The Palm Beach Post du lieu suivant : West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 14

14A THE PALM BEACH POST TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1997 The Palm Beach Post TOM Gll'FFRlDA. Publisher EDWARD SEARS. Editor LON DANIELSON, General Manager TOM O'HARA, Managing Editor RANDY SCHULTZ, Editor of the Editorial Page AS TX'CKWOOD. Associate Editor MONDAY: SEX, WRECKS, CORPSES, PLQOR ears, MURDER TUESDAY: (QPPSES, BVXP, WEECKS, SEX, MUfcDEU, ojts. ALAN FERGUSON.

Advertising LARRY SIEDUK, Treasurer GALE HOWDEN, Director, Community Relations TOM HIGHFIELD, VP Circulation UNDA MURPHY, Director, Human Resources BOB BALFE, Director, Production "KEN WALTERS. DirectorMarketing and Research ft. If School sidewalk turns into a killing ground ITS NOT EASY B0N6 WEDNESWSfc GUTS SEX, MURPER BLOOD, WRECKS CORPSES Moral firestorm, but tudents inevitably have conflicts with other students at school. Parents know this. So do teach ers Most advise kids to resolve problems peacefully.

Everyone wants to believe that conflicts won't lead to violence, especially fatal violence. Yet just such a violent incident took the life of Jean Pierre Kamel at Conniston Middle School Monday morning. Minutes before school began, witnesses say, the 14-year-old was shot arid killed by a 13-year-old male student 'on a sidewalk outside the West Palm Beach school. The alleged killer was arrested, police say, after throwing his gun under a portable classroom and running into the school. Early reports indicated that a dispute possibly over a watch had festered, then exploded, terrifying students, teachers and parents.

But trying to explain the unex-plainable doesn't make it less terrifying. School officials could do little more than describe the shooting as "an isolated incident." They said the same thing when a 15-year-old put a gun to his temple and committed suicide in front of a half-dozen students January 1995 at Palm Beach Gardens High. It was the same when a mentally ill 13-year-old shot two classmates on a crowded John F. Kennedy Middle basketball court one March 1994 morning before school. A judge had ordered that the student receive a psychological evaluation that the courts were too busy to give.

That shooting was the first 'on a county campus since May 1991, a 15-year-old was shot dead and two other students wounded at the School of CHOICE in Pahokee. Gun-toting police patrol Conniston Middle. That couldn't stop what happened outside. Conniston has adequate security, school officials say, but that depends on one's definition of secure. Like churches, schools once were sacrosanct.

Today, like many other campuses, Conniston is patrolled by uniformed, gun-packing school police a necessity that, for many students and teachers, is still chilling. No thought was given to sending students home Monday. One school official said that "school is the safest place for them to be." Though concerned parents came steadily during the day to take some children home, for other students there was no one who could come get them and no place to go. As details come out, lack of parental involvement fact may be part of this tragedy at a typically crowded, understaffed school where many good people work against great odds. Some may demand metal detectors, but they would not have prevented what happened on a public sidewalk.

Those who work inside could tell state lawmakers who routinely ignore pleas for money to hire more counselors who might detect problem kids early that schools reflect society. And schools can't be successful if stu- dents come unprepared to learn or to get along with each other. ow many more of these "celebra tions will we witness? The anniversary of Roe vs. Wade on Jan. 22 was once again surrounded by the worst kind of fireworks.

Dynamite in Atlanta. A firebomb in Tulsa. No wonder that a small fusing device that went off near a Washington clinic was thought to be a grenade. Ellen Goodman We have gotten used to these annual reports, come to assume that this is the price of moral controversy in America. We have been trained through these 24 years to believe that any deep conflict will come to blows at least verbal, at worst, lethal.

But this year the anniversary came just two weeks after the question of assisted suicide was heard in the Supreme Court and in a rising public debate. Aid-in-dying is also a debate cast in moral terms, a matter of life and death, right and wrong. Here too, advocates, clergy, lawyers, doctors, patients, line up on either side of the question. And here too, the Supreme Court is asked to determine what the Constitution says on a dilemma of our time. But how different is the tone surrounding these two moral conflicts.

There were, to be sure, pickets and protests on the Supreme Court steps the day of the assisted-suicide appeal. On one side were folks calling themselves "Not Dead Yet." On the other side were supporters of assisted suicide, including the Unplug WXEL merger Computerize the campaign-cash cops no violence So too, in the discussion about dying there is respect for the complexity of experience. People's beliefs come tempered by sympathy and acceptance of other realities. But in the abortion war? Consider the renewed and troubling struggle over what is labeled "partial-birth abortion." During this same anniversary week, Sen. Trent Lott, announced that a ban was on his top-10 list for the new Congress.

For the anti-abortion movement, this is a tactic to end abortion, procedure by procedure. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops dismisses the women' who need late-term abortions to "fit into a prom dress." But they are talking about women who' may face the most excruciating calculations: How great a health risk to endure for how deformed a baby. If the opponents qf abortion turn hard-of-hearing to this plight, is it any wonder that they turn a deaf ear to the stories of other pregnant women? I am not suggesting that everyone who opposes abortion lacks sympathy for women with unwanted pregnancies. But I arn sure that the public debate over dying is civilized by an understanding of life's complications. It's humanized by a willingness to listen and believe in each other as moral-decision-makers.

If we can learn to approach the abortion issue with an equally open ear, how differ ent the next anniversaries can be. Ellen Goodman is a columnist for The Boston Globe. Electronic filing would mean better access to information about where campaign money goes. Candidates are required to file reports on disbursements, but the FEC doesn't computerize these records because of the volume and cost. Finding wrongdoing isn't the only reason more attention should be paid to the spending side of campaigns; there also are important public policy reasons The only significant, comprehensive studies of campaign spending have been done by Dwight Morris, formerly a re- i porter at the Los Angeles Times and now a consultant on campaign finance issues; Mr.

Morris' work shows that most of what we know about where campaign money goes is wrong. For example, it is not television spending that is driving up campaign costs; in most House races all advertising accounts for less than a quar ter of spending. What costs money is the permanent campaign the offices, the computers, the vans that incumbents use to keep their seats. Yet, Congress, and most reformers, keep proposing free television time as a solution to higher campaign costs. Using computer technologies to im- prove disclosure would present trivial technical problems and add little to the reporting burden of campaigns.

The stumbling block here, as with other pro- posed reforms, is a lack of political Members of Congress won't decide it is in their interest to promote disclosure until the public makes it clear that it will settle for nothing less than timely, accu-'', rate and meaningful information about where politicians spend their money. Wendell Cochran teaches journalism at American University. He wrote this article for The Baltimore Sun. The tone of the debate over aid-in-dying is decidedly different from discussion of abortion. daughter of Jack Kevorkian's 19th patient.

But we did not hear opponents hurling epithets at Dr. Timothy Quill as he came to court after a public admission that he has assisted in a death. Nor did we see the sights of Jan. 22: Supreme Court steps dotted with police in riot gear. The public discussion about the end of life has been civil, somber, respectful of complexity, humble in the face of life's uncertainties.

These are not fighting words. Why is there such a difference in the emotions swirling around pregnancy and dying? The beginning and the ending of life? I suspect that it goes beyond the ideology called "pro-life." For one thing, dying as described by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor "is an issue every one of us faces, young and old, male and female." But pregnancy, and therefore abortion, is a woman's issue by its very biology. Yet there is another, more subtle dividing point in the tenor of these arguments. Like many who write about abortion, I get my share of hate mail, angry voice mail and vitriolic e-mail. But the mail about physician-assisted suicide brings stories.

takes. In 1996, the commission began putting much of this information on the Internet. This situation should end, and all reports should be filed electronically. The commission will begin experimenting with electronic filing in 1997 by accepting some reports on disk. This timid step should be bypassed in favor of immediate, mandatory electronic reporting.

By 1998, all reports should be digital. Computer reports could help improve the reporting schedule. During years without congressional elections, candidates report just twice. During election years, there is a patchwork of reporting dates that are tied mostly to state primary schedules. This system makes it difficult to track contributions.

The disclosures need to be more complete. Campaigns and committees should be forced to comply with rules requiring them to list a donor's occupation and employer. If the information is missing, the contribution should be put in trust until the information is filed. Many contributors use variations of their names and addresses when giving to candidates, making it difficult to get accurate readings about how much money, and to how many candidates, a particular person is contributing. A similar problem exists with PACs.

It is important to know, at least in general, the interests the committees represent. The FEC assigns PACs to six large, meaningless categories. The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington nonprofit group that has led the way in campaign finance disclosure, has developed a useful system to categorize the interests of PACs. The FEC should negotiate to have these categories attached to the PACs identifying information. I ublic broadcasting station WXEL is asking the public for money this week.

Radio announcers talk about how much the station needs its "members." But Friday's vote by the WXEL board shows how little the 1 station actually values its "members." a controversy over the board's secret decision to merge with Barry University a private, Catholic college in Dade County board members assembled after receiving hasty messages Thursday night. At that meeting, they formally approved the merger. As it turns out, a membership meeting is scheduled for today. So any protests will come too late. PBS boards are autonomous, so the decision is not illegal.

But it is wrong. The decision also continues a pattern of deception by the board and management of the Boynton Beach station. The merger with Barry would have stayed a secret if The Post hadn't reported it. Then WPBT, the Miami public station that wants to acquire WXEL, revealed that WXEL had mortgaged its headquarters. WXEL (TV Channel 42 and WXEL-FM) is a public institution.

But no merger discussions were held with public colleges or universities. On Friday, the Florida Board of Regents formed a committee to study creating a consortium to buy WXEL. It includes the presidents of Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University, other public school officials and Education Commissioner Frank Brogan. Nor was WPBT given the opportunity to discuss a partnership. On Thursday, WPBT's executive board voted to buy WXEL based on the recommendation of its 20-member Palm Beach Martin Counties Advisory Committee.

'Further, WXEL officials say their Equity now These days, you expect big companies to have standardized hiring and promotion policies. It's not that business publications and executive seminars have lacked advice on how to avoid lawsuits by getting personnel policy right in the first place. Yet it cost Publix a year and a half in court and $81.5 million to get the point. While the company pays, the supermarket chain will set up procedures for posting job vacancies and for dealing with discrimination complaints. And Publix will put managers through equal opportunity employment training.

Publix will do all that, says Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Howard M.Jenkins, "to avoid extensive and prolonged litigation." The policies could have gone into effect at less cost before 12 current and former employees filed sex discrimination suits, starting in July 1995. The suits alleged that Publix filled good'management jpbs with men and kept women in lower-paid positions. The Barry deal was made in secret and with contempt for members who pay the bills. mission is education and community service, yet this week's on-air begging is geared to programs such as All Things Considered. WXEL officials say the merger "will provide our community partners (schools, nonprofits and social service agencies) the resources of Barry University." Is that what contributors are giving money for? If, as those officials say, "30 percent of the nation's public television stations are licensed for education and generally operated by universities," do WXEL donors support that arrangement here? The WXEL situation has strong parallels to the Boca Raton Community Hospital controversy.

The hospital, built by local contributors, is a community asset. When residents learned trustees were planning to sell it, they demanded to know why and blocked the deal. Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth is investigating why trustees kept information from the public. Mr. Butterworth is examining the WXEL-Barry merger for similar reasons.

Florida has invested millions in WXEL's building and equipment, now mortgaged to Barry for a $500,000 line of credit, and given $643,149 a year. Donors have given almost twice that. WXEL's deal with Barry should not be allowed. It serves the interest of station management searching to justify WXEL's existence and their employment not the public. The station should be taken over by public universities or absorbed by WPBT.

a pleasure U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams Jr. allowed the cases to be consolidated into a class action suit in which the first complainants stood for all Publix female employees. And he allowed the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to join the suit on their side.

Against that lineup, even a company with $10 billion in sales would find it hard to prevail. That big bottom line and its place as Florida's largest private employer made Publix a deep-pocketed target for a gender discrimination suit, as the company's managers should have realized. But with activity spread through 535 stores, they let habits and customs of the past go on while the world and the laws changed. Women are as likely as men to be supporting families. They take seriously their jobs and a fair prospect for getting ahead.

Like other big companies, Publix found that out in court. The lesson cost $81.5 million. Federal Election Commission records are a relic of the paper-based past, making journalists' and reformers' jobs tougher. By WENDELL COCHRAN hen Congress created the Federal Election Commission in the wake of Watergate more than two decades ago, one hope was that better disclosure would limit abuses of money in politics. There is little question that the FEC, although understaffed and starved of resources by Congress, helps journalists, public interest groups, political challengers and citizens to learn more about campaign cash.

But anyone who has spent much time with FEC records knows there are serious shortcomings in the disclosure system. Many of the problems stem from one root: The commission's recordkeeping system is a relic of the paper-based past, developed before government agencies and campaigns moved into the digital age. Disclosures aren't timely enough, sophisticated enough or comprehensive enough to keep track of the escalating amount of money flowing through campaigns. Fortunately, advances in computer technology can fill these gaps, probably saving money for the federal government while improving access to information. Any campaign finance reform proposal should make swifter, more complete computerized disclosures a centerpiece.

The first step in modernizing the FEC is to get rid of paper. Although all serious campaigns are computerized today, FEC reports are filed on paper. During the 1995-96 campaign cycle, more than 5,500 candidates and 10,000 party and political action committees filed more than a quarter-million reports containing several million pages. This blizzard of paper threatens to bury the concept of meaningful disclosure. FEC officials understand the problems, and they have been trying to bring the agency into the digital age.

The agency pays to have the contributions reports typed into computers which takes more than a month after a filing deadlineand unavoidably introduces mis-.