Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 3

lottery extra Thursday's number, 623, has been selected twice before: on 5-10-79 and 9-28-82. Lottery line 1-976-2020 Section Page 3 SECOND FRONT PAGE Friday, July 27, 1984 how you can call us Circulation Dept. 222-6500 Classified Gold Ads 222-5000 Insurance Dept. 222-6470 City News 222-6600 All other calls 222-6400 For delivery 222-6500 Blanchard signs $184 million tax rollback 9 ri" Susan Watson dangering essential state services. Republicans charged that the proposed reduction was not enough, and offered a larger, quicker tax cut.

The Republican-controlled Senate approved a rollback to 5.35 percent July 1 and to 4.6 percent on July 1, 1985. After Blanchard promised to veto the Senate version, the Democratic House rejected the Senate bill and approved Blanchard's tax cut. The nearly six-month debate ended with an agreement on the version Blanchard signed. It resolved the highly partisan tax rollback issue in time for the Aug. 7 primary.

was held to boost the re-election prospects of Lynn Jondahl, D-East Lansing, the House Taxation Committee chairman who played a key role in last year's passage of the income tax and this year's accelerated rollback. The official signing had taken place earlier in the day. Under heavy pressure from the Legislature to cut the income tax rate and help defuse recalls against lawmakers who voted for the 1983 tax hike, Blanchard entered the tax rollback debate in mid-January by proposing a rollback to 5.35 percent, effective Oct. 1. The governor argued that was the most the state could responsibly reduce the rate without en By TIM JONES Lansino Bureau Chief WILLIAMSTON Standing beneath a 50-foot American flag, Gov.

Blanchard on Thursday signed into law a $1 84 million election-year income tax cut. Blanchard, who had resisted legislative suggestions that the 1983 income tax increase be scaled back so early, signed the bill to drop the state's 6.1 percent income tax rate to 5.35 percent Sept. 1. The bill also reduces the rate to 4.6 percent on Oct. 1, 1987.

"The signing of this early tax cut represents a remarkable achievement for the State of Michigan," said Blanchard. "The tax cut makes good on our promise to seek a new and more efficient direction to the operation of state government." The tax cut, which moves up by four months the reduction that was scheduled for Jan. 1, 1985, will save a family of four earning $20,000 a year $31.64 during the last four months of this year. The same size family earning $50,000 would save $106.46, according to the Department of Management and Budget. The signing ceremony in Williamston, a largely Republican town just east of Lansing, Arv ihvy healthy north oi 12 Mile? And some of you thought didn't sympathize with the suburbs.

Well, my dears, just wait until I tell you about the doings of a review committee of the Comprehensive Health Planning Council of Southeastern Michigan, the folks who help decide where hospitals will be built. My occasional snips at some surburan foibles seem like love pats to the actions of that committee, which recently turned down proposals for six new hospitals in western Oakland County. Next to these folks, I'm a mere innocent, a babe in the woods, just a good old girl from River Rouge who remembers when everybody knew that Wayne County General Hospital we called it Eloise was the place poor folks went for care. But that's another story. U.S.

Fails In Effort to Start Talks On Midland one more? WhaV By DAVID EVERETT and TIM JONES Free Press Staff Writers A meeting planned next week by U.S. Energy Secre A ill horn Going Friends and co-workers of singer Philippe Wynne give their last farewells Thursday at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. Wynne was the former lead singer of the Spinners, and three other Spinner members (above) stand before the open casket. They are, from left, Pervis Jackson, Bobbie Smith and Henry Fambrough, and they were pallbearers. During the services, gospel singer Aretha Franklin (right) sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." Wynne collapsed and died while performing July 14 at a California nightclub.

Free Press Pholos bv IRA ROSENBERG tary Donald Hodel to discuss ways to revive the canceled Midland nuclear project was itself canceled Thursday after a group of Consumers Power largest industrial customers rejected the idea. The industry group, ABATE, told Hodel's office that the meeting "would not be useful," Hodel spokesman Phil Keif said. "We tried," Keif said. "No meeting." THE MOVE CAME after Hodel had invited representatives of ABATE, Consumers and state regulators to Washington next Wednesday. "He's not trying to get into formal negotiations or mediation at all," Keif said before the meeting was canceled.

"There would absolutely never be any federal financing involved. He just wants to do whatever he can to try to get them together." The Hodel meeting was requested by John Engler, R-Mt. Pleasant, Michigan's Senate majority leader whose district includes Midland. Keif said Hodel's invitation was accepted by Consumers and the staff of the Michigan Public Service Commission, but ABATE officials would not meet. "They called and told us no," he said.

Officials for ABATE, which has a formal no-comment policy on the issue, were unavailable for comment Thursday. ABATE the Association of Businesses Advocating Tariff Equity includes the Big Three automakers and other powerful firms. EARLIER, A CONSUMERS spokesman had called Hodel's invitation "interesting." "Realistically, it's hard to imagine that a rescue can be worked out, but, in this world, stranger things have happened," Paul Knopick said. After the meeting was canceled, Knopick said Consumers was "sorely disappointed." At a news conference in Williamston, before the meeting's cancellation, Gov. Blanchard had criticized Hodel's involvement.

"I think it's time to worry about the overall survivability of Consumers and not one plant," Blanchard had said. "Our sources indicate that the federal government has no interest in a bailout. My guess is it's more of a political fcin dcincc Before the Midland project was canceled July 16, the PSC staff had supported Consumers' last completion proposal, and ABATE had said it would support completion under certain conditions. But two other parties in talks with Consumers the state Attorney General's Office and the Michigan Citizens Lobby remained opposed. Joseph Tuchinsky, executive director of the Citizens Lobby, said Thursday his group agreed with ABATE in refusing to meet with Hodel.

The Attorney General's Office and Citizens Lobby were not invited to the Washington meeting, Keif said. Black student finds Ann Arbor refuge That cold-hearted, insensitive review committee could not understand why an area that already has four large hospitals within spitting dis- tance would need six more facilities; an area where, if all of them were built, hospitals would be bunched to- 1 gether like beads on a string. The new hospitals would have been a fairly short drive to Pontiac, where three large hospitals already are located. They would have graced such areas as West Bloomfield Township, Far-mington Hills, Commerce Township and Independence Township, areas where most folks have a medical insurance card in their wallets and a car that will get them from suburbia to Detroit or Pontiac in short order. The area isn't rich by a long shot, but then again it isn't impoverished either.

Comfortably middle class is an apt description. For the life of me, I can't understand how the review board could fail to see the need for more hospitals out. there. Middle class malady Some skeptics might ask why any hospital corporation would want to construct a new hospital building when the greater Detroit area already has more hospital beds than it can use but not I. Some skeptics might wonder if the proponents of the new hospitals believe suburbanites would suffer a double indignity if they were forced to be hospitalized in Detroit or Pontiac with poor people but not I.

Some skeptics would find it ironic that these suburbanites who have insurance cards and cars are offered hospitals within walking distance, while the impoverished have to go out of their way for care but not I. I know why these areas need more hospitals. You see, there is an inverse relationship between income and health. Those folks in the western Oakland suburbs are so fragile, so frail and so weak that they couldn't make the drive to Detroit or Pontiac for health care. It's some kind of disease that affects those who move north of Twelve Mile.

The proponents of new hospitals understand the malady. They discovered it when they plugged their stethoscopes into their billing computers. a mailer oi fairness I think it is only fair, only American to have those new facilities in western Oakland County. We must find a cure for the "North of Twelve Mile" syndrome, and the only way to make a medical breakthrough is to set up shop in the neighborhood. After all, how can we ask our children to study hard and better themselves economically if they discover that once they do what we have asked, they'll be be struck by an incurable illness if they, move to a middle-class enclave? No longer is it enough to have a chicken in every Crockpot and a second car in every garage.

Now there must be a hospital at every crossroads. For the life of me, I can't understand how the review board could fail to see the logic here. Maybe someone forgot to show them how to plug a stethoscope into a billing computer. will have to travel the 22 miles each way to and from the Jewell family's home, and her tuition will cost "about said. "We think the family perhaps has the travel problem solved," King said, "because they have neighbors who drive to Ann Arbor every morning." And the Washtenaw County ACLU is going to raise money for Ellie's tuition, she said.

"We feel that people will help support us with donations. Ellie appears to be very bright she might even be gifted, particularly in the area of biology, which is her current interest," King said. THE JEWELLS became Ellie's foster parents when she was seven months old and adopted her when she was three. Ellie attended a I Iighland Park school for the first See STUDENT, Page 15A because it was truly in the best interests of a young person, because of the compassionate nature of the request and because and I want to stress this it was done in agreement with the superintendent (Arnold Haugen) of the Columbia school system," said Wiley Brownlee, Ann Arbor's deputy school superintendent. Jewell previously attended Columbia Central High School.

JEAN KING, a lawyer from the Washtenaw County American Civil Liberties Union who attended the board meeting Wednesday night on behalf of the Jewell family, said: "It was an exception to board policy, but exceptional things have happened to Ellie, so I think it's appropriate." But two minor problems remain: Ellie By BRIAN FLANIGAN Free Press Staff Writer Ellie Jewell is going to school in Ann Arbor. In a 9-0 vote that broke from its policy, the Ann Arbor School Board has agreed to admit Jewell, the 17-year-old black studenf from rural Jackson County who said racial harassment at her old school led her to try enrolling in a junior college to finish high school. "She's been pretty worried but now she's very happy," Ellie's mother, Lois, said Thursday. "And I'm pleased, gratified and appreciative." Ordinarily, policy prohibits students from other school districts from attending Ann Arbor schools. "But we made the recommendation to the board and they approved it MSU trustees to vote today on midcrgrad tuition freeze Offtrack betting could ease lottery9 s' sting, official says it File Pholo E.J.

(Bud) Sears: "With the introduction of' the lottery, we lost 30 percent of our business; people became numbers players." What do you think? See Soundoff, Page 15 A. planning and budgets, said the $4 million lost by freezing tuition would be borrowed from money MSU expects to get from the state for the 1985-86 school year. The state owes MSU about $15 million that was cut from the school's budget by orders from former Gov. William Milliken. State officials have promised to repay the money next year.

Except for Peter Fletcher, all seven trustees who met Thursday expressed support for the freeze. FLETCHER SAID freezing tuition could undercut efforts by MSU administrators to urge lawmakers to increase outlays for higher education. State political leaders expect the school to provide "Neiman-Marcus" quality on a "blue light special" budget, Fletcher said. Borrowing on the future, he said, was a "monetary form of smoking See MSU, Page 14A By SUSAN GOLDBERG Free Press Education Writer EAST LANSING Michigan State University trustees, under pressure from state lawmakers and the example of most of the state's public colleges and universities, today are expected to freeze tuition for undergraduate state residents this fall. The tuition freeze would affect about 29,500 students more than 90 percent of MSU's undergraduates and would leave the East Lansing school with a $4 million gap in its budget for the 1984-85 school year.

If MSU's in-state rates remain the same as last year, it would mark the first time in 10 years the school has frozen tuition. BUT THE FREEZE would stick MSU's 2,800 out-of-state undergraduates and 6,500 graduate students with increases of 8.3 to 9.5 percent. Tuition for an out-of-state senior, for example, would increase from $4,246 last year to $4,615 this year. Bob Lockhart, MSU's director of By JACK KRESNAK Free Press Staff Writer Offtrack betting by telephone could be the key to turning around the troubled horse racing industry in Michigan, a Detroit Race Course official said Thursday. E.J.

(Bud) Sears, director of racing for the Livonia racetrack, said legalizing offtrack betting in Michigan would undo some of the harm done to racing "unintentionally" by the state lottery. "With the introduction of the lottery, we lost 30 percent of our business; people became numbers players," Sears said. He was reacting to reports Thursday that state Racing Commissioner William Ballenger believes he can authorize a telephone offtrack betting system without legislative approval. But a representative of the state Attorney General's Office said Ballenger reached that conclusion without consulting them. Ballenger cited provisions in the state's 1980 racing law that he believed gave him power to authorize telephone betting because the law does not specifically prohibit it.

He said, however, that he would not authorize such betting without approval from the attorney general. State attorneys are studying the issue and decide if Ballenger has that power, said Stanley Stnborn, chief assistant attorney general. MEANWHILE, Gov. Blanchard offered little encouragement to proponents of offtrack betting. "I haven't really looked at it," the governor said Thursday, "but I'm not prepared to support it, no.

"I don't see it as a panacea for Michigan's economy or our financial turnaround or any of the major issues that I deal with My inclination is against any extension of betting of any kind until I'm shown a compelling reason to do otherwise." Ballenger said that no racetracks have asked him for authorization to begin such a program. Louis Carlo, assistant general manager of Northville Downs racetrack, said he vould not ask Ballenger for See BETTING, Page 16A.