Friday, February 28, 1997

Petition effort fails to rid High Plains of weevil eradication program

By MARK BABINECK

Associated Press

LUBBOCK - A petition effort to force a recall vote of the High Plains boll weevil program has failed, leaving an impending appellate court ruling as the opponents' final opportunity to get it spiked.

A verification committee headed by Taylor County Judge Lee Hamilton approved 8,330 of the 9,526 anti-foundation petitions submitted by farmers in the High Plains region, which includes the Panhandle and South Plains.

The petition count, which was short 302 signatures, was announced Thursday.

The Legislature established the Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation as a farmer-funded effort to fight the spread of cotton-destroying weevils. Farmers in each region of the state voted to get the program started.

But opponents who want to force a recall criticize the way the foundation collects payments from the farmers and complain that the malathion spraying also kills beneficial insects.

The farmers needed 8,632 signatures to force a recall vote, or 40 percent of the region's 21,581 proprietors. Hamilton's committee threw out 1,196 duplicate petitions, including 36 from one overanxious grower.

"They spent a couple of days alphabetizing all the petitions, and during that time they noticed there were indeed duplicates inside the full petition," foundation spokeswoman Teresa Eliason said.

Hale County farmer Tommy Applewhite, president of the recall organization, said he was satisfied with the results, but disappointed that some late petitions weren't accepted. He acknowledged that duplicates damaged his effort.

"That's what hurt us more than anything, but we sent out four mailouts, so we knew there were going to be some duplicates," Applewhite said.

Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley successfully forced a recall election and ejected the program a year ago.

But farmers in the southern Rolling Plains around San Angelo and the South Texas Winter Garden around Victoria have seen anti-foundation petition efforts fizzle.

"As far as we're concerned right now, we did best we could and we came very close," said Don Lyles, another South Plains opponent. "(Foundation backers) said that if the program was bad enough, that 40 percent would not hard to gather. We came close, so obviously it did have very large problems, even by their own measure."

The foundation can't celebrate quite yet. The Texas Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the foundation's appeal of a district court ruling last summer that the foundation's method of collecting assessments in mid-growing season is unconstitutional.

If the Supreme Court finds the foundation's collection methods unconstitutional, it would invalidate the entire program.