Opinions from past add perspective

Big cars, June 25, 1976: An S-R editorial lamented Americans’ short memories about long gas lines, noting that large inventories of compact cars were going unsold.

“As memories of the oil and gasoline shortage two years ago become dimmer, the American public, and especially car purchasers, are once again demonstrating their preferences for larger, less efficient automobiles.”

It continued: “The auto industry cannot be blamed for responding to the changing attitudes of the country. One even can say the industry has made measurable strides in abandoning or improving the gas-guzzling engines that were designed when gas seemed to be ever available and inexpensive.”

The editorial concluded: “It is human nature to forget quickly an unpleasant experience. But if we permit that experience to be forgotten individually and collectively, we are only hastening the next traumatic realization that our fossil fuels are limited.”

AIDS, June 24, 1986: An S-R editorial was critical of the Reagan administration’s position on AIDS and the workplace.

“The Justice Department, in a 49-page legal opinion, gave the go-ahead for employers and public health officials to discriminate against AIDS victims if their intent is to prevent the spread of the fatal disease. That would be a reasonable approach if it were based on available medical knowledge – but it is not.

“Scientists assure us that AIDS is spread through sexual contact and the blood – not by casual contact. But the Justice Department’s opinion kicks open the door of discrimination even when it is the product of baseless, irrational fears.”

It goes on to say, “If the employer’s concern, no matter how unfounded, is that the person would spread the disease, the firing generally would be considered legal unless the employer’s fear were merely ‘a pretext for discrimination on account of handicap.’ What that says, in essence, is: ‘Do what you think best’; it puts the arduous and unfair burden of proving discrimination on the AIDS victim.”

Closed meeting, June 23, 2006: An S-R editorial criticized the process by which the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority hired a new director.

“By hiring a new director on Monday after making the decision in private, the SCAPCA board circumvented at least the spirit of the state’s open meeting law. Once the shortcoming was called to public attention, board President Matthew Pederson dismissed the incident as if it were just a semantic technicality. The board didn’t vote on the selection of Bill Dameworth in private, he said, it just reached a consensus.

“Vote or consensus, the point is that the board came to a decision during discussions held without the public’s presence. The open meetings law meant to prevent that.”

The agency, now called Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency, was eventually fined for violating the open meeting law.