AN “A” FOR BIG D

Thomas W. Luce III is a formidable man, but you’d never guess it from looking at him. He’s slight, with a face that’s nearly devoid of emotion and a short haircut that betrays the fact that he attended the Virginia Military Institute and graduated from SMU Law School.

Despite the low profile of the founding partner of the law firm of Hughes & Hill, Dallas businessman Ross Perot says that Luce is the unsung hero behind much of the grueling work that went into getting the Texas Legislature to approve the state’s education bill (and the $4.6 billion tax bill that will help fund it). The bills were passed in a special session in July.

Luce, 43, one of Perot’s close friends and an attorney for Electronic Data Systems, was asked by Perot last December to act as chief of staff and project director for the Governor’s Select Committee on Public Education, which was established to find out what’s wrong with the Texas public school system and to recommend ways of improving it. Perot, as head of the committee, was in the limelight, but he needed strong workers.

Luce says that the toughest and most persistent problem he encountered in his work was explaining the committee’s purpose and recommendations to legislators-“leading them through the process so that they could be assured that we had met with experts in education and with educators and parents all over the state.”

He says that the people who made that job easier were the ones who rose above party politics to support a bill they believed was in the best interest of all Texans. He ticks off some of their names: Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Linus Wright, who at one point supported a bill that would result in the DISD losing some state funding; Rep. Bill Hammond, R-Dallas; Rep. Lee Jackson, R-Dallas; Rep. Paul Ragsdale, R-Dallas; Sen. O.H. “Ike” Harris, R-Dallas; Sen. Oscar Mauzy, D-Dallas; Sen. Bob McFarland, R-Arlington; Forrest Smith, president of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce; and Bill Solomon, chairman of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

When asked if his committee was forced to use extra pressure to convince some legislators to support the bill, Luce demurs, but he doesn’t deny that legislators with political and financial debts were easier to convince than those without debts.

“When we were faced with a situation where a legislator was uncertain what he was going to do,” Luce says, “we picked up the phone, called the leaders in those cities and asked them to call their legislator and ask him to vote for the education bill. But you know, that’s democracy. That’s people voicing their opinions.”

That’s not exactly the way outspoken Republican Sen. John Leedom of Dallas sees it. He refused to support many recommendations proposed in the education and tax bill and maintains that both were passed in haste so that all the Democrats would have time to get to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. He adds that he didn’t feel particularly pressured to support the bill because he sees himself as independent.

Another aspect of the education bill that isn’t kosher, Lee-dom says, is the fact that members of the Legislative Education Board (who will make recommendations to Gov. Mark White for appointments to the education board) are all Democrats.

Luce says he doesn’t understand Leedom’s objections. “I feel like the education bill was something very important to the future of Texas, and for something that was so important, legislators should have risen above partisan politics and supported issues like teacher competency testing. There is no doubt that our education system was in need of drastic reform, and we proposed dramatic reform. I’m sure that made it difficult for the legislators, but it was something that had to be done.”