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Show Monday, February 20, 2006 EDI ORIALS DAILY HERALD DoilySHerais | EDITORIAL BOARD | Albert J. Manzi, President & Publisher Randy Wright;Executive Editot Donald W. Meyers, Editorial page editor Nancy Hale, Public adviser OUR IN OUR VIEW Downthe path THIS PANEL FEELS Yu | WERE-IF You'LL PARDON THE EXPRESSION- EXTREMELY Ne GHTED.... ofsilliness ven a goed legislative * bills face the law of unintended consequences. ; Bad bills, however,, attract pee conse- ‘ quences magnets, Rep. Eric K. Tacherey 'sHouse ? Bill 281 is not a good bill and it is chogk full of risk to public access“ to information held by state and lo- . cal government. * ihe Kearns Republican's bill declares that the names, ages, address, phone numbersand Social Security numbersof juveniles are considered private records under the GovernmentRecords Access and ManagementAct. Hutchings crafted HB 281 as a way, purportedly, to keep pedophiles from huntingforvictims in the rosters of youthathletic leagues. . The idea thatchild molesters are downatlocal recreation offices submitting formal GRAMA requests for youth soccer,Little Leagueor basketballrosters is absurd.Thereis no record of any pedoing this,andit is unlikely that anyone bent on harming children is going to draw attentionto himself by askingfor a directory of children and then creating a pa. pertrail straight back to himself. «This effort by Hutchings is nothing more than another messagebill ina legislative session unusually information about patients. The newsletters schools send home would need to be sanitized to avoid mentioning the names of any students, Hutchings’sbill also would create a legal conundrum forstudent media. Could a school-sponsored newspaper or yearbook even be published, since the school would be barred by law from releasing the names of minors? And what about Amberalerts? Couldthe. state release the name, age and hometownof a minor who has been kidnapped even though the law saysit is private? If commonsense rules, then the bill will have created a double standard whereblocking someinformationis enforced while other informationis not. This over-broad bill does not adequately differentiate between what should be blocked and whatshouldn't: Under HB281, the Summit County Sheriff may not have beenable to announcethat Garret Bardsley was missingin the High Unitas.His identity would be a private record. Likewise,thebill would affect the information police canrelease abouttraffic accidents, murders and other crimes. Theseareall legitimate concerns. Hutchings did not doa thoroughanalysis of the long-term consequences ofhis bill. It just packed with such nonsense. Unfor- sounded good. tunately, HB 281 comes with a host ofpotential unintended consequences that would shut offa lot more information than athletic records. Forinstance,rosters of school athletic teams‘could be considered private records, since they contain the names ofstudentathletes. This law could preclude the school, as an agent of the state government, from producing a media guide for school teams. Forget about getting a printed program fur the schoolplay thatlists the cast and crew. That would be forbidden It's a poorbasis for public policy, _andthe Legislature should reject this bill along withall the other messagebills that are currently clogging the drain on Capitol Hill. Utah's current open records statute, GRAMA,was carefully thought through. Any amendments through the years havelikewise beencareful. And guess what? Thecurrentlaw alreadyprotects such things as home addresses andSocial Security numbers from unwarrantedpublic disclosure. Otherlawsalready provide minors becomes law. Therule could complicatelife for newspapers,especially the small weekly papersthat practically live and die on school news. High school sports coverage would be \difficult, if not impossible. Honor rolls could be discontinued unless the parents were the ones to submit the information, as happened to birth announcementsin the newspaperafter the HIPPA law forbade hospitals from releasing the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Division of Child and Family Service's confidentiality regulations. So what will Hutchings’sbill achieve? Nothing ofvalue.It takes a first step downa pathofcivic silliness never before contemplated by reasonable people. GRAMAhas served Utah well for 14 years. Legislators should notalterit just to go after a bogeyman. informationif Hutchings’s billever with privacy protection, such as MEDIA VOICES Blameaplenty, butjustfix it From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Feb. 16, 2006 early four years after Sept. 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. In those four years, between the destruction of the towers in New York and the breach ofthe levees in New Orleans, the federal government — despite creating a whole new departmentdelegated to ensure home—apparently learned nothing about disaster preparation. When Katrina subsided, more than 1,300 people were dead and hundreds of thousands of others were left homeless. ° On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff offered ener regret anda.weak defense of nt’s actions. Now, heome abigger problem: fixing the obviously dysfunctional ment he took over in 2005.Thatfix should include a serious look at whether Homeland Security is too large and needs to divest itself of some agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Michael Brown, head of FEMA Sap uo tne of the hurricane, has sours i argue fh habebe Chectotfs tur now,but the fact is he was prob- ably in office too short a time to turn HomelandSecurity into an effective department. Evenif the buckhas to stop somewhere, Cher_toff was hardly the only one to blamefor whatha f A 520-page report on the Katrinadisaster by a House special committee excoriates governmentofficials and agencies atall levels. The Teport says the federal government’'s biggest failure was _in not recognizing the likely consequencesof Katrina. Agencies merely reacted to a disaster when what was needed was planning. Many officials “ran aroundlike Keystone Kops” — in the words of Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn, — whenthey should have swung into action based on a plan. They knew the hurricane was coming and not just in the immediate days before landfall as Katrina plowed throughthe Gulf of Mexico, The ences of such a storm on the levees of New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast in general werewell known.Yet Officials at every level reacted as if they were as surprised as tl were on Sept.11, 2001. This time, let'sfix the problem so we're not surprised again by terrorists or a natural disaster. That has to be Chertoff’s first responsibility. DOONESBURY- Garry Trudeau 00e©)GPEN NEWSSERVICE. Grey EIN Utah onverge ofhistoric tax reform Jon M. HuntsmanJr. | t is time fora fundamental reform of ourstate’s tax code. As governor,I am looking outfor _ thebest interest of Utah residents, businesses GUEST and-education by seekQPINION ing a lower incometax rate witha flatter, fairer distribution of tax burden. In Utah, we have a uniquesituation where every pennypaid in incometaxes goes into the Uniform School Fund to payfor education. That revenue base is declining, becauseofa loophole-filled tax code. At the same tim: .e have becomethe nation’sfifth-fastest growing state with unprecedented educational needs. Weadvocate true reform: A tax code thatis simpler; one that provides for the needs of the.state consistently and from a broaderbase; and onethat is competi- tive with the states around us and compassionateto those bearing the burden. There's no reason wecan't make meaningful tax reform reality. Tam supporting HouseBill 354, now moving throughthe Utah State Legislature. This bill will lowerthe incomerate from 7 percent to 5 percent and remove sales tax on food, The essenceofthis reform means long-term, dependable revenuefree of the economicvolatility that our current system is beholdento. This instability impactsour children’s education, our families’ strength and our communities’ livelil |. The goal is to stabilize the tax base and make Utah more economically competitive. Thecritics look for winners andlosers, but the problem isn’t that simple. ‘The income tax reformweareseeking is not cosmetic. We're not talking about tax rebates and winning a popu- larity contest in November. I am not proposing a giveaway. Thereare plans out there that would simply drop the rate without addressing the deductions and othercritical components of our antiquated tax code.This is not true reform. This will notlenditself to longterm problem solving,but will only give rise to the possibility of a future tax increase to make up for whatwas lost. Weareat a time of opportunity where wecan truly makea difference in the overall well-being ~) ourstate's economicfuture. The tax codeis ready for an historic change and weareprepared to makethe changes, and the hard decisions thatwill better serve our To say that there are winnersor losers loneters interestas astate. by changing the system mieans that the current program is perfect. It is not. It is broken and must be fixed. DJonM. Huntsman Jr. is governor of the state of Utah. CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Cheney’s delay hardly national scandal ’m just glad he didn’t shoot Scalia. Well, everyone's entitled to one Quailgate joke, so that's mine. Althoughthe best one, occurring at the Monday White Housenewsbriefing, was only inadvertently funny: Reporter’s question to Scott McClellan, “Would this be much moreserious if the man had died?” This newsbriefing got famously out of control(as a psychiatrist, the groups Iran forinpatient schizophrenics were far morecivilized) over the new great issue of our time: Why was there a 14hourdelayin calling the press? Let’s pose a tyouthetical You're at a gatheringat a friend’s housein the country. You'reall playing touch football and, as you lunge to tag someone, you stumble andaccidentally barrelinto a would-be receiver running a crossing pattern and you knock him down, breaking a fewofhis ribs, maybe puncturing a lung and whoknowswhatelse. Whatdo you do? Youget him immediate help. Then you notify and tendto his . Then you try to calm the host andthe guests andtry to mitigate the damage you've caused. Now changethe hypothetical in just two ways.It’s not touchfootball but a birdshot accident, which makes it a bit more romantic and more comical. But that changes nothing about the correct reaction. Thenit turns out you're not just anybody,but the vice president of the United States. What do you do? If the victim is Alexander Hamilton — or Antonin Scali — this is an event with deep implications for the country andthe country needs to know aboutit immediately. But the manis neither. Heis a private citizen. Had he been shot by Joe Blow it would merit perhaps a three-lineitem in the local newspaper andbe entirely forgotten to history. So the storyis you, the vice president. Youshot him.But it was an accident, and the eventhas noeffect on national policy, nationalsecurity, national anything. Something happened involving the vice president that was interesting and unusual, butofno greatsignificance beyondthat. Do you notify the nationalpress right away?In his interview Wednesday with Brit Humeof Fox News, Cheney gave two explanations for the 14-hour delay. First, to give timeto notify the family. This is perfectly legitimate. You have done enough damage. You don't want to compoundit by having the man’s childrenfind out ontelevision that their father was shot. But they werenotified within a few hours on Saturday night. Why the overnight delay? Aoturacy, Cheney told Hume.Reports about Mr. Whittington's condition Saturday night werepreliminary and uncertain, Cheney wanted to wait until he knew something definitive. This is understandable,but not really justifiable. If the public had the right to knoweventually — something even Cheneydoes not question — that right is not dependentonthe firmness of the information. Cheney understandably wanted to controlthe situation, to know what he was dealing with, before having to confront the world about the accident. Perhapshealso wantedtogive the victim,the victim's family, his host and the other guests anovernight respite before the inevitable mediacircus arrived at their door. If there was sin against the public interest, it wasin thedesire to retain control over what wasa still-chaoticsituation.Butit is a minorsin. There was no cover-up, nothing to cover up. There was no scandal.It hardly merited the quite overwrought charges of excessive secrecy, imperial arrogance, abuseof powerand other choiceselections from thelexicon of Nixoniana, Secrecy? This was hardly an affair ofstate. Andit was hardly goingto be kept secret. Arrogance? The media laying these charges are the same media thatjust last week unilaterally decided thatthe public's right to know did not extendto seeing cartoons that had aroused half the world, burned a small part ofit and deeply affected the American national interest. Having arrogated to themselves the judgment of what a free people should be allowedto see regardinganissuethatis literally burning, they then goballistic over a few hours’ delay in revealing an accident with only the most trivial connection to the nation’s interest or purpose. Cheney gota judgmentcall wrong, for reasons that are entirely comprehensible. The disproportionate,at times hysterical, responseto thaterroris far less comprehensible. D Charles Krauthammeris a columnist with The WashingtonPost. |