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Show TheSalt LakeTribune OPINION MEPUBLIC FORUM, AA-2 BEREADER ADVOCATE, AA-2 Bag TO, SUNBAY ROLLY REPORT, AA-3 JANUARY24, 1999 OUR VIEW The Salt Lake Tribune’s Editorial Position Prepare Bridges for Quake The Utah Departmentof Transportation’sinterestin fortifying 25 bridges on I-80 between State Street and Parleys Canyonis taking a reasonable and prudent approachto a real problem. A preliminary study shows that the state could reinforce the freeway bridges for about $4 million to better resist earthquake damage and keep them functioning for 15 years, until UDOTplans to rebuild that stretch of freeway. While not exactly cheap, $4 million beats the economic costs of not having the highway running becauseof severe damage in an earthquake. UDOTestimates that a major quake (magnitude-7) would cause $170 million in damage to I-80 between State Street and Parleys, including added fuel and driving time for motorists. With retrofitting the 25 bridges, this dropsto $17 million. Savings also are significant even in a moderate (magnitude-5 to -6) quake, from $25 million to $200,000 with retrofitting. The differential is significant enough to justify the cost and effort. While no one knows when the Salt Lake Valley will next experience a ma- jor earthquake, experts know onewill surely come — and probably soon. Geologically, the area is earthquake prone, has beenthesite of periodic major quakes andcurrently is overdue for one. This proposed expenditure is not flippant, but an exercise in stewardship of public resources. It is akin to buying insurance.In this case,life insurance. Just as death will come one day, so too will a significant earthquakerock the Salt Lake Valley. Like death, it is a question of when,notif. The UDOTcost saving estimates of retrofitting are evident in California’s experience in two earthquakes during the past decade. The LomaPrieta quake that rocked the San Francisco Bay area in 1989 — the one that caused the collapse of the double-decked 1-880 in Oakland in which motorists caught on the lower road were crushed — caused about $8 billion in damage,including $2 billion to the transportation system. Conversely, highway collapses caused only 2.5 percent of the more than $20 billion in damage resulting from the 1994 Northridge quakethat shook Los Angeles, where bridges had beenretrofitted. UDOT’splansforretrofitting the I80 bridges make sense. Superfluous Reform A legislative bill that would force Utah's 23,000 public school teachers to take college courses andparticipate in other educational activities to retain their state licenses is harmless enough, but superfluous. House Bill 6, sponsored by Rep. Richard Siddoway, R-Bountiful, would mandatethat teachers be involved in “professional developmentactivities” and workat least three years in ‘“educational employment” during each Teachers receive pay raises on the basis of seniority and continuing education — the same thing Siddoway’sbill would mandate. Moreover, ever since lawmakers adopted teachercareer ladders in the 1980s as an education reform, they have offered higher pay for teachers who take on extra education-related five-year interval to retain their state lic education system, the Utah Education Association and other teacher teaching certificates. This measure sounds good. It is aimed at improving teacher quality andensuring that teachers remain cognizant and excited aboutthelatest innoyationsof their profession. Everybody, from President Clinton on down, wants to improve teacher quality. No one,in fact, argues against improving teacher quality. The only question is whether this bill, if enacted, would effect this. Already there are are plenty of inducements for teachers to do this sort of thing. Oneofthe biggest is money, the same thing society believes improves most everything. Utah's 40 local schooldistricts use salary schedules to pay teachers. responsibilities and upgrade their talents. Colleges and universities, the pub- unions offer plenty of courses, semi- nars and other professionalactivities to keep educators abreast of their trade. Most teachers take advantage of someorall of these things. If they did not, many wouldnot be offered. ‘There may be a few who spurnthe opportunities and inducements. For them, the Siddoway bill would be helpful. Yetifit is passed, there is no reason why lawmakers should not accompany this action by repealing career ladders and tossing out the professional development component of salary schedules, since it would make these superfluous. Curb Prison Growth Most Utah political and civic leaders like growth andclaim it is inevitable, a given, However,thereis one area where state officials are exploring ways to curbit This 1s prison population, andit is about time. Penal officials estimate that Utah's prison population will jump by10 percentthis year. For the past 12 years, the incarceration rate has risen 87 percent, compared to an increasein the crimerate ofonly 7 percentin the sameperiod. Sincetherising prison populationis not reflective of rising crime, it means police are arresting more people, and more of them are going to prison, either because of convictions for crimes mandating prison or because convicts have violated conditions of probation or parole. To address this disparity, Utah's Departmentof Corrections has recently released a report calling for less costly strategies for managing offenders than simply adding them to the prison population. comes to throwing the book at crimi- No one’s name wasinvoked moreof- ten by the House managers or by the White House defenders. Nooneelse had a closer relationship over a longerperiod of time with both the president and Monica Lewinsky. No one else could do more to resolve the legitimate doubts senators may have about the case against the president. Thereare those — including some sen- ators in both parties with whom I've spo- ken — who maintain that the outcomeof this trial is foreordained and there’s no reason to delaya verdict. The possibility of 12 senators of the president's own party voting to removehim from office, when large majorities of the public tell pollsters they want him to remain,is so remote, it’s time “to end the charade,” they say. Even if Republicans controlled 67 of the 100 Senate seats — rather than the 55 they actually have — the case that has been made maynot bestrong enough to assure the required two-thirds majority. They maybeproved right. But if the presidentis to be acquitted,it is impor- tant — if possible — that it not be by a party-line vote. The House impeachment process was damaged by the widespread public perception thatit was, at bottom, an exercise in partisan power, engineeredby the majority Republicansover the protests of the Democratic minority. That is in my judgment a distorted view; the last 25 or 30 House Republi- cans to declare themselves on impeach- THE WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP ment were motivated — so far as I can tell — not by animus toward the president or pressure from their peers, but rather by their belief, after much soulsearching, that his actions were serious enoughfor him to standtrial. But the worst outcome in the Senate would be another party-line verdict. It would convince somevotersthatthis had been a Republican witch hunt, and oth- ers that Clinton would have been convicted, were it not for the obdurate refusal of the Democrats to face facts. The residue would be undiluted bitterness — which was oneadditional reason, beyondrevulsionat his,abuse of his high office, that some of us thought Clinton should have resigned last August when he admitted having lied to the American people. Butthat moment has passedinto history, along with all the times earlier in 1998 when hecould have dealt with his situation in a straightforward way. Now we are left with a vexing case. The hours of argument bythe opposing attorneys brought about onesignificant change. Polls say the public is convinced Clinton lied to the Kenneth Starr AUSTIN, Texas — President Clinton has a thoroughly bad idea. This is sur- UTAH'S INDEPENDENT VOICE SINCE 1871 PUBLISHER Dominic Welch EDITOR James B. Shelledy KEARNS-TRIBUNE CORPORATION,143 §, MAIN ST, SALT LAKE CITY, 4111 MOLLYIVINS isting record — the transcripts and videotapes — becauseClintonis unlikely to testify even if invited by the Senate and Lewinskyis not a witness on whom any sensible person would rely. But the second charge — the obstruction of justice count — has emerged as a moresubstantial indictment thanitfirst appeared. The evidence is “circumstantial,” as Rep. Asa Hutchinson, whopre- sented the case to the Senate, acknowl- edged. But the narrative he puttogether was one the White House lawyers never entirely managed to erase. The central — and equivocal — steps in that narrative all involve Betty Currie She was Lewinsky’s inside ally, the one who retrieved and hid the president's gifts to the former intern, the person who enlisted Vernon Jordan in the job search. She wastherecipient of the pres- ident’s comments — We were never alone, right? She cameon to me, right? — that are the closest thing the prosecutors have to a smoking gun on this charge. If Currie can convincethe senators by her testimony that she was not used by the president in a cover-up, I believe there are Republicans who would vote for acquittal. If her testimony — when confronted with evidence such as her cell-phone call to Lewinsky, which was not known when Currie appeared before the grand jury — casts doubton the president’s case, some Democrats might have second thoughts about protecting him. newspapers nowtend to identify with the upper class. This helps explain why, for example, personal finance coverage is ever expanding while aggressive reporting about corporate misdeedsis not. consequenceofa failure of wonkology. The problem is, he didn’t study it Reporters and editors downplay [mili- tary coverage] because, as a rule, they have never served in the military them- FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM our military 20 years ago, when Jimmy Carter was president and the Soviet generation of advanced weaponry that can prevail over this unnamedfuture en- Actually, there are parts of our military on which it would be a goodidea to “America remains supremely ready for war. No onein authority dares question this, and the public does not ask: to what end? This book is designed to pro- Unionwasa real threat spend more money. The problem is that no one in the administration has both- ered to figure out which ones they are. Meanwhile, the military carries on, trying to do everythingit used to do but now with fewer resources, with the unhappy result that it’s not doing anything well. Bill Greider, surely our most consis- tently valuable journalist, has a timely these issues: Fortress America. “When the Cold War ended, America did not demobilize, had after previous great conflicts,” writes Greider “True, the awesome U.S. military arse- nal was reduced in size, but it remains configured and equipped to confront a war of maximum scale, prompted by some large and unknowable threat that no onecan yet name. “The vast industrial structure re- quired to support and supply the armed forces underwentits own shrinkage and emy voke a muchlivelier discussion of big questions nearly everyone nowwishes to avoid. What exactly is the purpose of Fortress America nowthat our only seri- ous adversary has evaporatedintohisto- selves and havelittle feel or interest in its activities or its mind-set.” Let me point out that the sameis largely true of today’s political class. Except for the World WarII vets who are con- gressional lifers, there's practically no one under 60 in Congress who has done military service.The few who did serve are noticeably more willing to take on the military than those who fear being labeled “doves.” Why are Republicans talking about pursuing Star Wars —an anti-missile defense system of incredible cost, dubious effectiveness and minimal potential use ry? What are the real costs of imagining new foreign dangers simply to sustain the status quo? Aboveall, can the nation really afford the price of our owniner: — if the greatest threat to our security is tia?” make of our phenomenally expensiveold tanks is sinking them offshore to make One reason that the Big Questions have not been asked is because the media, as usual, have fallen down on the job. Scott Shuger, who writes about newspapers for the on-line magazine Slate, did a scathing article for Mother Jones magazine about media coverage of military issues, He points out that the story about themilitary-relatedsatellite business conducted in China by Loral also continues in place Space — whose chairman is a major Democratic donor — was news only be: with massive capabilities, still inventing and producing, still imagining a next able job of keeping up with the defense consolidation but Amongother causes for this signifi- elitism: “Reporters and editors at big advocates badideas for political reasons all the time — but becausethis oneis the The turkey in his State of the Union address wasthe berserkernotion that we need to spend $110 billion-plus on the military over the next few years in additionto the $260 billion we spend annually already. Adjustedforinflation, we are already spending as much as we spent on industry and the military. cant failure, Shuger fingers the media's prising not becauseit’s a bad idea — he new book out that examines precisely TheSalt Lake Tribune Jerry O'Brien (1983-1994) countwill have to be decided on the ex- dent's personalsecretary. enough. age successful completion of their sentences. ‘This will, of course, cost money. Yet it will be less expensive than building moreprisons It would be too simple to suggest that lawmakers have been too keen on creating felonies and judges too eager to sentence people to prison. Utah is no more eager than other states whenit of any comprehensive solution. John W, Gallivan (1960-1983) menttrial. She is Betty Currie,the presi- grand jury — probably because they saw him lie to them in his famous, fingerwagging claim he had not had sex with “that woman.” But Clinton’s lawyers have created a robust legal defense against perjury. That impeachment individuals in their charge to encour- other alternatives to prison for some JohoF. Fitzpatrick (1924-1960) DAVID BRODER U.S. Doesn’ Need to Increase Defense Spending used if officials are to reduce prison growth, Legislators and judges will have to look at homeconfinement and PAST PUBLISHERS WASHINGTON — Afterthe skillful lawyers’ arguments for and against Pres- ident Clinton,it is clear that the Senate needs to hear from atleast one witness to reach a fair judgment in the impeach- offenses. A prison spokesmansaid probation andparoleagents will have to measure their suecess on how many of their charges successfully complete probation or parole rather than in how many of these folks they return to prison. Now such agents are responsible for about 50 inmates. This ratio may have to be reduced if agents are expected to have time to work with the nals. Indeed, prisonofficials say Utah's incarceration rate is 43rd in the nation and the lowest in the western states. Utah's burgeoning prison population may not be due mostly to a lawand-order mentality, but officials will have to look at sentencing practices and the penalties laid out in law as part All kinds of things will need to be For a Nonpartisan Result, Put Currie on Stand cause the media have donesuch a miser | anthrax in the New York subways? Why are we designing phenomenally expen- sive new tanks when the best use we can fish reefs? Greider’s thesis is that our existing de: fenseinstitution is too large to maintain, too backward-looking in design and too ambitious in its preparations for future war, “Yetit is also too settled and powerful to think of undertaking fundamental change, so it feeds on itself, US forces are becoming dysfunctional militaryleaders must keep hacking away at their own institution (thus) the steady erosion of superb defense capabilities. |
