Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 12

STATE EDITION I A leaving Pf wAnr-t Monday, October 8, 1990 The Arizona republic Founded in 1 890 Published since 1 946 by: Phoenix Newspaper, 120 E. Van Buren, Phoenix, Ariz. 85004 EUGENE C. PULLIAM 18891975 Publisher, 19461975 EUGENE S. PULLIAM President JOHN P.

ZANOTTI Publisher WILLIAM P. CHESHIRE Editor of the Editorial Pages JOHN F. OPPEDAHL Managing Editor WM. R. HOGAN Vice PresidentGeneral Manager CONRAD KL0H Director of Sales and Marketing BILLSHOVER Director of Public Affairs Where The Spirit Of The Lord Is, There Is Liberty II Corinthians 3:17 EDITORIALS THE INDIAN SCHOOL PROPERTY More acreage for a park give the city 45 acres for a park and leave the developer 43 acres for office towers, hotels, shops and residential units.

He doesn't want the development to compete with downtown, the mayor says, and increasing the amount of open space would assure a more modest density for LETTERS Timber policy must protect the land Architectural challenge BY demanding that the future developers of the Phoenix Indian School property more than double the acreage allocation for a municipal park, Mayor Paul Johnson has staked out a tough bargaining position, underscoring the importance of the pending land-use decision. Mr. Johnson says the city isn't going to "roll over and play dead" in negotiations with the Barron Collier the Florida developer of the land. For his part, Collier President Roy Cawley responds that the city probably expects it to provide "free bus rides from Hong Kong," too. What the city seems to expect is a land-use plan that benefits all parties to the deal.

Judging by the initial response from the developer, arriving at such a plan may be tougher than expected. Development of the site had appeared to be all but a done deal. Evidently this is not the case. The city has been overtaken of late by a fit of activism, and new concerns have been raised by Mayor Johnson, Councilman Craig Tribken and others. Under a 1988 law the federally owned Indian School property would be exchanged for thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive swampland that Collier owns in Florida land to be added to Everglades National Park.

But the swap is contingent on Collier and the city putting together a development plan for 68 acres of the Indian School property. Of the remaining land, 20 acres would go to Phoenix for a park, 11.5 acres would go to expand the Veterans Administration Hospital and 4.5 acres would be reserved for a veterans nursing home the Collier project. Also, the mayor says he is troubled by preliminary sketches from Collier on utilization of the city's 20 acres. These show small greenswards strung out in a necklace design looking less like parks, says the mayor, than amenities designed to enhance the commercial development. Collier appears to have settled on the 20-acre figure, at least in its own mind.

If more acres were allocated to the city, the company appears to be saying, the city should make up the difference by handing over parcels elsewhere in Phoenix. Yet the 20 acres ought to be negotiable. Nothing in the law, according to the city's attorneys, precludes a larger city park as part of the overall site plan. The place to work out the obvious disagreement is in negotiations. The city may not get every bit of the extra acreage the mayor is demanding, but some additional land surely could be added to the city's parcel without spiking the deal with Collier.

Though Mr. Cawley says he is unwilling to give up more land until the land-use plan is completed, a development plan ought to be a more-or-less accurate representation of the final use of the property. It is, after all, the basis for the final property appraisal. The next move is Collier's. Clearly the city has no intention of walking away from the table.

It would be foolish to do so. But it does seem intent on negotiating the best deal it can. That is not unusual, and Collier, it seems reasonable to think, will wish to do the same. those sales failed to meet the standards that were decided and agreed upon in meetings of the Forest Service, timber industry, Arizona Game and Fish and other public participants. In spite of such documentation, industry spokesman continue to complain that Arizona Game and Fish is threatening their industry.

Fortunately, it does not take a lot of thought to conclude who is the real cause of the industry's poor public image. We still have the opportunity in Arizona to avoid the abuse of public lands that has occurred in the Northwest. Let us all hope that responsible people in public agencies and the timber industry can recognize this challenge and work together to implement the changes now dictated by an increasingly informed public that is, incidentally, the owner of the lands in question. THOMAS G. WOODS JR.

Chairman Arizona Game and Fish Commission Phoenix Editor: Columnist James Bishop Jr. presented an accurate perspective on the timber issue on a national as well as local basis in his recent column. It may be true that the timber industry may not realize as great a short-term profit margin with the recently proposed U.S. Forest Service mitigation plans, but the industry and related jobs will be around a lot longer and on a more steady basis as a result. Further, recreational and wildlife uses of the forest lands will be sustained as a result of the balanced planning and resource allocation resulting.

As an aside, and in partial response to the recent letter from Stone Forest Industries, it should be noted that in confirming the need for a harvest reduction, Coconino Forest monitored eight different timber sales and found that all of them failed to meet the U.S. Forest Service plans and guidelines for timber management and wildlife requirements. In other words, 100 percent of Editor: I write in response to the Sept. 9 Perspective article by architect Ted Alexander. Perhaps both the editor and the architect thought that his ideas of what might make Phoenix a more agreeable and even a more interesting place to live would be controversial, or at least challenging.

Perhaps his well-founded ideas of living in harmony with our place in the desert and thus in harmony with the world is a challenge, at least that is the message when one looks around at what we really have built. But my own affirmative nod of approval for a more fundamental response to climate as the making of local culture seems to be reinforced with the agreement of everyone who read the article. I would also like to endorse your adventure in providing a public forum on the built-up environment. With the upcoming underfunded City Hall with too small a site, it is a good time to both ask and find some well-considered answers to what we value in our buildings. Thank you both for a solid page.

JEFFREY COOK Arizona State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design Tempe run by the state. Mayor Johnson, however, wants 25 more acres from the Collier allotment, which would DOWN ON THE FARM Where has the state's auditor general been? Computer glitch at USDA anything at all? As a 30-year veteran of the banking industry, I can tell you that private industry protects itself with internal and external auditors. The public sector should do no less. If the auditor general can't do the job, then we should find out why and either give the department a proper staff or junk the auditor general and hire a private firm. Superintendent of Public Instruction C.

Diane Bishop and her staff deserve the gratitude of the public for unearthing this scandal and bringing it to our attention. WILLIAM E. GARY Phoenix Editor: I have been following the growing scandal in the state Department of Education with great interest. Your editorial of Sept. 25 mentioned that The Republic hired Pat Schindele to conduct an investigation and that he turned up at least a seven-year history of $4 million in federal grants being disbursed with no check on how the money was spent.

As I read the editorial, I kept coming back with the question of where was the auditor general all this time? Has our Legislature, in its questionable wisdom, failed to authorize the auditor general to review anything but the Department of Revenue? Or, for that matter, does the auditor general have the staff to do Enjoyable performance Editor: I read with interest the music review by Dimitri Drobatschewsky "ASU Symphony only so-so in opener." I attended the concert along with a capacity audience, which appeared to thoroughly enjoy it, as I did. I did not attend with the objective of looking for imperfections in the performance, as the critic does, but rather to enjoy the music performed by university students. After the concert I joined the Arizona State University Friends of Music to show my support for their musical programs. The ASU School of Music is the fourth largest in the nation and I feel fortunate to live in a community where there are so many good musical events on campus to which I can go. LYNN E.

WIGGINS Sun Lakes Othodoxy not open to revolutionary innovation commissioned Anderson Consulting, a division of the Arthur Anderson accounting firm, to update its system for $7 million. The contract was one of those wonderful Washington creations known as a "cost plus incentive fee" deal. Costs quickly piled up. Virtually every taxpayer will agree with Rep. Robert Wise of West Virginia, chairman of a subcommittee reviewing the "The delays and cost increase since the awarding of this contract have been astonishing," he says.

Indeed they have been. Cost-plus contracts are licenses to print money. The GAO puts most of the blame on the ASCS's "ineffective project management and oversight." This is consistent with Mr. Wise's finding that the USDA inspector general issued reports in 1986 and 1987 criticizing ihe agency and Anderson Consulting, but that the ASCS never showed them to Anderson. Sarita Schotta, deputy administrator of the ASCS, assures Congress that she is now providing the supervision the project should have had all along.

It would be a mistake to bet the farm on it. The ASCS's request for an additional $57 million in procurement authority for massive upgrades of other systems should be given intense scrutiny especially since the GAO did its own calculations and found that the job could be done for about half that. HORROR stories of extravagant spending abound in Washington, the waste capital of America. But 'even if such revelations are hardly surprising, it is always discouraging to read how government agencies have cost the taxpayers millions through slipshod management. One such case concerns the U.S.

Department of Agriculture's computers. According to the General Accounting Office, the taxpayers could be stuck with a $61.9 million bill for a USDA computer system originally priced at $7 million. That may not seem like a lot of money for an agency that routinely doles out billions to big-time corporate farmers. Even with the proposed cutbacks in federal subsidies, agribusiness payments are expected to reach close to $8 billion in the coming fiscal year. Still, a 900 percent increase is nothing to sneeze at.

The problem began at the USDA's Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation Service, which since the 1950s has used an automated system to track the acquisition, storage, movement, sale and donation of grain and processed commodities. Over the years the program's computers became obsolete, so in .198, 3 the ASCS began shopping around for a firm to streamline its system. Trouble was, no company wanted to take on the job at a fixed cost. So the ASCS entirely new theological questions about the male character of the Christian priesthood. These questions deserve a serious Orthodox response.

However, in keeping with the practice of historic Christianity, the Orthodox have never ordained women as priests or bishops, nor is there any significant movement within the church to promote it. To do so would be tantamount to a radical and irreparable mutilation of the faith. This firm position is not the decree of a reactionary hierarchy, it is an expression of the whole spiritual ethos of Orthodoxy. TIM BLUMENTRITT Phoenix Editor: Three photographs titled "Nuns be come Orthodox Priests" appeared in the Sept. 22 Religion section.

The headline incorrectly gave the impression that the nuns were associated with an actual Eastern Orthodox church (Greek, Russian, Antiochian, Serbian, Since some Protestant and Anglican churches have ordained women, and since there is growing support for it among some Roman Catholic laity, it is important not to mislead those who look to Orthodoxy as a faith that is not open to revolutionary innovation. In recent decades, scholars writing from a feminist perspective have posed LETTERS POLICY Your letters are welcome. Please include your name, address and daytime telephone number. Please keep your letters brief. All letters are subject to editing.

Short letters will be given priority. A 6 owr uuisiueis must wage wai against jdumi aim msiucis RICHARD LESSNER Deputy Editor of the Editorial Pages The Arizona Republic The freeze would not even require real spending cuts. Hold the growth in federal spending to 4 percent a year, roughly the rate of inflation, and we would all but eliminate the deficit in five years. Too draconian? All right, allow non-defense spending to grow by 6.5 percent, cut the Pentagon in response to the receding threat in Europe, and still the budget would balance by 1995. This won't happen, of course, because Mr.

Bush has thrown in with the insiders. What GOP outsiders now have to do is to mount a challenge to the president. They have to wage guerrilla warfare against the president in '92. Not that a conservative candidate Newt Gingrich? Jack Kemp? could unseat Mr. Bush, but he could sharpen the differences between the outsiders and the insiders.

The president has deserted the conservative cause, but the outsiders cannot surrender the party to the 80-pcrcent Republicans. A struggle has begun for the soul of the Republican Party a struggle that reflects the new political realities in Washington. Last week's epic battle over the so-called deficit-reduction compromise revealed the true nature of American politics as it exists in the late 20th century. The nation still has two political parties, but they are not the traditional Republicans and Democrats. Rather, the two parties are the insiders and the outsiders.

The insiders are those denizens of Washington who pretty much like the system as it is. Most have been in D.C. for a long time and are comfortable with the size of government. They dote on their perks and privileges as career politicians. They approve of government's paternalistic relationship to individuals.

They look favorably on the perpetual growth in the size of government. Among the insiders are most of the Democrats some of the Southern boll-weevils excepted and the "80-percent Republicans," those who are comfortable with about 80 percent of the Democratic agenda. With the exception of GOP House Whip Newt Gingrich, all the congressional leadership in both parties fall into the "insiders" category. George Bush is the quintessential insider, Homo washingtonicn. He has few principles that are not amazingly flexible, and he prefers process to substance, compromise to confrontation.

He would rather not fight than lose. The outsiders are conservatives in both parties who think that government is too big, that the relationship between government and the individual needs to be fundamentally altered. The outsiders think that "going along" and "compromise" has gotten us into the fix that we find ourselves in. And what is the fix? It is this: nearly 37 percent of our gross national product goes to local, state and the federal government. A full 20 percent is grabbed by Washing ton alone.

What this means is that every American must work more than four months of every year just to pay his tax bill. The overriding question facing the nation is this: How much more of its citizens' earnings and the nation's wealth can government seize before our economy begins to implode, before we fall victim to the malaise that we have seen ruin one socialist country after another from Eastern Europe to the Third World? Can government take 40 percent of the GNP? Fifty percent? What is the finite number there must be one the point at which the government extracts so much wealth from the private sector, that investment grinds to a halt, that new business and jobs cease being created? If we are to avoid that, we must get the growth of government under control, and to do that we must accept that the basic relationship between government and the individual must change. Today more than 50 percent of the federal budget goes out in direct payments to individuals. The hard truth is that there is no way to control spending without it impacting on people, lots of people. Conservatives had hoped to change the relationship between the individual and government during the Reagan years.

They blew it. Mr. Reagan turned out to be an insider, and so did many of the conservatives who followed him to Washington. They found they liked being insiders with cushy jobs, tickets to Kennedy Center and limousines. To say that insiders can't control themselves is an epic understatement.

Government continues to grow much faster than either the population or inflation. Nevertheless, the budget deficit could be retired without undue pain. Here's how: Enact Mr. Bush's "flexible freeze," the good idea he dropped like a bad habit before Michael Dukakis had finished his concession speech..