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Show Political Necks in Danger THE Salt Lake county commission three-ring political circus has reached a stage where It Is threatening W P A employment In the county. Because of a political squabble In county affairs, necessary engineering work on W P A projects may not be carried out on schedule and, as a result, projects may either be shut down or not started, thus throwing W P A workers out of employment To keep the record straight, there has as yet been no disruption of W P A projects and there is no immediate threatof disruption. Despite alarmist reports, the county's fulF quota of men are working on W P A Although there are almost a thousand eligible workeri not assigned, their lack of W P A employment is due to an insufficient quota and not to lack of projects. The state W P A quota for March Is set at 13300 men. The last report showed 13,437 working in the state, 3991 in Salt Lake county. There Is then no Immediate danger of the closing down of projects due to the county political squabble over engineering work. But, there Is plenty of future danger. Much engineering engi-neering work must be done this month If projects are to continue uninterrupted. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, although the W P A has been able to carry on projects without interruption, recently re-cently there has been considerable delay and trouble over completion of essential engineering engineer-ing work. It Is perhaps significant that there was no trouble over engineering work on W P A projects proj-ects prior to 194a Last year everything went along smoothly. The trouble has all arisen since the development of a political squabble between two county commissioners on the one hand and the third commissioner and the county surveyor on the other. In drawing up the 1940 budget, the two commissioners com-missioners reduced the surveyor's budget from $23,000 to 113.000 and deprived him of his official offi-cial county car. The commissioners made the reduction as an economy move and also on "the supposition that the surveyor's office could . get along very well oa a smaller budget and without a car At the time the surveyor declared the reduction re-duction would cripple his staff and make continued con-tinued efficient operations Impossible. Oddly, one of the commissioners who two months ago voted for the budget reductions was quoted Thursday as saying: The surveyor has all the work he can handle, and apparently is unable . to keep the engineering up to date on all the ' little projects scattered around the county." . That sounds as If perhaps the surveyor does need his car to get around to the projects, and does need a $22,000 budget so that he can keep up with his work-However, work-However, the question of right and wrong In the county political squabble is beside the point of this editorial. The Important issue Is that such a- political squabble must not be permitted per-mitted to disrupt the county's W P A employment employ-ment program, which it la now threatening to do. County officialdom can squabble to their hearts' content and the public will pay very little attention to them. But let the squabble result in a shutdown of W P A projects or In-' In-' creased costs to the taxpayers and there will be a howl that will shake the rafters of the city and county building. So squabble or no squabble, both sides In the row had better find some way to prevent the dispute from disrupting the W P A employment em-ployment program in the county if they want to save their political necks. |