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Government Family Plan

Cuttyhunk Island (pop. 46) is a hilly, isolated spit of land off Massachusetts. Naturally, the sense of community is strong. "Everybody's involved," says A.P. Tilton. He should know. Tilton was town auditor for a decade, and has been a water commissioner and a selectman since 1961. Indeed, every resident either works for town hall or is related to somebody who does. Under such circumstances, getting a sewer pipe fixed or a pothole filled should be no problem.

But it is. A 1962 Massachusetts conflict-of-interest statute forbids awarding any municipal contract to a relative of a government employee. Violations are punishable by fines up to $1,000. To clear the air, Selectman Alan Wilder (who is also on the board of health and the planning, cemetery, police and conservation commissions) last week asked the legislature in Boston to exempt Cuttyhunk from the antinepotism provision. "You can't get anything fixed," complained Wilder.

State bureaucrats advised the islanders to cool it. They pointed out that a reform goes into effect in two weeks that should permit small towns to keep municipal work all in the family. Tilton, a retired carpenter, was unmoved: "Why don't they just leave us alone? There are just too many laws, and we get caught in the middle."

No Complaints About the Food, Please

A man's home is supposed to be his castle. But his dungeon? Beginning this week, ten Albuquerque lawbreakers, instead of being sentenced to jail or to a toothless probation, are obliged to stay home every night. No police sentries are stationed outside, families are not required to snitch. Rather, confinement is enforced by remote control. Strapped to the ankle of each offender (mainly drunk drivers, all nonviolent adults on work-release) is a transmitter tuned in to a device on the home telephone. The phone in turn is connected to a computer downtown. It will monitor whether the electronically shack led prisoner strays more than a few hundred yards from his telephone. "Every morning," says Michael Goss, the local businessman who developed the contraption, "we'll give the probation officer a list of all their comings and goings."

The novel Albuquerque pilot program is the doing of a local judge. Says District Attorney Steven Schiff: "It ought to make everybody happy. Like a jail term, it keeps these people inside so they don't drive drunk." The operating cost of the contraption, $70 a month, will be paid by each plugged-in prisoner. Says Goss: "I think most people would pay to stay out of jail."

A Brahman Not Covered At Disney World, just to the west, animals talk and dance. At Cape Canaveral, just to the east, sophisticated guidance systems are nothing unusual. In this climate, a pregnant, two-year-old Brahman cow named Julieann last week managed to navigate at least 25 miles of unfamiliar Florida terrain and get back to her former home. "We've had dogs that have come back five miles or so," says Read Hayes, from whose ranch near Christmas, Fla., Julieann bolted, "but nothing like this."

Julieann was the least manageable of Sidney Kraftsow's 70 Brahmans. It was her terrific "craving for citrus fruit," says Kraftsow, that led her to leap over (and even limbo under) 4-ft. barbed-wire fences or bound across her 5-ft.-wide concrete cattle guard. "She was really a menace," he says. Fed up, Kraftsow sold the cow to Hayes for $350, a bargain price.

But Julieann had been away from home only a few hours when, at night in a driving rainstorm, she jumped out of her pen and over perhaps a dozen fences, crossed swamps and pastures and even swam across the Econlockhatchee River. Last Monday at dusk, 100 Ibs. lighter, she arrived back at Kraftsow's. "An incredible journey," says Kraftsow.

For her trouble, Julieann was ordered back to Hayes. Says he: "Maybe motherhood will settle her down." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.