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Show Section AA he Salt Lake Tribune OPINION PUBLIC FORUM/AA-2 @ READER ADVOCATE/AA-2 ROLLY REPORT Jim Hansen plays to extreme right with recent as- sassination joke/ AA-3 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER1, 1998 =e OUR VIEW The Salt Lake Tribune’s Editorial Position “Yes’ on County Reform On Tuesday, Salt Lake County voters should junk the commission form of county government and replaceit with an elected mayor and a nine-member council. The new government would be morerepresentative and provide a true separation of powers. The current governmentis headed by three commissioners elected at large. They serve as both legislators and executives; they create policy and they carry it out. lighting, snow removal). Critics of the plan complain thatit concentrates too much executive power in the handsof the mayor, when un- der the status quo those responsibilities are shared by the three commissioners. But that is not a common complaint in larger Utah cities, which operate under the samestructure. A single mayor will be more ac- countable to the electorate — the voters will know who to blame — and his Under the new government, those or her power will be checked by the would manage the executive depart- and enact a policy, Under the reform plan, a mayorwill have to persuade at least five council members to support a policy. Critics also argue that the new form of governmentwill be more costly to functions would be separated. The council would exercise all legislative and policy-making powers. The mayor ments, with the exception of those headed by other elected county offi- cials (assessor, district attorney, auditor, clerk, recorder, sheriff, surveyor and treasurer). The council would serve as a check on the power of the executive, and vice versa, as in the federal andstate governments. The council wouldpass ordinances, approve the budget, impose taxes and havethe final word on planning and zoning appeals. The mayor would have veto power, which the council could override with a vote of six members(two-thirds). For thefirst time, the people would have representation by geographical district on the countylegislative body. Six of the nine part-time council members wouid beeiected from equally ap- portioned districts to four-year terms. The remaining three would be elected at large to six-year terms. This design balances regional with countywideinterests. As a result, each voter would have a handin selecting four members of the council. This is particularly importantto citizens in the unincorporated area, for whom the county government provides not only general governmentfunctions(thejail, tax collection, health and social services) but municipal services (police, firefighting, garbage collection, street council. Besides, under the commission form, two commissioners can propose operate, since the nine-membercoun- cil will require a staff. The auditor has estimatedthat, under minimalstaffing, the transition will cost between $543,000 and $1 million, with ongoing annualcosts of $380,000 to $3 million. Assumingactualcosts fall betweenthose extremes, that’s serious money. But essentially the voters will be buying additional oversight of the county’s $500 million annual budget and policies by elected representatives. Despite its advantages, this is not the best possible reform proposal; that would be a consolidationofall 13 cities with the county government. That would save taxpayers moneyby eliminating wasteful duplication of bureaucracies. Unfortunately, voters have soundly defeated two previous at- tempts at consolidation. After repeated failed efforts to reform its governmentin the past three decades, Salt Lake County stands on the threshold of a new governmentfor a new century. Vote ‘‘Yes’’ on Tuesday. Vote for S.L. Library Bond The Salt Lake City Publie Library has served this community well for 100 years. Voters can lay the foundation for its second century by approving an $84 million bond issue on Tuesday's ballot. A positive vote would raise an estimated $52.7 million to design, build, furnish and equip a new, state-of-the- art main library building. It likely would be a six-story structure located on the southeast corner of 400 South and 200 East, on the same block but north of the current main library building at 209 E. 500 South. The current main library would be preserved for some future use — perhaps a museum or cultural center — but the rest of the structures on the block, including the Salt Lake County Jail, the Metropolitan Hall of Justice and two courts buildings, would be demolished in the next two years. The formercircuit court building must be razed to make wayfor the newlibrary. The courts moved earlier this year to the new Matheson courthouse. The jail will be emptied when a new one now under construction opens at 825 W.3300 South. In reality, then, the bond issue would finance not only the construction of a new main library but the first phasein the redevelopmentof the entire municipal block bounded by 200 Hast, 300 East, 400 South and 500 South. It would provide funds for the demolitions and to construct a $12.2 million, 600-car underground parking garage to be topped by a public plaza. Andit includes 3 million to install a new heating plant for this block and the historic City-County Building acrossthesireet. The jewel in the project would be the new main library. At 215, square feet, it would house not quite double the space of the current building, and it would be wired to serve as a true portal to cyberspace. Butin addition to improvingthelibrary’s capabilities in telecommunications and new media, it would be a much more user- friendly home to an collection of books and periodicalsin English and other languages. This is crucial, because a modern library must bring together both digitized and traditional sources of information. Rather than supplanting older sources of knowledge, the World Wide Web, to cite one example, feeds the hungerfor books, magazines and newspapers. That helps to explain why by far the largest number of people who visit American libraries today, about 81 percent of library patrons, check out books. By comparison, about 17 percent connect to the Internet at the library. Circulation has climbed about 4 percentat the Salt Lake City main library this year, and thoughthecity operates five satellite libraries, about 43 percentof the system’scirculation still passes through the main library. The library board studied remodeling and expanding theexisting building, which opened in 1964, but opted for new construction because the mechanical systemsofthe old building require upgrading or replacement, it was not designed for extensive rewiring, and it does not meet current earthquake codes. This $84 million bondissue will not come cheap.It will cost the owner of a $150,000 home $43.50 a year. And whenthelibrary opens, another $7 tax increase will be necessary to cover higher operating expenses. But the price of not building a new library is to deny Salt Lakers the knowledgethatis key to life in the Information Age. Note to Readers Six statewide propositions will ne pear on Tuesday'selection ballot. Tribune published its editorials on Propositions 4-6 in Saturday’s edition, Page A-10. The newspaper's positions on Propositions 1-3 will be published on Monday’s editorial page. TheSalt LakeTribune UTAH’S INDEPENDENT VOICE SINCE 1871 PAST PUBLISHERS John F, Fitzpatrick (1924-1960) John W.Gallivan (1960-1983) Jerry O'Brien (1983-1994) PUBLISHER Dominic Welch EDITOR James E. Shelledy KEARNS-TRIBUNE CORPORATION,143 S. MAIN ST, SALT LAKE CITY, 84111 Academics Heedlessly Plungeinto Clinton Debate WASHINGTON — When academics DAVID BRODER decide to becomeactivists, they sometimes bring badly needed wisdom and perspective to raging political debates. But whenthey plungein heedlessly, they CharlesL. Black Jr., whose 1974 book on risk looking ridiculous. Both sides wereon display last week at a hotel ballroom where three noted American historians — speaking for more than 400 of their profession — un- loaded a broadside condemnation of the impeachmentproceedings the House has voted te begin against PresidentClinton. THE WASHINGTONPOST WRITERS GROUP The rhetoric of their statement, read by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. of City University of New York, began on relatively calm note and built to a tantrum. “Although we do not condonePresident Clinton's private behavior or his subsequentattempts to deceive, the current charges against hirn depart from what the Framers saw as groundsfor impeachment. The vote of the House of P ives to conduct an op ed inquiry creates a novel, all-purpose search for any offense by which to remove a president from office,” it de- clared. The “unprecedented” steps of beginning a formal inquiry ‘are extremely ominous for the future of our political institutions. If carried forward, they will leave the presidency permanently disfigured and diminished, at the mercy as neverbefore of the caprices of any Coness... . We face achoice between preserving or undermining our Constitu- tion. Do we wantto esfablish a precedent his federal grand jury testimony, suborned perjury by others and obstructed justice. Are those — if proved — impeachable offenses? Yale Law Schocl professor but “‘a statement by historians speaking as historians.”” Schlesinger, who served in the Kennedy White House, struggled to maintain that dispassionate tone, but wound up sowiding at times like James Carville in cap and gown. Accusing independent counsel Kenneth Starr of being “Ameri- ca’s No. 1 pornographer,” he said, “We all lie all the time. Ronald Reagan lied repeatedly on Iran-contra. . . iy should this president be held more accountable than anyone else?” The one personclearly speaking as a scholar was the 89-year-old dean of American historians, Yale professor emeritus C. Vann Woodward. He readily concededthat “there can be honestdis- agreement’ about the Framers’ intent when they said impeachment should be reserved for bribery, treason and other “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But, hesaid, if it applied to illicit sex during White House tenure, more than half our impeachment is a good layman’s guide to the issue, says sex is not enough. In one of his hypothetical scenarios, he wrote that it was “preposterous” to imagine the impeachment threshold is low enough to catch a president for transporting a woman, ‘so the Mann Act reads, from one point to another within the District of Columbia for what is quaintly called ‘an immoral purpose.’ ” But Black displays an intellectual modesty far removed from the historians’ assertion that they know with cer- tainty what the Framers meantby “high erimes and misdemeanors.” He says that neither English legal usage from which the words came nor American precedents provide “unequivocalvalidation of any veryprecise view ofthe exact boundaries of the phrase’s meaning.” “Whatthehistory really says is that no historical impediment exists to a sensible, reasoned treatment, right now, of the problem of the meaning of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,” Black writes. The Founders clearly left that determination to the members of the House, and in all our history, they have voted bills of impeachment against only two presidents and 14 others, mainly federal judges. No president has ever been con- for the future harassmentof presidents and to tie up our governmentwith a protracted national agony of search and ac- presidents would have faced removal vieted and removed by the Senate and there is little reason to believe, at this What the historians seemed notably reluctant to recognize was that the charges the Judiciary Committee will juncture, Clinton will be thefirst. But the Houseis following the process ed the statement with Schlesinger, said it was “extraordinary” that so many of their colleagueshad signed on as soon as consider are not-the sexual misconduct cusation?” Sean Wilentz of Princeton, who draft- it was e-mailed or faxed to them.It was not partisan, Wilentz assured reporters, from office. which Clinton has acknowledgedbut the accusations, which he vehemently denies, that he committed perjury in his deposition before a federal judge and in set forth in the Constitution. This ten- ured trashing of Congress for meeting its responsibility says more about the state of the history profession than about the law ofthe land. Class dismissed. Last Minute Ads Are Just Blatant Electioneering WERTHEIMER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST As the 1998 congressional races head into their final days, the Republican and Democratic congressional party committees are pouring millions of dollars in hugeunlimited soft-moneycontributions into congressional races, ‘The moneyis being spent on TV ad campaigns running in ted House and Senateraces around the country that the political parties claim are “issue” ads, not campaign ads. ‘Thatis palpably false. Theads, pure and simple, are blatant electioneering ads being run for the clear purposeofdirectly influencing the outcome of Houseand Senate elections. And everyoneinvolved knows it. The i and Dy and their spinmeister lawyers, say the ads are legal. They are wrong. The use of soft moneyto finance these political party campaign ads violates existing Federal Election Commission rulings and has never been sanctioned by the courts. FEC rulings on this subject they march forward at record congressional levels with bald-faced soft-money illegalities. House Republicans led by Speaker Newt Gingrich are far and awaythe biggest 1998 players in thisillicit game. In to be covered by federal campaign financelawsit must contain express advecacy suchas ‘“‘vote for’ or “‘vote against” contesied House races around the coun- their ads must be treated as issue ads, try, they are conducting an estimated $25 million phony “issue” ad campaign ealled “Operation Breakout,” which they haveexplicitly stated is intended to pick up as manyas 25 additional House not campaign ads, no matter whatelse is seats. But the House Republicans are not alone. The other three political party congressional committees — the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Com- mittee and the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — also are i imillion-dollar “issue” ad campaigns this fall. Even a cursory examination of these ad campaigns quickly confirms that these are campaign activities, not issue discussions. Theads are runningin the heatof congressional campaigns, are targeted at contested House and Senate races, are the federal candidate named in the ad. The absence of these so-called ‘magic words,” the parties claim, means that said in the adsor involvedin the ad campaigns. The SupremeCourt, however, has never ruled that ads by political parties. or by their candidates, must contain “magic words” in order for the contributions and expenditures involved to be subject to federal campaign finance laws. The court, in fact, clearly recognized the differencesthat exist betweenpolitical parties and non-party organizations when it set forth a “magic words” test for ads by non-party organizations and non-candi- date individuais to draw theline between their campaign activities, which can be regulated, and their issue advocacy, which cannot. In Buckley vs. Valeo the court explicitly excluded political par- ties from its discussion ofthis line-draw- attacking or promoting the character political party to fund any ad that cox- and record of named federal candidates ing test because, it said, the activities of political parties “are, by definition, campaign related.” plicitly or implicitly urges voters to support or oppose a federal candidate. and are no different from the ads being run by the congressional candidates themselves, except that they are often more negative and nasty. The political ington politicians in recent months about the fundamental importance of the rule of law, But, it turns out, many Republi- state that soft money cannotbe used by a tains a federal electioneering message, which is defined as a message that exThe practice of using soft money to evade federal campaign finance laws has been growing for some time and exploded to new heights with the Clinton presidential campaign in 1996. But this year even the fig leaves of legitimacy have been dropped by thepolitical parties as parties have chosen to simply ignore the FECrulings that apply to them, rulings that have never been rejected by any court. The parties argue that their ad campaigns are perfectly legal because the Supreme Court has ruled that for an ad We haveheard lot of talk by Wash- cans and Democrats in Congress do not believe the rule of law applies to them whenit comes to raising and spending big money in American politics. Fred Wertheimer is president of Democracy21, a public policy group. |