Med School Land Buy is Center of Latest Mayoral Race Attacks

              Med School Land Buy
Is Center of Latest
Mayoral Race A ttacks
By EVANGELINE TOLLESON
Journal Staff Writer
Mayoral candidates Bill Hanna
and Don Hathaway created another
series of personal attacks and
charges of dishonesty Wednesday,
with heated comments centering on
the proposed parking lot acquisition
at LSU Medical Center here.
Hathaway's newest attack on Han-na
comes from an advertisement
which says that Hanna was selected
to the Louisiana Board of Super-visors
through the political influence
of Shreveport businessman Gus Mi-jalis,
who is an active supporter of
both Hanna and Gov. Edwin Ed-wards.
The advertisement said
shortly after Hanna's appointment,
the Board of Supervisors "voted in
favor of purchasing land for a park-ing
lot from Gus Mijalis for
$1,490,000."
The Board of Supervisors is a
state-financed group which directs
activities of the LSU system and
requests needed funds from the Loui-siana
Legislature.
Hanna responded to the advertise-ment
during a joint appearance with
Hathaway at the South Shreveport
Kiwanis Club and later with a press
conference. "Neither I, nor the LSU
Board of Supervisors had anything to
do with the selection of or payment
for the Mijalis property in question,"
Hanna stated. "Don Hathaway's ads
to the contrary are false and repre-sent
a deliberate distortion of the
facts."
The Ford dealer said that Hath-away's
"obvious false advertising"
on the issue is "yet another example
of the difference between us. While
we have hit hard on the issues of fact,
records and performance, he per-sists
in dealing with personalities,
untruths and political promises."
Hathaway, in response to Hanna's
statements, said that he did not un-derstand
what all the "hullabaloo"
was about. "My opponent has been
attacking my honesty and integrity
for months. He has called me a
politician and said that politicians
make decisions one way and busi-nessmen
another.
"The purpose of the ad was to
show that my opponent is a politician
and has been making political de-cisions
for years and that according
to the minutes of the LSU Board of
Supervisors on Dec. 4,1976, he made
a political decision that later re-sulted
in a business deal for one of
his business and political as-sociates."
The issue has caused so much
uproar that even Gov. Edwin Ed-wards
has commented on the matter.
When asked at a press conference
Wednesday evening whether the
Board of Supervisors was respon-sible
for selecting the property
leased by Mijalis, the governor re-plied:
"Bill Hanna had nothing to do
with that decision. The Board of
Supervisors had nothing to do with
that decision." He said the only thing
the board did was to file an ex-propriation
suit for the attorney gen-eral's
office. The suit is against Mrs.
Bessie Harman Barrow and Mrs.
Sidney Harmon Peacock, owners of
the 10-acre tract of land in question.
Minutes from the board's meeting
on July 28, 1978, state that it was at
this time that the supervisors author-ized
a request to the attorney general
to begin the proceedings.
Hathaway's advertisement does
not say that the board was involved
in the selection of the site, but only
that the supervisors voted in favor of
purchasing the land. Hathaway said
that because Hanna and Mijalis are
business associates and friends,
Hanna should have abstained on the
vote.
The advertisement said that Han-na
was selected for the board "with
the political influence of Gus Mi-jalis,"
but Hanna said "Gus Mijalis
didn't have anything to do with it."
Hanna said he supported Bennett
Johnston in the governor's race
against Edwards. When asked why
Edwards selected him for the board,
he said, "I would hope it was because
of my interest in LSU and my ability
to perform."
The Board of Supervisors recom-mended
that money be appropriated
to solve the medical center's parking
problem after officials at the medi-cal
center expressed the need for
parking space, but the Facility Plan-ning
and Control Office of the Gov-ernor
of the state of Louisiana chose
the land site, according to Mac Grif-fith,
spokesman for the LSU Medical
Center here.
"In 1975, a committee (at the med-ical
center) was formed to evaluate
and assess the needs;" Griffith ex-plained.