Show Opinion 18 The Herald Journal Logan Utah Thursday April 5 1984 Our View Commissioners should govern according to law We’ve said it before and we’re saying it again: Present Cache County Commissioners seem to have a knack for disregarding the rules and procedures required of their office The end result of commissioners’ disregard for those rules in connection with repairs to the Hog Hollow bridge north of Avon is not yet known the county attorney’s investigation into alleged violations of bidding laws and nepotism is continuing Regardless of how that investigation ends however it’s obvious something is not quite right in the commission’s approach to the project And the commission could have avoided charges of wrongdoing by being more of a stickler in following procedures Commissioner Charles Shelton admitted last week the commission could have been “tighter” with paperwork on the repair That is an understatement There seems to be no official contract for the job a “change-order- ” reducing the amount of work contracted to Bartlett Construction Co is still unsigned two months after the fact and there is no mention in commission minutes of the initial decision to repair the bridge A recent letter to the editor called the commission’s idea of an open meeting “driving around with the windows open” There appears to be a grain of truth in that Cache County maintains some 800 miles of roads and almost every week the commission spends several hours inspecting those roads It’s impossible to say how many decisions are made on those tours It is certain that at least one — repairs to Hog HojlMr bridge — was made The decision should have been Tidisilited and approved in open meeting it was not Commissioner Dean Smith said he did not know what the county’s costs on the Hog Hollow bridge were Commissioner Owen Yeates considered it “routine maintenance” and Shelton called the bridge repair an “emergency Thailand now imports its heroin WASHINGTON — Thailand has of the notorious measure” Not only do commissioners appear confused about the need and cost of the repair they definitely seem confused about laws Shelton said he thought a job had to be $40000 before it is bid Utah law says $12000 What makes the Hog Hollow incident even more troubling is the commission’s laxity in a situation with so many potential conflicts of interest Shelton’s son Lynn was not only an employee of Bartlett Construction but signed receipts for materials received from his father’s employer Johnson’s Construction Co This is not the first time The Herald Journal has editorialized against the commission’s lack of sensitivity for rules and procedures Our past complaints have centered on commissioners’ penchant for excluding the public from their discussions and actions Items not listed on meeting agendas have been discussed anyway commissioners have gathered early before the regularly scheduled commission meeting and decisions appear to have been made on those “road trips” Open meetings laws bidding procedures and other rules and regulations exist to protect the governed And when followed they also protect the governors To ignore them places everyone in peril It’s time for the Cache County Commissioners to begin paying much more attention to that fact and to recognize that Cache County Corporation is not their private corporation but a subsidiary of the public It is the public’s business they are conducting wholly-owne- Golden hill the untamed region of Triangle Southeast Asia that for the past two decades has supplied tons of heroin to the world’s junkies The Thais have finally gotten tough on dope traffickers In fact with the encouragement provided by US financing and expertise the Thai government has cracked down so severely on drug exporters and opium-poppgrowers that Thailand is now a net importer oi heroin The 35 tons of opium produced in the country last year — half the amount produced in 1980 — weren’t enough to satisfy the needs of Thailand’s estimated 500000 heroin addicts — roughly 1 percent of the population Production and refining of opium into heroin are now largely confined to Burma which produces about 500 tons of opium a year Laos the third leg of the triangle accounts for about 50 tons a year On a trip to Thailand my associate Dale Van Atta visited the dangerous area where Thailand Burma and Laos meet He talked with border guards slipped into Burma briefly and talked with intelligence sources in Chiang Mai and Bangkok Here’s what he learned —In bloody battles fought in January 1982 the Thais managed to push the 3000-ma- n army of drug warlord Chang Chi-facross the border into Burma Both sides suffered casualties —The expulsion of Chang effectively ended the local domination of mercenary armies in northwestern Thailand As I reported five years ago these drug traffickers had become so brazen that they almost succeeded in a plot to kill four US congressmen who went to the Golden Triangle on a trip news-gatherin- g : u d fact-findin- office The record shows the president argued he was sovereign like King George the Third and above the law Hitler was 'Watergate' To the editor: It appears someone made a difficult problem for the editor Why? Didn’t he print it the way city hall wanted it? Did he print too much of the story or too little? Editors in Russia are censored also and must print it the way the party wants it Freedom owed a debt of gratitude to a free press and courageous reporters who dig out the facts and tell the whole story like it is It was due to the thorough work of reporters and a tough-minde- too! The minutes handed to The Herald Journal four days after the news article by Cornish are scrambled inaccurate and like Nixon's tapes incomplete with parts missing The information give to The Herald Journal by my wife and myself is not complete because space and time would not permit But it is rcurate Only a small part of it was printed There is a little Watergate going on in Cornish constitutional d judge that a president of the United States was turned from Evan O Koller Cornish Quotes “I am Dorothy Judy Garland was in one of my dreams and said to me ‘This part was mine I know you’ll play it well'” — Fairuia Balk the actress who will play Dorothy in movie “Oz” the new high-tec- h The $20 million Walt Disney production is based on the three books by Oz creator L Frank Baum (Time) “There has never been a sensible explanation by Moscow of why it refuses to renew its ties with Israel It can only be because of the Soviet Union’s irrational hatred of Jewish people” — Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir “Bing is stiil very much a part oi my me i cared for him since I was 19 Now I want to And I share him with people can’t stop wanting to do that” —Kathryn Crosby Bing's widow who recently gave away thousands of autographed copies of her book “My Life With Bing” to customers of a cleaning company for she which has done national commercials “Like Jack Anderson Merry-go-roun- 6 d the last four years the Thai government has succeeded in cutting by half the acreage of poppy fields in Thailand —In y Letters to the Editor A redrawn the boundaries roving wolf Castro’s Cuba looks to its peave-lovin-g neighbors with hungry eyes and a sharp teeth” —President Reagan speaking to a group of some 200 Cuban Americans He said those who link military aid and human rights are “naive or downright phony” and accuse his critics of assisting Marxist takeovers in Central America g —The Thai crackdown is a joint effort with Drug Enforcement Administration agents “We have pushed all active refineries back to Burma” a US official in Chiang Mai boasted “Our intelligence is pretty good so they don’t last long if they start up in Thailand” —Chang and the other dope traffickers are still a threat Thai government informants have been buried alive drawn and quartered and suffered other grisly deaths When the Thais offered a $23000 reward for Chang’s capture he countered with an offer to pay cash for killing Americans In 1980 a DEA agent’s wife was gunned down in Chiang Mai —Much of the heroin that comes out of the triangle still travels through Thailand But an American official in Bangkok noted that Thailand does a better job at interdiction than the United States does within its own borders A single seizure usually brings in more drugs than a statewide DEA agent is likely to see in his entire career In fact the week Van Atta was there the Thai government seized 265 kilograms of heroin from a single shipment — worth $500 million in the United States It’s only fitting that the United States has taken a major support role in the Thai crackdown on heroin A classified DEA report blames the long American presence in Southeast Asia for creating both the need and the greed that nurtured the Golden Triangle in the first place Another DEA report noted that “many US armed forces personnel returned from the conflict in Vietnam not only with heroin habits but also with the knowledge of where to purchase heroin and smuggle it into the US” Unfortunately the opportunity is still there “An interested party can easily obtain a kilogram of injectable heroin in Bangkok where established detailed or complicated contacts with distributors are unnecessary” a DEA report notes And a kilo of heroin bought for $15000 in Bangkok would wholesale for more than $200000 in New York and bring in upwards of $2 million in street sales Headlines and Footnotes: James Watt the easily recognizable former secretary of the Interior was spotted at a Washington supermarket trying to enter by the exit door — which promptly swung open at him As he extricated himself form the aggressive door Watt remarked to his wife “I’m always going in where I’m not supposed to” —Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige who ordered his staff to write better simpler English is concerned with quantity as well as quality The department’s chief flack was granted an award for cutting number of press releases from 1200 in 1982 to 850 last year The award was announced in a press release Vin Weber has a —Rep standard opener for speeches outside his district and it usually disarms his audience “Even though I represent the congressional district with the highest number of turkeys in the nation” Weber begins and goes on from there © 1984 United Feature Syndicate Inc By the way how’s your weather? My phone bill is higher these days for two reasons: One reason is the weather The other reason of course is the government’s masterstroke of creating a competitive phone system that miraculously costs more than a monopoly My monthly phone bill has increased 40 Bill Hall The Lewiston Tribune percent since the government saved me from Ma Bell Similarly I had more flights out of this town at less cost before the government decided to save me from the airline industry by deregulating it Typically the government regulators got it backward They should have kept the airline industry tied up and left Ma Bell alone The other reason our phone bills have always been higher than need be is the weather — or more accurately curiosity about the weather We waste part of call discussing almost every the irrelevancy of far away weather “How’s the weather there?” I invariably conask my mother during It’s also a telephone way of being together Maybe there isn’t that much to report But you haven’t seen the old girl in months and you just want to be with her for a while — a while longer than it takes to relate the scant amount of news you have “Not bad” she says “a little chilly maybe How’s the weather there?” “Fine” I answer with that mastery of descriptive words so common to people in my profession “It’s fine here too” she counters in a choice of words that shows where I picked up this knack I have for the language “That’s good” I say as the meter ticks on the phone “Yes” she says “that’s good” And another buck goes down the drain all on pretty ordinary weather Every phone call like every television news show must have a weather report It’s a way of filling space between the things you called to say the time when you re thinking When cats are just being together they rub against each other and purr Pigeons coo Horses snort Mom and I hardly ever snort at each other though we do sometimes sort of purr We do sometimes sort of coo And we snuggle up against each other by long distance That requires words though practically any words will do “How the weather there?” I coo “Fine” she purrs” A reader tells me that his mother in Oregon is so given to weather purring on the phone that during one call she r neglected to mention that the before wife his had shot the neighbor night But she did report that they’d had a lot of rain lately long-distan- long-distan- versations An airplane is nothing compared with the speed of the telephone in bringing two people together What a magic carpet But the carpet is propelled by words It takes words to visit someone by phone whether you have anything to report or not You can t just hang on the phone and wheeze at each other When you call up just to be with someone just to linger on the liae with them some conversation is required next-doo- I i However weather purring doesn’t explain talking about distant weather with total strangers People I’ve never met (and some I never want to meet) call me long distance on some newspaper matter And though they have no intention of visiting this town any time soon if ever they invariably ask “How’s the weather there?” “Fine” I say “Really?” trigued they say incredibly “A little warm maybe but “That’s good” they say” in- fine” I say “Yes” I say that’s good” We lope along like that at God knows what cost per minute proving that everybody talks about the weather on the telephone but nobody really gives two hoots in hell about it Why do we do that? I think it’s a hollow way of trying to ingratiate yourself with someone you barely know a way of greasing a conversation with the ooze of false concern We used to do the same thing in this society with family questions but that’s become trends: risky given recent marital “How’s the missus?” “She ran off with her gynecologist to Colorado” “Sorry to hear that But how's the weather in Colorado?” “Fine She tells me it’s fine” It’s time to liven up these calls It’s time to lie if necessary: “How’s the weather there?” “It’s 24 below the cruelest spring we’ve ever had The glacier is wiping out what little of the town we had left after the flood and the tornado” “That’s nice How’s the missus?” “Fine” r |