There have been a lot of waves made lately over candidates who want to overturn the 17th Amendment and return the selection of US Senators to the various legislatures. Certainly, I believe the system of appointed Senators made a lot of sense. It allowed states to directly have a say in the affairs of the national government, contained the power of the political elites to a single house of Congress, and created a much more deliberative body that would act as a check on popular sentiment. All that said, I don’t think the genie can be put back in the bottle quite that easily.

The biggest roadblock is Congress itself. Senators would be essentially asked to vote against their own re-election prospects. Any Senator not on good terms with the legislature of their home state could find themselves quickly out of a job. You then still need 38 state legislatures to sign off on repealing the amendment to get it to go into effect. All of this would need to happen in the midst of citizens likely protesting moving a previously elected position to an appointed one.

Even if a repeal of the 17th Amendment passed, there is nothing to restrict a legislature from retaining a de facto system of direct election anyway. Just a few years before the ratification of the amendment, 29 states allowed some form of popular vote for senators. There’s no reason to believe that most, if not all, states won’t pass statutes to preserve the status quo.

In short, even if a repeal of the 17th Amendment was probable (which it isn’t), it isn’t likely to even change anything. It’s nice to theorize about rolling it back, but taking a hard-line policy position on it as a candidate amounts to so much grandstanding.

School board is one of those positions that, like city council, not enough voters pay attention to. When they do pay attention, it is all to often a reaction to an unpopular policy, not proactive involvement. I don’t yet have any children enrolled in a public school, but that means now is the time to get involved, before the bad decisions get made.

I want to preface this with saying that I think all of the four candidates vying for the seat are good candidates. I did not dismiss any one of them out-of-hand because they all sound like reasonable people that won’t do anything too rash. (Of course, how do you know until they are there?) Each of them responded to my e-mail inquiries within 24 hours, so responsiveness is not an issue. Each of them provided detailed answers to my questions either via phone or e-mail and it appears that they have all put some thought into running for this position.

Even though all of them are good candidates, one stands apart from the rest: Steve Wrigley. I feel that he has both a good understanding of how the district is currently operating combined with a willingness to try out new things to see if they will work, but not without doing some research ahead of time. Some of his main planks include moving 9th grade to high school and 6th grade to junior high to better utilize existing facilities, increasing building energy efficiency with an eye towards a reasonable ROI, better partnerships with local governments and businesses, and exploring the use of ebooks to replace costly textbooks. Despite his plethora of ideas, I came away with the feeling that he will not grow complacent with the status quo and always be looking for ways to improve how the district operates.

I would encourage each of you who can to vote for Steve Wrigley in the Tuesday primary for Canyons School Board #5.

Note: below is contact information for all of the candidates currently running. The Salt Lake County Clerk doesn’t list this information online, but will happily e-mail most of it to you on request.

Steven J. Morrison
(801) 842-4303
steven.j.morrison@gmail.com
http://stevenmorrisonforschoolboard.com/

Steve Wrigley
(801) 598-3894
wrigley.steve@gmail.com
http://www.wrigley4education.com/

Melody Shock
(801) 596-0416
mshock@xmission.com

C. Grant Hurst
(801) 942-4832
ghurstut@yahoo.com
http://hurst4canyons5.com/

Four years ago, I was absolutely aghast that Sherrie Swenson would claim that there was nothing wrong with the Diebold voting machines in use by the county despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Her constant denials of any problems rather than taking ownership of the issue demonstrated a lack of real leadership and put me off from ever considering her for public office. It is especially disconcerting that Ms. Swenson is so cavalier about one of her most basic responsibilities, ensuring fair and honest elections.

These problems with our current County Clerk do not automatically guarantee an endorsement for her opponent. I’m perfectly happy to vote “none of the above” when it suits me. (I’m seriously considering it for the US Senate race.) Jeremy Votaw, a web designer, is currently running to replace Sherrie Swenson and I e-mailed him to find out a bit more about why he thinks he should be the new County Clerk.

I’m pleased to report that Mr. Votaw is very well-acquainted with the issues facing Diebold voting machines generally and electronic voting machines in particular, but is also realistic in accepting that the decision to purchase said machines can’t be undone due to the sunk cost. As a fellow technologist, I’m also confident that he can use technology to improve operations at the Clerk’s office; I was appalled that I could not find candidate information on their website, but instead had to e-mail to get it. It’s only slightly inconvenient, but why have a person do the job of a machine? I think that belies a need to better modernize the office, something that the current Clerk has had ample time to do.

Is this a perfect choice? No. The snarky exchanges between the two on Twitter over the age of their campaign photos, while hilarious, also made me wince a little at the lack of decorum. (But still, super funny, so I can let it slide.) Given how strongly I feel about Sherrie Swenson’s ignorance on electronic voting machines and the contrasting familiarity with them on the part of  her opponent, I fully endorse Jeremy Votaw to replace her this November.

Remember the talking points in favor of splitting the Jordan School District a couple of years ago? We were told that splitting up the district would lower costs and result in a much leaner and responsive school district. Almost immediately, however, I noticed that my property tax bill for the newly-created Canyons School District shot up rather sharply over the previous year. Apparently, that wasn’t enough.

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Two years ago, I was very happy to support LaVar Christensen in his efforts to be my representative in the state legislature. Not only did his government philosophy and principles align nicely with my own, but he was also very responsive as a candidate, taking the time not just to personally respond to my questions and concerns, but to come to my house and answer them in person. His opponent, Trisha Beck, had the time for a 2-minute phone call during which she sounded very rushed and somewhat annoyed. Even had I found as much agreement with her positions, responsiveness in a legislator is crucial. There are many trans-partisan issues from my district (most notably the preservation of the township designation) that demand it.

I was perfectly willing to give Rep. Beck a shot and she how she did the job. Unfortunately, every e-mail I sent during both the 2009 and 2010 sessions went entirely unanswered. Compare that with the personal responses I received from Sen. Niederhauser, my state senator. Those responses were not too brief and often arrived within a couple of days, even during the height of legislative wrangling. He’s also held community meetings to brief us all on what’s going on in the legislature and respond to voters directly. Regardless of how you feel about his positions or votes (I’m not happy with his vote for HB 150), that kind of personal touch is commendable.

This year, LaVar wants a rematch against Trisha. While I did a lot of careful weighing and evaluating last time (I’m kind of obsessive that way), I already know which horse I’m picking. While I can appreciate that the life of a legislator can be very busy and stressful, there is no excuse for being a communications black hole. (I’ll get to you soon enough, Jim.) LaVar Christensen is the better choice in this district hands down.

The attitude of the education establishment can be easily summarized: “Ask us to try something different and we’ll just call it a waste of time and money. In fact, just give us more money to do the same thing we’ve been doing with no kind of institutional change and expect better results. And if it doesn’t work, you didn’t give us enough money. Whatever you do, don’t base any part of our compensation upon results, just on how long we can outlast the others.”

Teachers unions always talk out of both sides of their mouths. They tell us that they are advocates for quality education, but their actions and primary function are all about the Benjamins. Individual teachers and administrators may care, but they are ground up like so much steak in the meat grinder of powerful interests more concerned with money than educating kids.

Legislators do the same thing. They talk a good game about local control and letting teachers excel. When it come down to it, most of them end up making a big pile of rules for teachers to follow that does nothing but soak up time and make it impossible to innovate. Many school boards are no better. They treat professional adults like small children who are incapable of making decent judgment calls.

Anyone who supports this kind of entrenchment is an enemy to both quality education and the taxpayer. Get rid of the grandstanding legislators, the overbearing administrators, and the money-hungry unions and maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some exciting things happen in education.

A lot of people call themselves constitutionalists. Almost universally they claim a particular view of the US Constitution and what it means. And again, almost universally, that view is that of the anti-federalists. The implication is that federalists like Madison and Hamilton were heretics and can be conveniently forgotten when discussing the formation of this nation. That view is wrong.

I do not agree with the views of federalists. I do not subscribe to the notion that the balance of power should be tipped towards the federal government at the expense of the states. I do not support the idea that the Constitution is open to creative interpretations that turn it into a blank check for Congress. I do not think that Hamilton was even a particularly nice or honorable guy. And I do not think that their views can be written off since they were a very important part of the process of creating our nation’s founding document.

Constitutionalist and anti-federalist are not synonymous. To try and make them so it to try and re-write history.

Curtis Haring at Blue in Red Zion recently expressed his dismay at the failure to collect enough signatures to get the Fair Boundaries initiative onto November’s ballot. I supported this initiative because of the way that neighborhoods were often divided amongst several legislative districts. Examples of this include Tooele being split four ways and the Avenues being cut in half. Basically, the boundaries of many districts looked like the boundaries of many African nations, drawn not with consideration to who lived there, but to who wanted to control the land. Curtis says that the failure to get Fair Boundaries on the ballot means that the initiative process in Utah is blatantly unconstitutional. Despite my support of the initiative, I doubt I could disagree more.

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More supposed constitutionalists should be questioning the wisdom of what Arizona is doing. Controlling the border is clearly a federal responsibility. Just because they are doing a sucky job at it doesn’t mean you get to step in and take over. Remember how much it cheeses you off when the feds do that to the states?

It looks a lot like West Valley City Mayor Mike Winder. His take on UTOPIA:

So if you were mayor, what would you do? Walk away from the system, let it go dark and make your $147 million in payments over the next 30 years with nothing to show for it? Do you try to sell the network and take pennies on the dollar? Do you dribble in a little money so the network can limp along indefinitely, hemorrhaging cash along the way? Or do you take out a new bond that can grow your subscriber base to break-even point and beyond? A relatively small bond — 20 percent the size of the original UTOPIA bond — could do that.

Leadership is not complaining about decisions made in the past that can’t be undone. It’s not questioning whether or not the decision should have been made in the first place. It’s not endlessly blaming your predecessor for inherited problems. It means accepting the reality of your situation and choosing to make choices that lead towards the best possible outcome, no matter how painful or unpopular they may be.

If only other elected officials had the same strength. (I’m looking at you, Congress.)