The Republic from Columbus, Indiana • Page 6

H. "tftf "jji i "i Hi a if m1 "it1 Opinion A6 The Republic, Columbus, Thursday, January 28, 2010 Edited by Anthony Murphy Permanent tax caps could stifle some communities could become part of the state Constitution. Right now communities such as Columbus which has been able to develop a quality of life for its citizens that most others envy are severely limited as to how they can raise the money needed to perpetuate that quality of life It will receive a share of the EDIT tax recently increased by Bartholomew County Council, but that is only a portion of the $800,000 to $1.3 million it is estimated to lose annually under the property tax caps. One other small revenue source a wheel tax also would have to be adopted by the County Council. Recently, residents of this community indicated by significant majorities that they want the quality of life they enjoy to be passed on to future generations.

The decision to bond The Commons project and the approval of the massive improvement projects at East and North high schools speaks to this commitment to keep the community special. By making these tax caps part of the state Constitution, local residents and their governments will have a much smaller say in what their community should be. many of those local governments would be ill prepared to respond to emergencies. Columbus and most of Bartholomew County were presented a real-life example of one of those emergencies in the 2008 flood that required a massive outlay from local treasuries. Unpopular though the action might have been, the city of Columbus essentially was forced into a dramatic change in the manner in which it collects garbage and pays for it, when it adopted a trash fee that would be applied to local utility bills.

Many voters thought that was a betrayal of the property tax reforms, but the essential question boiled down to what other choice the city might have had. Even with the trash-collection fee, city government in Columbus will have to operate on bare bones budgets that offer little or no wiggle room. That makes building for the future much more difficult to achieve and definitely can hamper economic development. Individual communities should have the opportunity to chart their future courses. Those decisions should be made within the community rather than be stymied by a statewide attitude that HOOSIER voters will have an opportunity to take direct responsibility for an action their elected representatives already had put into place a permanent cap on property taxes at 1 percent of a home's assessed value.

Local governments already have experienced the effects of this measure, and by most accounts there have been significant disruptions in services for citizens. THEI REPUBLIC Chuck Wells Publisher E-mail address: cwellsTherepublic.com Bob Gustin Harry McCawley Editor Associate Editor E-mail address: E-mail address: rjgustinTherepublic.com harry Therepublic.com "We shall endeavor, to make our paper the champion of the people of Bartholomew County and we shall advocate, irrespective of political considerations, all measures that have for their object the good of the community. In short, we hope to make our paper such as no intelligent person in the county can do without. Isaac T. Brown, Founding Editor, 1875 The Issue: Making tax caps part of state Constitution Our position: Individual communities should have ability to chart their own courses.

The caps are already part of state law, but the action voters will take in November as part of the general election will elevate them to a special protected category if approved they will become part of the state's Constitution. Changing them after that point regardless of the gravity of any particular situation that might call for it will be extremely difficult and certainly take a great amount of time due to the constitutional constraints. There is no question the measure enjoys tremendous populist appeal. That's reflected in the overwhelming votes to move the measure to the final step by the Indiana House and Senate earlier this month. It's also reflected in the attitude of the public legislators are reflecting that public sentiment by their votes.

Popular though this measure might be, voters must recognize that their approval could handcuff severely the hands of local governments that have to serve the public. Without other options, Republic newspage appears on popular Disney sitcom a mi Harry McCawley 'am about to become a dedicated viewer for Seasons II and Two of the Disney connection to Columbus and the newspaper Hellen Ochs, the popular Bird Lady columnist for The Republic who now lives at Four Seasons Retirement Home. "I didn't know what to make of it when she sent it to me," Hellen said Wednesday. "I was just as surprised to see a newspaper page on a piece of the cloth and even more so when it was The Republic." I could fill in the blanks on that one Actually it was something we did more than once. The first time I remember it being done was in 1967, when The Republic hosted an open house at its offices, then located at Fifth and Franklin streets, current home of Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce.

Someone decided it would be a nice touch to run off copies of a recent paper onto cloth instead of the standard newsprint and convert the materials into draperies to be hung in front of the windows for the special occasion. Several women staffers were taken by the idea and obtained materials from which they made dresses that were worn while greeting visitors. The idea was repeated for another open house in 1971, shortly after we had moved into our new quarters the current newspaper building at Second and Franklin Street. Bettie Burbrink, an administrative assistant to then-publisher Bob Brown, remembered making her dress and one for her 6-year-old daughter. Several staffers followed From Republic Akmves I VO -T7 7 A Channel's pre-teen television series "Suite Life on Deck." I'll be looking for the girl wearing a skirt bearing a page from the Sesquicentennial issue of The Republic.

It might seem odd that a newspaper page first printed in 1971 would pop up on a kids' television series almost 40 years later, but a swatch from the skirt was recently found in, of all places, a stock room for props and clothes worn by the series performers. How it wound up there is a mystery. The swatch was discovered a few weeks ago by Debbie Wiley, a member of the production staff for the show, which is filmed in Disney's Hollywood studios. Debbie was cleaning out the prop room and setting aside items that later would be sold as excess wardrobe. Stunned She first was attracted to the skirt by the newspaper type.

She was stunned when she picked it up and saw it was a reproduction of a page from The Republic "My jaw dropped," she wrote to a relative. That relative is another tm i Hamy McCawley ft Repumjc Above: The original version of The Republic's "Sesquicentennial" dress was worn in 1971 by 6-year-old Nancy Jane Burbrink, left, and 1 0-month-old Julie Ann Young, who was seated on the lap of her father, Richard Young, then the newspaper's photo production foreman. The three were photographed at an open house celebrating the move of The Republic staff into quarters at Second and Washington streets. Right: Hellen Ochs, The Republic's Bird Lady, looks down at a swatch of cloth bearing a 1 971 page from The Republic The cloth was discovered by her cousin in a prop room for a popular television series "Suite Life on Deck," which is produced by Disney Channel at Its Hollywood studios. Apparently the material had been worn as a skirt on one of the show's episodes.

room, counted it as one of her treasures. Unfortunately, she lost it when her home was inundated in the 2008 flood. I still remember the funeral services for Marybelle Gossman in 2007. Her 'newspaper dress" was displayed on one of the tables next to her coffin. I'm sure that other newspapers over the years have done the same thing in one form or another.

It was a neat way to promote the product. However, I would be willing to bet a modest sum that no other newspaper's dress popped up on "Suite Life on Deck." I'd just love to know how it got there. Harry McCawley is associate editor of The Republic. He can be reached at or 379-5620. in Hollywood 38 years later.

Treasured keepsakes Those dresses became memorable keepsakes. Lorene Marshall, one of the administrative workers in the news suit and wore the outfits while explaining the offset printing operation to more than 2,500 visitors. Their versions were reprints from the Sesquicentennial issue, the same one found U.S. should safeguard against EMP attack Week full of twists, Clifford D. May cheers, jeers From: Bill Scarbrough Columbus Received: Jan.

25 What a week! The election in Massachusetts was either cheered or jeered. The Supreme Court decision was either the best thing to happen to elections or the worst thing to happen to elections. The only thing that almost everyone could celebrate was the Colts win at Lucas Oil Stadium. Which reminds me, in light of the Supreme Court decision, this fall we'll be able to vote for either the Lilly Pharmaceutical candidate or the Lucas Oil candidate for the U.S. Senate Does that make you proud, or what? electrical grid and other components of the infrastructure to increase the chances they would survive, and pre-po-sitioning spares of essential but complex components of the electrical grid and other infrastructure critical to communications and emergency public services.

President Obama has pledged $100 million to help Haiti recover from its recent earthquake By coincidence, that's precisely the amount NAS recommends be spent on measures it estimates would limit the damage resulting from an EMP event by 60 to 70 percent. When you consider that such an event whether naturally occurring or a "man-caused disaster" could cause trillions of dollars in damage and claim more lives than were lost in World War that sounds like a reasonably priced investment. Clifford D. May is president of Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism. He can be reached at HAD the earthquake that hit Haiti shaken Florida instead, the death toll would not have been so tragically high over 150,000 at last count.

In Haiti, as in other impoverished countries, buildings are often shoddily constructed, infrastructure is weak, and governance is incompetent. The primary response to disaster: Wait for help from abroad. It's a well-established rule: Rich nations endure natural disasters better than poor nations. But there might be an exception. Stay with me for a moment, and you'll see what I mean.

In recent years, Americans have become dependent not just on electricity but on computers, microchips and satellites. The infrastructure that supports all this has become -increasingly sophisticated but not more resilient. On the contrary, as this infra-. structure has become more 'complex, it has become more fragile and therefore more vulnerable an Achilles' heel. quire nuclear weapons has conducted tests in which it launched missiles and exploded warheads at high altitudes.

And CIA has translated Iranian military journals in which EMP attacks against the U.S. are explicitly discussed. Might Iran's rulers orchestrate such an attack if and when they acquire nuclear capability? That is a heated debate among defense experts. But what is almost never discussed is the threat of a naturally occurring EMP event. I first learned about this possibility a few months ago at a conference organized by Empact America, an organisation concerned exclusively with the EMP challenge Scientists there explained "severe space weather" in particular, storms on the surface of the sun that could trigger an EMP event The strongest solar storm on record is the Carrington Event of 1859, named after Richard Carrington, an astronomer who witnessed the super solar flare that set off the event as he was projecting an image of the sun on a white screen.

In those days, of course, there was nothing much to damage. A high-intensity burst of electro-magnetic energy shot through telegraph lines, disrupting communications, shocking technicians and setting their papers on fire. Northern Lights were visible as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. But otherwise life went on as normal. Mass disruption The same would not be true were a solar storm of similar magnitude to erupt today.

Most of us would not adapt well to this sudden return to a pre-industrial age How likely is a repeat of the Carrington Event? Scientists say it is not only possible it is inevitable. What they dont know is when. The best estimates are that super solar storms occur once every 100 years which means we are about 50 years overdue EMP Commission and a 2008 study by National Academy of Sciences call for a response: hardening the That is why, in 2001, the U.S. government established a commission to "assess the threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack." Such an attack would involve the detonation of a nuclear warhead at high altitude over the American mainland, producing a Shockwave powerful enough to knock out electrical power, electronics, communications, transportation and much more. Indefinite blackout Think of a blackout, but one of indefinite duration because we have no plan for recovery and could expect little or no help from abroad.

The EMP commission also reported that Iran which is feverishly working to ac Your Comments Mail or hand deliver letters to The Republic, 333 Second St, Columbus, Indiana 47201 or Fax them to 379-571 1 or Send them by e-mail to editorialtherepubltccom..