Inside T onday Sports Big 12 selects new commissioner, page 10 Arts & Entertainment Daily Nebraskan film critics ™“™ pick Oscar winners, page 12 _March 27, 1995_ New task force to help NU be more efficient By Brian Sharp Senior Reporter 1 In an effort to make the University of Ne braska fit and trim, NU President Dennis Smith i has named a task force to eliminate administra- < tive excess. HI! nPAP||TC The announcement, which NU ntUCNIg came at a Friday meeting of NU Board of Regents, been met with full sup port — and confusion. The question is how far I the task force will go to cut j costs and exactly who will have the final say — or any 1 say — on what is cut. A statement included in a report to the re- i gents said there were 3,787 personnel in admin istration and operations, whose salaries make up 25.8 percent of the university budget. That is compared to 2,830 faculty members whose sala ries total 34.9 percent of the budget. Plea bargain possibility for Williams By Brian Sharp Senior Reporter Less than one week ago, Robert E. Williams came within three hours of his scheduled execu tion. Today, his lawyers are talking plea bargain as the courts grapple with who will represent Williams in future court hearings and who will pay. Vince Powers, one of Williams’ lawyers, has said Williams was prepared to plead guilty to the 1977 murders of Patricia McGarry and Catherine Brooks in exchange for commuting his death sentence to life in prison. The offer came after Williams’ scheduled execution was stayed because of possible juror misconduct in his 1978 trial. County Attorney Gary Lacey called the lat est action “a prayer.” But Friday afternoon, Lacey, Powers, repre sentatives from the public defender’s office and other officials met with Lancaster County Dis trict Court Judge Paul Merritt. A new question had arisen. County officials and Williams’ lawyers at first declined to comment on the meeting. Pow ers later said, however, that Williams’ represen tation was in question. Powers and co-counsel Paula Hutchinson were appointed by the federal courts, which See WILLIAMS on 7 “The university has made improvements in he way it does business,” Smith said in a itatement accompanying the announcement. ‘But it has not, in recent years, undertaken a comprehensive review of its administrative pro cesses.” Regent Charles Wilson of Lincoln said after the meeting that the task force would serve an idvisory role. Any recommendations would go to Smith, he said, and then be filtered through idministrators, the board and many other people. Regent Drew Miller of Papillion said that laving Smith on the committee was all the ipproval needed in most cases. Miller and Re cent Rosemary Skrupa of Omaha also are mem bers. But reducing administrative costs can’t be lone through analysis of business processes done, Miller said. Jobs will have to be cut, he laid, and more attention given to computers. Wilson said he expected the task force to jegin with general guidelines for an administra tive slim down and then get more specific about functions, offices, positions and departments. The problem is that the further such recom mendations go, they begin to conflict with the governance shared with departments and fac ulty. Regents were not clear on exactly how far the task force’s charge extended. Departments already go through practice reviews, where they are given a predicted bud get cut and asked to make accommodations. The exercise is meant to maintain efficiency. Miller said Smith’s task force sent the mes sage that those reviews were no longer doing enough given today’s restrictive budgets. That “squeeze on funding” is not going away, Wilson said, and will likely continue for an other 10 to 15 years. The 10-member task force also includes the followingpeople: John Angel, retired chairman and CEO of Guardian Life Insurance; Fred Luthans, UNL management professor; James McClurg, president and CEO of Life Sciences for Harris Laboratories, Inc.; John Oseth, UNK executive assistant to the chancellor; Julie “The university has made improvements in the way it does business. ” m DENNIS SMITH NU president Totten, UNO assistant vice chancellor for busi ness and finance and director of finance; Pamela Triolo, UNMC associate dean of the college of nursing; Lewis Trowbridge, president of Mammel and Associates in Omaha; James Young, vice president re-engineering Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha. Angel, who will serve as chairman of the task force, said the need for outside influences such as himself was needed. Universities are com peting in a market they’ve never seen before,he said—the business market. -1 Spring fung ____ Travis Heying/DN Taking advantage of Sunday’s warm weather, UNL student Dan Ryan tosses a Frisbee during a game of Ultimate Frisbee on East Campus. Boot camp bill would replace prison with push-ups By J. Christopher Hain Senior Reporter Some criminals in Nebraska could soon be doing push-ups and running obstacle courses instead of mopping prison floors and making license plates. Part of Gov. Ben Nelson’s crime bill, LB371, would create a boot camp prison for first-time, non-violent of fenders. Boot camps, or shock incarcera tion,are an alternative to prison where regimented physical training is com bined with education and rehabilita tion. Nebraska actually is jumping on the boot camp bandwagon late, said Steve King, planning/administration manager for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. The first boot camp prison was fr*startedin Georgia mT 98 Ji and since then, many more states have imple mented some form of the camps. King said boot camps had wide appeal because they served the inter ests of the public, the criminal justice system and the criminals themselves. The public probably will like the discipline of a boot camp, he said. “I think it’s seen as getting tough on crime,” King said. “It matches what the public wants to see.” Boot camps can help alleviate one of the biggest problems in criminal justice—prison overcrowding. “Where other states have started a boot camp, it has been an effective prison crowding release,” King said. The Nebraska penitentiary cur rently is almost 700 inmates beyond capacity, he said, and that number will only grow. A boot camp also is a money saver when compared toprison, King said. King said his office was working with Nelson’s office to get federal funds that may be available to the state. In terms of preventing offenders from returning to prison, however, boot camps have not been proven, to be much more effective than prison. Several studies, including one is sued by the National Institute of Jus tice in October 1994, have found that rates for criminals returning to incar ceration are similar for prison and boot camps. Nebraska’s boot camp would at tempt to include the benefits of the boot camp experience and improve offenders’ rates of return, King said.. “We’ve spent a lot of time looking at what works and what doesn ’t,” King said.' A |argc number of people who have successfully completed a boot camp program in other states, King said, descritedtheexpeftenceas positive. ported. “These individuals will spend a lot of time in class, as well as out doing push-ups or an obstacle course,” he said. King said the Legislature still needed to approve the boot camp pro vision of LB371 and fund the program before it could become a reality. • A boot camp provision was in cluded in Nelson’s crime bill last year, bid the bill failed to pass the Legi&la