The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 10

Che Uurlingtonrte Press PAGE 10A Thursday, March 16, 1995 Editorial Page Editor Nick Monsarrat 660-1867 or (800) 427-3124 EDITORIAL BOARD James M. Carey President and Publisher Jennifer Carroll Executive Editor Stephen Kiernan Editorial Writer Mickey Hirten Managing Editor Nick Monsarrat Editorial Page Editor Edward Bartholomew Controller Linda Marabell Market Development Director Opinion Gordon Paquette mm III I iri I urlington Alderman and consummate conservative Mayor Gordon Paquette was the Democrat'and party man who I did it the old-fashioned way: hard work, long hours and schmoozing, one day at a time. It was what helped keep him in office for 23 years 13 as Ward 2 alderman and 10 as mayor, re-elected more often without opposition than against strong challengers. Yet it was too much party coziness that also proved his and Democrats' undoing in 1981 as a changing Burlington, isolated low-income neighborhoods and Socialist Bernard Sanders caught him aloof and napping. STRIKE IS WTHEDC NOW THE PLAYERS WE HIRED REFIACEMErVT wHINbAb.

government at its worst (mm Activist WASHINGTON The national pastime, at least here at the seat of the national government, is a game economists call "rent seeking." It has many permutations, one of which has produced the "perimeter rule" concerning National Airport, which sits on the Virginia bank of the Potomac, a short drive from the Capitol, the Yankee Stadium of rent seeking. Rent seeking is the attempt by a private faction, in league with compliant public officials, to bend public power to private advantage by conferring either an advantage on that faction or a disadvantage on that faction's competition. Rent seeking is usually an attempt to evade market forces, so it sows inefficiencies in society's allocations of resources. Consider the rule that planes taking off from National may not have as their initial destination any airport more than 1,250 miles away. Begin by drawing on a map a circle with a radius measuring 1,250 miles.

The perimeter of the circle will cut just deep enough into Texas to include the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The perimeter rule was set at 1,250 miles in 1986, when the speaker of the House was Jim Wright of Fort Worth. This story began in the 1960s, when airlines serving National agreed to combat congestion at National by limiting non-stop THIS BASEBALL Politically, Burlington Democrats have still not recovered from that. Yet while Paquette was as close to a machine politician as Vermont gets, for Burlington it was mostly for the better. He immersed himself in the details of city business and federal grantsmanship to the point his predecessor as mayor, Democrat Francis Cain, remarked before retiring, "Gordon probably has more knowledge of city government than any other man I know." The burden of property taxes was never far from his mind, his final term a rare exception to his typical dedication to holding taxes down.

wuii a viguaiu news uicuia, holds the key to its future Meanwhile, much of what the city's government and businesses are finishing up or expanding on now and much of what the public might take for granted was nurtured or completed in the Paquette years, much of it through no small effort of his own: Expansion of the city and region's bus system. The start of renovation of the city's aging housing stocks and the launching of Vermont's first public housing authority. Start of planning for the Southern Connector. Downtown urban renewal and other groundwork laid for Burlington Square Mall and the Church Street Marketplace. Park development, including construction of the Leddy Park ice arena, now bearing his name.

Through it all, though, party wasn't far away. In his first run for alderman in 1958, he out-organized and upset a Republican, then took his place on a board dominated by sometimes fractious Democrats squaring off against a Republican mayor. In less than four years, he was seen the unifier of Democrats on the board. In his first run for mayor in 1971, he rejected the notion of a separate campaign team and used instead the party's ward apparatus. He was so consistently certain of re-election that in five aldermanic races he faced no opposition at all.

In his fateful run against Sanders, he claimed to be running scared but acted anything but. In the end, he had lost by 10 votes. Neighborhood more than party politics make or break Burlington campaigns now, and Paquette's Democrats have yet to find their legs after that 1981 fall. In the long run, though, more than that last political defeat, Paquette deserves to be known for the foundations he and his party helped lay for Burlington's future a much bigger thing. Openness at risk It's no accident that the statement of purpose for Vermont's open-meeting law begins, "All meetings of a public body are declared to be open to the public at all times, Before that language was crafted and passed by the 1973 Legislature in a major rewrite of the law, some lawmakers had nearly turned the purpose of the law upside down: "Public bodies may exclude the public More like the state's earlier right-to-secrecy law, when closed meetings were allowed as long as votes weren't taken.

On Freedom of Information Day, it's worth noting those past pitched battles over secrecy in Vermont, and revisiting events that have followed. First, to say today's law has worked better than might be expected, given its notoriously weak enforcement provi- sions. Second, to emphasize M. tnat a vigilant public, along advantageous to various interests, in cities that have been hubs for flights forced by law to terminate within 1,250 miles of National. So there is much talk about this change "wrecking" air traffic patterns around Washington and around the nation and hurting Dulles as a feeder of trans-Atlantic flights.

This small controversy about an obscure rule illuminates how regulatory government produces resistance to the reform of itself. By making decisions that markets would not make, government creates or strengthens interests that become dependent on government's not letting markets work. These interests defend their government-conferred advantages by playing upon two impulses that are becoming stronger in reaction against conservative attempts to prune government. One impulse is a flinching from the unpredictability of freedom's consequences. Another is to assert the entitlement mentality interests that become dependent on government policies are entitled to have those policies continue forever.

Thus does the perimeter rule demonstrate how activist government, responsive to rent seekers, creates in the end constituencies for inertia. George Will writes from Washington on political and social issues. His column appears Mondays and Thursdays. The Free Press welcomes letters to the editor commenting on op-ed columns. non-stop flights from National, was not amused.

Neither were cities within the perimeter that stood to lose flights that would be rerouted to Dallas-Fort Worth. Texas prevailed with the 1,250 perimeter rule that swept in Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. The effect was to permit some flights to land there and to compel many others to land there. This benefited two large airports and many commercial interests. But the law in its majesty still forbids non-stop flights from National to, for example, Denver and Salt Lake City.

And to Phoenix, home of Sen. John McCain, who has an old idea and a new position from which to advance it. The idea, which pertains to government involvement in the economy, is: When in doubt, get it out. His position, a result of last November's election, is the chairmanship of the aviation subcommittee of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. The perimeter rule is, 1 8 years after the deregulation that produced today's highly competitive airline industry, an obviously anomalous federal interference with the market's ability to reflect consumer preferences.

Erasing the rule would cause a redistribution of flights between National and Dulles, and would have ripple effects, some of them dis Three strikes make sure the jerk is out George Will flights from there to destinations within 650 miles, with exceptions for seven more distant cities that already were receiving non-stop flights from National. The federal government, which then operated National and, much farther out in Virginia, the new Dulles Airport, which had opened in 1962, supported the rule as a subsidy for Dulles: the rule conferred on the less convenient airport a monopoly of long-distance flights. In the early 1980s the perimeter rule was revised to permit flights, covering the seven cities that had been granted exceptions to the 650-mile limit. But by 1986 some airlines responding to that inconvenient (as governments often consider it) idea called consumer sovereignty, were evading the perimeter rule by taking off from National, touching down briefly at Dulles about 26 miles away, then flying on to Dallas-Fort Worth. Texas' congressional delegation proposed exempting Dallas-Fort Worth from the limit.

But Houston, which still would have been without Mike Royko mending a glaring gap in our justice system. It is the question of what to do with jerks. The fact is, most people are not murdered or robbed or attacked by a fiend. The average bank teller will never see a bank robber. But hardly anyone in our society can get through even one day without being tormented by a jerk.

They are everywhere and they multiply faster than the general population.1 We entered the Age of the Jerk sometime in the 1960s. That's when screamers decided they could dominate any public discussion, slobs decided that all the world was their litter box and droolers began forcing their boom box noise on innocent ears. All you have to do is get out in rush-hour traffic. Within seconds a jerk will tailgate or cut you off. Or white-knuckle merge at 5 mph in a high-speed zone.

Turn on your radio and hear the grunts and "ya knows" of the jerks who dominate the call-in shows. would talk loudly in a movie -theater, pick his nose in a restaurant, blow black smoke out of his exhaust pipe and let his dog doo-doo on someone else's front lawn. A few years ago, after a record-setting weekend of litter in Chicago's Lincoln Park, I made a simple proposal for teaching people not to litter. A few of them would be seized and strung up by the neck on trees in the park. Their bodies would be left to dangle and decay with signs on their chests saying: "I Littered.

Now I Am Dead. Mend Your Ways." The bleeding hearts said I was sadistic. That's what they said more recently when I suggested that those who use their car stereos to jolt entire neighborhoods with the noise of cha-cha or rock music should have their ears sliced off and the ear canals filled with Krazy Glue. Cruel and unusual punishment, the do-gooders said. OK, I'm not a monster.

I'm open to compromise. So on the first offense, maybe we cut off and plug only one ear. After that, we get tough. Mike Royko Is a columnist at the Chicago Tribune. His column appears in the Opinion section on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

The Free Press welcomes letters to the editor commenting on op-ed columns. A large segment of the population believes that chicken bones should never be put in a garbage can. Instead, they should be taken to the nearest park and scattered on the softball diamonds or in the grass. Drive through some neighborhoods, and you get the inner-city strut from young men who slowly jaywalk and dare you to hit them so they can sue and ruin your life. If your phone rings with a wrong number, it's likely that the person on the other end will get mad and blame you for his stupidity.

In a checkout line, the jerks wait until the entire order has been tabulated before slowly taking out his wallet or opening her purse. So, basically, stealing a slice of pizza from children was the act of a jerk, not a criminal. Similar acts of jerkism are committed every day. And nothing happens to the hairy-browed perpetrators. But now the word might go out, maybe on radio talk shows, where most jerk info is exchanged: "The jig is up, a jerk got 25 years to life." Why not? Why should jerks get away with a lifelong commitment to shredding society's delicate fabric of common courtesy and civility? Why should society just heave a sigh when made miserable by these gap-toothed primates? A bully who would steal a slice of pizza from children The same rule is true for the state's access to public documents law.

As applicable today to computerized public records as to paper records, it now requires more public persistence to ensure officials treat them that way. But it's the open-meeting law that remains most fragile in Vermont enforcement options so weak all the legal efforts in the world mean little without public and news media watchdogging to buttress them. Indeed, the threat of revived calls for cops and prosecutors to replace today's misdemeanor fines and after-the-fact court injunctions (see a summary of the law on the opposite page) might be today's main deterrent to secrecy. i That said, local and state officials have breached the law's reasonable limits in the past, and to a more limited degree still do fair warning to the Vermont public that its hold on open government remains tenuous at best. The law, for example, does not allow closed-door meetings "to discuss personalities," only the hiring, evaluation or discipline of employees.

Yet local officials often insist otherwise. The law does not allow unwarned closed-door "working meetings" over morning coffee, on the telephone late at night or behind the barn. Yet some local public officials behave otherwise. The law requires meetings and emergency meetings to be properly warned, but sometimes they are not most recently in the case of the Pownal selectboard and a gambling casino developer. The law allows citizens, including the news media, to seek court injunctions to stop potentially illegal meetings pending a court hearing, but in practice illegal meetings are often over before a.

judge can stop them. The law does not allow legislative or other other state bodies to meet behind closed doors but on occasion, committee chairmen and at least one governor have attempted to do otherwise, stopped only when publicity and public outcry forced reversals. Public complacency and government secrecy are partners in the same crime: bad government and, at worst, corruption. Vermont government, so far, has remained remarkably insulated from the worst of both. However, as local and state governments get more power and federaj tax dollars grow scarcer, it's a record no one should take for granted.

At first glance, it seems like a terrible abuse of legal power a man sent to prison for 25 years to life for stealing one slice of pizza. Yes, only one thin slice of pizza. And it didn't even have everything on it. But that's what happened to a mope named Jerry Dewayne Williams in a Los Angeles courtroom. It was Williams' misfortune to have stolen the pizza slice after California put in one of those tough "three strikes" laws.

This meant that because Williams had four earlier felony convictions including robbery and attempted robbery a judge could whack him with the 25-to-life stretch on another conviction. But why would stealing one slice of pizza be considered a serious crime? Because after too much drinking with his buddies, Williams, 25, grabbed the pizza slice from a group of children in a restaurant. And one of the kids testified that Williams frightened him. Williams is unhappy. So is his lawyer.

And many California liberals say that the three-strikes law was not intended to punish a pizza thief as harshly as a murderer, bank robber or sex fiend. They have a point. Some killers, robbers and fiends receive lighter sentences than 25 to life. On the other hand, the sentence could be a step toward.