting 77 different works of graffiti oi buildings and fences in the Brighton section has been postponed a month. Matthew Codings, 21, of Andover, was to have been tried beginning Tuesday in Chelsea District Court His case was continued until Oct 29.

Codings faces up to 231 years in prison and $77,000 in fines if coivicted. His attoney has said Codings is being blamed for graffiti that actually was the work of other people. Codings was first arrested about two years ago as he spray-painted the Armani store on Newbury Street. That case was continued without a finding. He was arrested again in November 1995 in Brighton while spray-painting a wad.

A.judge placed him on probation and ordered him to stop buying spray paint. The 77 counts Codings now faces are the most ever lodged against an individual in a graffiti case, police said. UMass gets $325,000 grant AMHERST, Mass. (AP) The University of Massachusetts has received about $325,000 in federal funds fa marine fisheries research in the Atlantic Ocean and Merrimack River. The money is fa the Cooperative Marine Education and Research Program, which is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The program enables the federal agency to use the universitys faculty, staff and students fa research. UMass-Amherst will use the money to study the: Schooling behavia of bluefln tuna; Feeding relationships of fish on Georges Bank; Effect of contaminants on the reproductive success of winter flounder; Downstream movements of Atlantic salmon in the Merrimack River. Researchers also will refine their techniques for detecting trace metals in the marine food chain and fa detecting irradiated seafood. The money also will support programs at the UMass-Dartmouth campus. Researchers there will evaluate a possible shift in the plankton population of the northwest Atlantic Ocean and will conduct an economic study of the hook, small trawler and charter boat fisheries off the northeast coast Program directa John Baeman says UMass has received $1.2 million in funding since the programs inception in 1989.

Officials blaiRS utility competition TURNERS FALLS, Mass. (AP) A 20-megawatt, coal-fired co-generation plant here may be one of the first victims of a growing push to open utility markets to increased competition. Officials at Indeck Energy Services, a privately owned energy supplier headquartered in Buffalo Grove, 111., say they plan to shut down their 7-year-old Turners Falls plant after losing a contract to supply electricity to a New Hampshire power company. ijwrence Kostrzewa, senia vice president fa contracts and economics at Indeck, said a pilot project in New Hampshire that encourages electricity customers to shop around led the Unitil Power COrp. of New Hampshire to drop the co-generation plant With the supply of electricity plentiful, in part due to manufacturing cutbacks in the early 1990s, Unitil is looking to reduce its costs, said Geage Gantz, senia vice president of Unitil.

Fifteen workers will lose their jobs in the shutdown. When it was originally built at a cost of $25 million, the Turners Falls plant had been part of a then-growing trend to piggyback electricity production on manufacturing. Fa its first five years the plant sold all the electricity it could generate as a byproduct of producing steam fa the then-thriving Strathmae Paper Co. mill to Unitil. Fugitive caught after TV show tip ST.

PAUL, Minn. (AP) Fa nearly a decade, Richard Alan Cepulonis was oie of Massachusetts most wanted criminals. Police finally caught up with him and his wife Tuesday after a St. Paul resident recognized the escaped Massachusetts bank robber from an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. The Minnesota Fugitive Task Force and Si Paul police arrested Cepulonis at about noon as he was leaving his home, police said.

Cepulonis was on the Most Wanted list of the Massachusetts State Police and the tion, which includes independent power producers, also said it supported Tuesdays agreement, which had made great strides toward consensus. The Weld administration has been moving for several years toward deregulating the electric industry. Officials envision people choosing their power suppliers much as they now pick a longdistance telephone service. But some consumer activists are wondering if the state will be too generous to the utilities, as they switch over to the competitive market, and not ensure there are enough savings for consumers. Cepulonis and two others robbed the Suburban National Bank in Woburn of more than $17,000 on Aug.

9, 1973. He was arrested several weeks later in a New York City hotel. At the time of his arrest, Cepulonis room was filled with several fully loaded automatic weapons, hand grenades, bulletproof vests and ammunition. On Tuesday, police also arrested Cepulonis wife, Karen Diane Walters, a former special needs teacher from New Jersey with whom he became pen-pals while he was in prison. The two married in a prison ceremony at MCI-Walpole in January 1985.

in Holyoke tract offers. But she said those talks broke down over seniority issues. The nurses have been working without a renewed contract for a year. These nurses were told with very, very short notice that their careers were over at that hospital, said David Schild-meier, another union spokesman. Despite their complaint, Diane Michael, co-chairman of the local union chapter, said the nurses dont believe they can stop the closure.

She said die best hope is to save some more jobs. The hospital is owned by the Sisters of Providence, an order of Roman Catholic nuns, and run by the Sisters of Providence Health System. The system also manages Mercy Hospital in Standard Offer power plan that would guarantee them 10 percent power savings. The settlement must be approved by state and federal regulators and attempts to reach similar agreements with the six other investor-owned utilities are continuing, Harshbargers office said. But Harshbarger crowed Tuesday about getting support from the Union of Concerned Scientists, the administration of Gov.

William F. Weld, the Energy Consortium, a group of the states largest power buyers, and U.S. Generating a power generation company. The Competitive Power Coali Massachusetts Department of Correction. The 48-year-old Worcester native, who used several aliases, escaped in 1987 from the minimum-security Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Shirley where he was serving a 58- to 82-year sentence for armed robbery, bank robbery, possession of a machine gun, armed assault with intent to murder and assault and battery.

It was his second prison escape. He already had a lengthy criminal history of armed rob--bery when he first escaped in 1973. While on the run the first time, pital. All have been laid off with the closure of regular hospital services at Providence. Managers say some are expected to accept new posts at the complex.

The hospital announced last month that it was ending surgery and emergency care and laying off 369 workers. Instead, it will offer nursing care, diagnostic services, and psychiatric programs though it will keep its name. Wendy Taylor, a hospital spokeswoman, said the decision to close acute care came quickly. It was never the intention to close Providence Hospital, she said. We believe that the charge can be defended.

She said the union could have saved 51 more jobs if it had accepted one of the hospitals con Nurses fight layoffs HOLYOKE, Mass. (AP) Nurses at Providence Hospital are accusing managers of an unfair labor practice, saying they hid their decision to close acute care services fa months. The nurses filed their complaint with the National Laba Relations Board, which enforces labor law in contract negotiations. They were also planning a protest at the Holyoke hospital on Thursday. The nurses announced the complaint Tuesday, a day after it was filed.

Simply put, the hospital has lied to its nurses at the bargaining table, said Vincent Gudewich, a spokesman fa the Massachusetts Nurses Association. The Canton-based group represents 112 nurses at the hos Alleged love GREENFIELD, Mass. (AP) A prosecuta says the lover of a supermarket heirs wife plotted with her to kill her husband and later bragged about the murder, David Ross, an assistant district attorney, made the accusation as he opened his case Tuesday at the trial of Alex Rankins. The 48-year-old drifter is accused of being the gunman in the death of Robert DAmour, who inherited part of the fortune of a founder of Big Supermarkets. Ross said Rankins carried on triangle murder trial opens an affair with Amours wife, Suzanne.

He said they agreed to murder him to claim his $3.1 million in life insurance. Ross said Rankins later told someone that he had popped a white guy in Hadley. 055 did not identify that person but said hb will be presented later as a witness. Rankins is black. The victim was white, as is his wife.

Also accused of murder, she is awaiting vial later. Rankins trial was moved from Northampton because of heavy publicity. But his lawyer later complained of trying his client in Greenfield, pointing to the tiny black population in this area. In his opening argument, Rankins lawyer suggested that DAmour was killed by someone else, perhaps someone to whom he owed money. Attorney David Hoose said DAmour showed a desperate need for cash and expenditure of vast sums shortly before his death.

I I I.