Sunday, November 19, 2000
Former governor brimming with
ideas
By Bill Whitaker
Mark White’s star has set over the
Lone Star political horizon. But in dusty Big Spring and beyond,
many folks still act as if the former Texas governor can walk
on water.
He just about did.
When the Colorado River Municipal Water
District marked its 50th anniversary in Big Spring last week,
Texas Gov. George W. Bush — drolly referred to as “the
president-in-waiting” by state Rep. David Counts — dispatched
his best wishes to the assemblage.
But it was White’s arrival that generated
electricity. Ivie Reservoir might never have been built had he
not cracked heads at the Austin-based Lower Colorado River Authority,
forcing them to scuttle fierce objections to a new dam upstream
for thirsty West Texans.
White, 60, loves telling how he locked Owen
Ivie, then the water district’s blustery, hard-headed general
manager, in an office with stubborn LCRA officials, ordering them
not to reappear till everyone had come to agreement over rights
to Texas’ Colorado River.
Ivie, 76, insists this account is embellished,
but White sticks by his tale, adding that the warring water officials
stayed locked up in the governor’s office several hours:
“I’d forgotten about them, to be honest. I didn’t
know they were still in there!”
Although White slipped from view after his
failed re-election bid in 1986, the Houston attorney continues
to pulsate with ideas. Texans may not always agree with him, but
White’s four-year administration was so rich with ideas as
to easily dwarf all of his successors combined, Democrat and Republican.
Some ideas got White into hot water, including
statewide testing for all public school teachers, old and new,
plus enacting a no-pass/no-play policy that outraged many a coach
but, thank goodness, forced schools to give a hoot about how they
were educating their athletes.
Assisted by Ross Perot in shaping his educational
plan, White today voices no regrets. If West Texas is ever to
attract high-tech industry, he warns, it will have to convince
high-tech leaders it can provide a solid education for their kids
— not merely terrific football programs.
He remains fervent about education, insisting
vouchers will only rob money from a public education system that
desperately needs it. And he offers his own version of putting
more cops on the streets, suggesting they mingle more within their
communities, preventing crime rather than just responding to it.
He also has intricate ideas for solving
Texas’ water crisis. He suggests East Texas, rich in water,
market it elsewhere in the state, “just like oil,” easing
risky city plans that rely heavily or solely on groundwater.
After a political season long on rhetoric
and short on solutions, it’s stimulating to find someone
bristling with so many ideas. But the white-haired Democrat has
no plans to return to Texas’ brutal political realm: “My
wife told me not to even think of it!”
Too bad. Even critics would concede that,
if nothing else, White at least found a good use for Ross Perot.
Contact associate editor Bill Whitaker
at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com.
His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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