A keta4 t9k4u., atomi Rep. Cofer faults Clements' wiretap bill By Sam Kinch Jr. Austin Bureau of The News AUSTIN — Rep. Lane11 Cofer, a Dallas, chairman of the subcommit- tee considering Gov. Bill Clements' wiretap bill, Thursday said she op- poses the measure because it is too expensive, ineffective, subject to abuse and misdirected. "To support a bill that, for all in- tents and purposes, has been totally discredited on its merits by the over- whelming weight of evidence is just plain unreasonable," Ms. Cofer said. "It would be unrealistic." The Dallas defense lawyer-legisla- tor said sanctioning wiretaps by state law enforcement officials would be a "wasteful and ill-advised expendi- ture of the taxpayers' money." Clements' bill proposes to allow Department of Public Safety officers to install any form of electronic sur- veillance devices after a designated district judge signs a permit based on probable cause of a narcotics offense. Tape-recordings of the secretly "bugged" conversations could then be used as evidence that an offense took place. Ms. Cofer has been a critic of the bill since before she was named chairman of the wiretap subcommit- tee by house criminal jurisprudence chairman Lynn Nabers, D-Brown- wood, who also opposes the legisla- tion. But Ms. Cofer said she made the additional public statement "to avoid any misinterpretation of where I stand on this bill." Her press remarks apparently were inspired by Clements' recent statement that, despite Ms. Cofer's distaste for the bill, the governor ex- pects it out of her subcommittee and the full committee soon. Ms. Cofer, however, has not given any indication that the bill will be re- ported out of subcommittee at all, or at least any time soon. She said' . . . only a small hand- ful of the wiretaps produce indict- ments and even fewer convictions" when used by the federal govern- ment and other states and they have been used less and less for the last eight years. The estimated cost of $74,000 per wiretap would be better spent to hire more Department of Public Safety narcotics officers, she said. "Local law officers will actively participate in the taping and overhearing of telephone conversa- tions," thus broadening the potential for abuse, she said.