John Webster

Why is Spokane's City Council held in such low esteem? High on our list of explanations is a perception of arrogance. That perception is not always deserved, but it has been fueled by officials who appear to enjoy the sound of their own voices more than they enjoy listening to the general public. Spokane would witness a noticeable improvement in the tenor of local government if voters would elect more people like Roberta Greene and Jim Kolva. Unfortunately, these two City Council candidates are running for the same seat. So are four other people.

If the people of Spokane County are fortunate there soon won't be a three-member board of county commissioners to make our local government a scandal and a laughingstock. Instead, the community can work to make a success story of the county Freeholders' plan for a more representative, potentially more efficient system of government. But it's unknown whether the freeholders' proposal will pass when voters consider it Nov. 7. So, one more time, we must evaluate county commissioner candidates. There are six. Two, a Republican and a Democrat, stand out, offering voters of both persuasions a respectable choice. What our editorial board looks for in a candidate, before getting to ideology, are the abilities to serve constructively with others and to articulate, clearly and knowledgeably, what the candidate aims to achieve in office. Divisiveness or vague rhetoric leaves us cold, and democracy poorly served.

If enough voters say yes on Sept. 19, residents in rural and suburban Spokane County will enjoy a dramatic improvement in their library services. The demand for what's being proposed became clear after voters in the city of Spokane shouldered what turned out to be one of their best investments in many years. The city's new library system - featuring new buildings, an enlarged collection and computerized information services - has been a huge hit. Residents who live outside the city and don't pay for the city's system were eager to get in on the action - and were dismayed to learn they have to pay a steep fee for the privilege.

How do you build a community? How do you make it, and keep it, a good place to live? As Spokane opens its new arena, let's reflect for just a moment on the dogged effort to build it. The effort began around the same time Cal Ripken Jr. played the first of his 2,131 consecutive baseball games. We live in times of hostility toward government, some of it warranted. Yet government also is a force for good; it should not be corny to remind ourselves that government, fundamentally, is not them, it's us. It is the way ordinary people work together to improve their communities.

Give Mayor Jack Geraghty a hand. In a major act of civic leadership he has challenged our community to face and deal firmly with one of the biggest, toughest urban problems of our time: Violence and crime among juveniles. His six-point proposal, submitted last week to the City Council, acknowledges the difficulty of the task ahead and defines the problem well. "Most of our kids are acting responsibly," the mayor emphasizes. "Only a few hundred out of the many thousands of young people in our area are involved in youth crime and violence. ... As citizens, we certainly should have the capability to target this troublesome hardcore segment."

The American people don't need to give up national parks, national forests and other public lands, as extremists in Congress propose. Rather, we ought to take better care of them, so that we, like visionaries of the past, can pass this vulnerable heritage on to succeeding generations. The move to liquidate federal lands indicates whose interests today's right-wing lawmakers represent. They aren't representing ordinary Americans, they represent the impersonal corporate concerns that work to log, mine, pave and otherwise exploit what remains of our nation's natural resources.

Hong Kong businessman Ronald Wai Choi Ng did not come to Spokane and invest $12.5 million because he wanted to get in a courtroom battle with the local power company. He came and invested here because he wanted to reopen the Davenport Hotel and restore this gorgeous, beloved landmark to the international renown it once enjoyed. This community and its leaders ought to look for ways to support and assist him so that his dream of a thriving downtown - a dream shared by others - can be realized.

It's August. Even Congress wants a break. So we pose the question: Is a meticulously tended lawn a thing of beauty? Or is it evidence democracy has gone to seed?< Show me a meticulously manicured lawn, and I'll show you someone who has forgotten this nation's roots. Well, sure, it is fine for managing editors and other aristocrats to have a yard that looks like the Butchart Gardens. Gives them a chance to return some spending money to the laborers who tend their lawns, manufacture their pesticides and grow their bedding plants.

We hate to rain on the closing days of summer, but when youngsters head back to school this fall they'll do so beneath a cloud. They have to get nearly perfect grades. They need more money in the bank than they can earn. Parents no longer can take it for granted that their kids will go to college. Costs and entrance requirements are getting prohibitive. Current political and demographic trends will make this problem worse. Young people are a state's most precious resource. They need advanced education to fulfill their potential and fuel the modern economy. If they don't get it - and without reform many won't - we're in deep trouble. So it was an act of leadership when Gov. Mike Lowry announced the other day that he has named a task force to propose a new financing system for Washington's public colleges and universities. Headed by former House Speaker Joe King, the group is supposed to submit recommendations by July 1996.

The first thing to keep in mind, as Congress rewrites the farm program, is that it's playing with ideological matches outside one whopper of a gas tank. The second thing to keep in mind is that politicians have harassed agriculture for 60 years but haven't blown it up yet. (Before they got involved, you might recall what private banks were doing to family farms: plowing them under.) Agriculture fuels the Inland Northwest's economy. And in a national economy weakened by imports, agricultural exports are a crucial plus. So there's a lot at stake as Congress assembles a new farm bill. There's also a likelihood of change. Some in the new Republican majority are ideologically opposed to subsidies. Urban Democrats also would like to kill farm subsidies, the better to subsidize the unproductive urban poor. But there's a potent moderating force: Many in the new Republican majority won their seats on the strength of farm-country votes.

It's a puzzle, and it's an economic crisis: Power from Columbia River dams seemingly has grown so expensive that utilities and industries are turning to other sources, such as natural-gas turbines. But dams buy no fuel. They harness gravity. The region must be clear about what the problem is, or solutions will miss the mark. WPPSS is the problem no one wants to talk about. The Washington Public Power Supply System set out to build five nuclear plants, but after a scandalous series of errors only one was completed. The Bonneville Power Administration (which also sells power from the dams) must repay some of the debt incurred to build the abandoned WPPSS plants. Like it or not, and no one does, it is a legal obligation. BPA owes $520 million a year to retire WPPSS debts.

Forest Service chief Jack Ward Thomas trooped through Spokane the other day, along with an entourage of top administrators. They were stumping for a big bureaucratic planning exercise. It will save the region's forest ecosystem, they contend, but Spokane's congressman, George Nethercutt, has placed it all in jeopardy. OK, we're all for saving the ecosystem. We agree that forest managers should keep nature's delicate balance in mind as they oversee valid human activities such as logging, grazing and recreation.

How many times, voters, have you stepped into the voting booth, looked at your choices and felt like holding your nose? Could would-be candidates play a role in restoring public participation in democracy? For instance, what if the nation's best talent started filing for office? What if deeply flawed contenders deemed it a service to back off? Those questions came to mind recently as Washington Gov. Mike Lowry acknowledged he will pay former press aide Susanne Albright $97,500 to settle Albright's sexual harassment allegations. Lowry admitted no wrongs in the settlement, but the cash says otherwise.

What a summer this has been for Washington state's most famous entrepreneur. Fifteen years ago, Bill Gates was an obscure computer geek. A few weeks ago, Forbes magazine crowned him the world's richest man. And now, with fanfare fit for the Second Coming, Microsoft is about to ship Windows 95. Out of the limelight, like a horse plodding to the glue factory, the last American typewriter maker, Smith Corona, has filed for bankruptcy. And corporate America continues to downsize its labor force, aided by the accelerating computerization of industry. Gates made his fortune from these upheavals.

When commuters arrive by bus in downtown Spokane this morning, they'll launch a new era for mass transit and the downtown business district. The long-awaited, long-debated downtown transit center is open. It culminates an effort that began eight years ago, when business leaders sat down with officials at the Spokane Transit Authority to discuss a mutual concern: A wall of buses, stretched for blocks along Riverside and Howard, was damaging the city's center. The buses and the crowds of waiting riders clogged streets and sidewalks, hindering access to ground-floor businesses. Added to other stresses on the core, the bus problems were a factor as storefronts along bus parking spots went vacant. Was there a better way? Could it also improve the transit system?

Spokane County Commissioners Steve Hasson and Phil Harris are making more urgent the case for dissolving the archaic, easily abused governmental structure they head. This fall voters should have a chance to replace it. Freeholders propose a consolidated city-county government with an elected executive and 13-member council to represent interests of the whole area. On the commissioners' three-member board, it only takes two to work mischief. Harris' arrival this year gave Hasson a partner. They claim they're out to slash an overgrown payroll and prepare for declining revenue. But the vast majority of payroll growth was for criminal justice needs the public supports. Tax revenue has been growing; they can't yet quantify the feared slowdown.

That black granite wall in the lush green lawns of the nation's capital won't go away, and it shouldn't. But neither, it seems, will the conflict it commemorates. Vietnam still divides the United States. We are a people in need of peace. Bill Clinton tried to make peace this week, when he normalized U.S. relations with Vietnam. But even before he opened his mouth, he came under attack. Waving Old Glory like Marines at Iwo Jima, Republican presidential candidates Bob Dole and Bob Dornan joined the American Legion in reminding voters that Clinton used to be one of those long-haired peaceniks who ducked the draft and called the war a mistake. George Bush made that a campaign issue against Clinton in 1992. It didn't work then. It shouldn't work now.

It wasn't the general public that Washington's Legislature was representing when it enacted Initiative 164 this spring. It was the bulldozer boys, the developers and timber companies who've shown they would hurt your neighborhood or fill your favorite fishing holes with silt if public agencies weren't there to demand responsibility in the pursuit of corporate profits. The people of Washington can ill afford to let this law stand. They need to take a stand of their own: for the protection of their quality of life. They need to reassert the average Joe's voice in today's corporate-oriented political climate. They need to sign petitions for Referendum 48, being circulated by good-government groups such as the League of Women Voters. That measure would give voters a chance this November to repeal Initiative 164.

Eastern Washington knows better than to trust politicians who come bearing radioactive gifts. As principal dumping ground for wastes from the nation's nuclear weapons program, this region has suffered more than its share of the environmental and human poisonings that come with nuclear industry jobs. Even now, radioactive waste simmers in Hanford's leaky underground tanks, while technicians with a mediocre safety record strive to prevent the stuff from exploding. Should Eastern Washington now accept radioactive waste from the civilian nuclear power industry as well?

When American revolutionaries signed the Declaration of Independence 219 years ago, they could only dream of a government that peacefully changes direction in response to public discontent. They had to fight and die to end the governmental annoyances of their day. For more than two centuries, our country has survived because, after the revolutionaries had laid down their guns, they picked up their pens, pooled their political ingenuity and designed a system of government with a miraculous capacity to change its own course.

1. What E. coli? 2. Wnjoy your commute 3. Coming attraction

After a century of cutthroat competition, Spokane's hospitals have laid down their scalpels. United by a common interest in survival, they and a majority of Spokane's doctors have joined forces to keep our sophisticated health-care industry alive. Last week, they launched a new organization that aims to cooperate, cut costs and eliminate duplication. The organization is known as the Spokane Physician Hospital Community Organization - PHCO, for short. To those who've watched Sacred Heart and Deaconess medical centers wage an arms race in medical equipment and services, this new entity's potential is breathtaking. So are the stakes for consumers and the economy.

Tsk, tsk. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that when a drug-abuse epidemic invades a public school, it's OK for the school to require that all student athletes undergo urinalysis. This is frightful news for those who think lawyers and civil rights litigation could solve what ails the upbringing of America's children. But it is good news for the rest of us who recognize that parents, schools and communities need to reassert their authority over children with enforceable standards of conduct. A fine way to win compliance with such standards is by requiring compliance in exchange for privileges young people covet - such as participation in sports. Yes, it is a privilege, not a civil right, to play football.

Few Americans will escape the pain of upcoming cuts in federal spending. Medicare benefits will shrink. So will farm subsidies, crucial to this region's economy. Ditto for long-standing popular aid to veterans, college students, small businesses and poor people in need of a lawyer, as well as hundreds of others. Highway maintenance will deteriorate. Scores of agencies, providing thousands of family-wage jobs, will be closed; among them may be the Spokane office of the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Deep cuts are needed to make government spend within its means. But one fat target seems exempt: the military-industrial complex.