John Webster

Voters want change in city and county government. Depending on the final count in one close race, all three City Council jobs that were on the Spokane ballot may have new occupants come January. In Spokane County, voters spurned a commissioner candidate backed by the two incumbent commissioners and chose newcomer John Roskelley instead. Forty-two percent - disappointing but still striking in view of the radical message embraced - supported dissolution of city and county government and creation of a "unigov." Meanwhile in Sandpoint, another community struggling with discord, voters installed a new mayor and four new council members. Mayor David Sawyer can be expected to end backdoor deals, open up City Hall and address the town's tainted human-rights image. Post Falls kept its mayor, but Jim Hammond is a progressive who has changed the city from a bedroom community to a growing commercial center.

It wasn't the soldier in Yitzhak Rabin that brought presidents and prime ministers to mourn his death. It was the peacemaker. It was the grandfather. Grandfathers have lived long enough to learn what matters in life - granddaughters, for instance.

It's just about time for the voters to speak. So we ought to do it well, since the lineup on Tuesday's ballot matters, to all of us. There are city and county officials to elect, judges to choose, school buildings to improve, several major laws to approve or reject, and in Spokane County there's a hugely important plan, born from years of frustration, to redesign local government.

Critics of the Endangered Species Act miss the point when they gripe that concerns for some obscure critter allowed anti-business obstructionists to file an annoying lawsuit. The act's value isn't in the litigation, nor even in the fate of kangaroo rats and Redfish Lake sockeye.

What makes a city official into a community leader? It's a tough question - one that comes to mind in the very tough choice between Jim Kolva and Roberta Greene for the Spokane City Council. Each offers a thoughtful agenda for reform, good listening skills, strong records of civic involvement, relevant academic backgrounds. As voters look for distinctions between these fine candidates, they can note that Kolva's expertise in land-use planning covers just one part of the spectrum of city issues.

John Roskelley is not a politician. He will look you square in the eye, shake your hand with a grip strengthened on the world's tallest peaks and tell you what he thinks, straight out. Roskelley is not a politician, but he is running for Spokane County commissioner. He has a few qualities that might bring honor to the title - for a change. Discipline made him a successful small businessman and one of the world's top mountain climbers. Commitment to the community led this longtime Valley resident to service on the county Planning Commission, the county Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, the Friends of the Centennial Trail and more. Thoughtfulness, of a type that sees down the road a piece, makes him a believer in disciplined budgeting, in preventing juvenile crime as well as locking up violent thugs and in making growth sustainable by planning adequate infrastructure.

Last in a series The mayor of Charlotte, N.C., told the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce the other day that he hopes Spokane area voters won't unify their city and county governments, as his community intends to do. "I hope you'll stay fragmented and disjointed because you'll be a less effective competitor," said Richard Vinroot with a friendly grin. Competitor? Here in Spokane, we know a lot about competition. City government fights with county government. Politicians fan flames of suspicion between the suburbs and the core. Never mind the common ground that underlies these divisions.

During the past 25 years, the United States dramatically has cleaned up its outdoor air, using regulations that ban pollution less noxious than what we still tolerate in the reeking blue air of a restaurant's cocktail lounge. All of us have benefited from cleaner outdoor air. It is past time to address our indoor air. It is time to quit kidding around about tobacco smoke. That is, by far, the deadliest single threat to public health.

Rosselle Pekelis is just too good to pass up, voters. She belongs on Washington state's highest court. Brilliant, down-to-earth, articulate, supported by police, revered as a judge, involved in the community from Little League to the PTA, a working mom, a grandmother, passionately committed to American freedoms as only an Italian immigrant who fled Nazi persecution can be ... These qualities - and more - explain why Pekelis has won a series of both elections and appointments to the bench over the years. She served seven years on the King County Superior Court and nine years on the state Court of Appeals and was named to the state Supreme Court last spring.

Business interests who've lined up behind unification of Spokane's city and county government are taking a chance. They are taking a chance on representative democracy. Frankly, business interests have little difficulty manipulating the weak, bickering governments Spokane has now. The unified government proposed on the Nov. 7 ballot would hand more influence to broad, grass-roots concerns. That should seem refreshing, in a community suspicious of greased skids and tired of flaky office holders. It means special interests will have to get the general public more securely on board with their proposals - by listening and refining. Bottom line? Better government. A stronger sense of community.

Here's a fact you rarely hear from the Northwest's environmental groups: When the first Columbia River dam was being constructed, salmon runs already had fallen to less than 20 percent of their original levels. Intense commercial overfishing, with wasteful methods still in use today, played a big role in that early devastation of the runs. A fair, effective program to save salmon must include an end to overfishing - as well as the dam modifications and habitat restorations that unfortunately are the focus of Sierra Club propaganda.

Correction: (Tuesday, October 24, 1995 B4) Sunday's editorial criticizing Washington state Referendum 48 incorrectly described the question it poses to voters. In fact, this Nov. 7 ballot item will ask voters whether they wish to approve or reject a property rights law passed by the 1995 Legislature. The Spokesman-Review editorial board urges that people vote to reject the law.

The first great March on Washington looked to government for solutions. This week's march took the next step. It looked to individuals for solutions to problems that government alone could never solve. Government, for example, makes a rotten father. Only a committed man can be a father, can create the environment required for children to flourish and society to survive. This is not really a racial issue, although participants in the Million Man March on Monday in the nation's capital called attention to the staggering, tragic fact that 65 percent of black children live in single-parent homes. It also ought to stagger us that 25 percent of white children live in single-parent homes.

Second in a series What would it cost, or how much might it save, if voters decide on Nov. 7 to merge Spokane's city and county governments? Nobody knows right now. Not the critics. Not the proponents. Here's why: The same voters who will decide whether to create a unified government also will have a big say in how much that government spends, what services it provides and how much duplication it cuts from the fighting, fragmented governments we have now. The freeholders' proposal dramatically increases voter influence: It creates an elected executive and a council elected by district. Voters get a say over tax increases, plus the rights of referendum, initiative and recall.

Conservatives in Congress want to take social services away from federal bureaucrats and hand them off to local charities. It's a decent idea. So why are they also trying to silence the charitable sector and hogtie it with regulations and reporting requirements? Could it be that when it comes to the poor, the Newtzies want to plug their ears as well as wash their hands?

First in a series In November 1992, Spokane County's voters showed vision worthy of their future. They elected 25 freeholders to design a unified local government. The freeholders have done it. On Nov. 7, the voters will decide whether to adopt their proposal and replace the mess we have now. It's a radical solution. One is needed. After a century on the road, Spokane's existing governments are wheezing to a stop like a couple of broken-down old cars. Both city and county government face severe budget problems. Their redundant, union-dominated bureaucracies resist innovation and cost more than the local economy can support.

The most important moment in O.J. Simpson's trial came just before the verdict was announced. For a couple of sweet, breathless minutes, the lawyers and the pundits and the people-on-the-street all fell silent. And waited for the jury to speak. Think about what that silence represents. This was not a trial by media, or a lynching in the court of popular opinion. It was a trial by jury.

As Congress cuts federal aid to the poor, poverty will not disappear. It will become, more than ever, a local problem. Local crime. Local hunger. Local homelessness. Local children who lack the basics of life. Spokane, which did its part last November to vote for the dismantlement of federal poverty programs, will have to do its part to replace them. As home to a large low-income population, Spokane has relied heavily on federal aid. The toughest challenge, as that aid disappears from the economy, involves housing. In a tight, high-priced real estate market like Spokane's, federal subsidies and incentives kept landlords interested in the provision of affordable housing. Without inducements, prices will rise out of reach.

The social worker was new to Spokane and unfamiliar with its ways when the telephone rang. Members of the Junior League wanted to see what life was like for low-income people. Could the social worker arrange for them to meet some? The social worker did, and after the encounter, the well-meaning fashion plates were appropriately appalled by the squalid housing conditions that they had seen. We must have a tea, they said afterwards, to raise money for the poor. What you really ought to do, the social worker thought but was too gentle to say, is talk to your husbands who run this town. Because for all its good intentions, Spokane's official priorities just don't coincide with its reality. The reality is a chronic housing crisis. An urban core filled with unseen poverty. Spokane's 3rd Legislative District has more welfare clients than any other district in the state; more than the most notorious slums of Tacoma or Seattle.

And you thought the baseball strike was disgusting. The brats of summer are at it again. The Seattle Mariners threaten to leave unless taxpayers build them a swankier stadium. It's high time taxpayers, somewhere, stood up to baseball industry blackmail. Too many cities have been shaken down, then left in the lurch for some field of dreams with greener grass. Let 'em go. Now. It'd be cheaper than re-enacting the boondoggles of the Kingdome's construction and renovation, and then watching the M's leave a new facility behind the next time they get the itch.

Other American tycoons consider themselves lucky if they can buy a U.S. senator. Ross Perot, whose fortune is exceeded in size only by his ego, wants to buy himself a new political party. Odd as it is for a billionaire to masquerade as a populist - a regular guy who wants to cut the power of big money in politics - we would like to wish him luck. He'll need it.

Think of the Pacific Northwest's economy as a house, with smoke filling the rooms. Its outdated wiring is showering the kitchen with sparks. Down in the basement, politicians are poking pennies into the fuse box. Okay, it's a crude analogy. But it's no joke. The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency that sells power from Columbia River dams, has begun to lose major customers. Aluminum companies are making deals to buy power elsewhere.

The conservatives who dominate Congress these days are really big on the Pledge of Allegiance. But their flag isn't the one representing "justice for all." No, when Newt and the boys place their manicured fingers on the lapels of those Brooks Brothers suits, they pledge allegiance to a flag that represents "justice for people like us." Other Americans need not apply. Under legislation approved by committees in both the House and Senate, no longer could the judicial branch of government be the one refuge where the humblest American can stand on an equal footing with the richest, seeking a redress of wrongs. By slashing and hamstringing legal services to the poor, Congress would make of the judicial branch what its water-carrying for corporate lobbyists is making of the legislative branch. A private club. Even Richard Nixon would hold his nose, in the presence of an ideology like this. Nixon's the one who created Legal Services Corp. Hired with federal, state and private funds, its lawyers specialize in concerns of the poor, such as domestic violence. This means fewer battered women have to go to court without a lawyer, or beg at the door of commercial law offices for someone to take their case for free.

Last week at 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon, 81-year-old Peter LaBeck was sitting in front of the Fox Theatre at Sprague and Monroe in downtown Spokane. Three black teenagers walked up to him, told him he was "ugly white trash," cursed him and said they would beat him up. While the other two cheered, the third punched and kicked LaBeck, breaking his nose, blackening his eyes and breaking his dentures in two. Witnesses said LaBeck had done nothing to provoke the assault. Police have arrested suspects and charges are pending. Let us hope the courts will give the offenders the tough, swift justice such a crime deserves. What happened to LaBeck is an outrage. But outrage hasn't stopped urban violence from happening over and over again.