Our Views
Personnel Board's Catch 22
Fairness sometimes requires an exception be made to a rule. The Jefferson County Personnel Board is currently trying to enforce a rule that needs such an exception.The board's rule on provisional employees has a valid purpose. Once the board has tested and certified applicants for jobs covered by the local civil service system, local governments should be required to hire from the board's lists and to dismiss any provisional employees not on the list for the jobs they hold.
Without such rules, an agency might be tempted to try to bypass the system when hiring some employees.
However, the rules assume the Personnel Board is functioning with reasonable efficiency and that its tests are offered frequently enough to keep lists of qualified applicants usable and to allow new applicants to qualify for inclusion.
That is not the current situation. The board is under federal court oversight because of multiple deficiencies. And despite improvements, the testing process is still not where it should be.
The result is a Catch 22 for four dispatchers at the Sheriff's Department and three who work for the city of Birmingham.
All were hired or transferred to their provisional positions because the Personnel Board was developing a test for dispatchers and did not have a current list of qualified applicants when the jobs needed to be filled.
Those who were hired were told the positions were temporary but they would have an opportunity to qualify for permanent positions by taking the test when it became available. That didn't happen.
A dispatchers test was offered in March, but it was open only to people who had taken the first part of the test in 2001.
Some, if not all, of the provisional dispatchers were not in a position to take the 2001 test, even if they had had the foresight to want to do so.
The time between test parts and the fact that the provisional dispatchers were not allowed to take the March part of the test makes enforcement of the dismissal rule unfair at this time.
The fair solution is to allow the provisional dispatchers to stay on the job until they take the test or are offered a chance to take it and refuse.
Once these provisional employees have the chance to qualify for the
hiring list, the rule should be enforced — but not before.
The threat in Iran
Iran is an oppressive theocracy posing as a democracy. It has harbored terrorists. It recently announced development of a missile capable of hitting Israel and American forces in the Middle East.All of which makes two questions hugely important.
One is whether Iran is also developing nuclear weapons, and the other is what the United States should do if the worst suspicions are confirmed or if Iran won't cooperate with multilateral investigators.
Luckily, the United States is not in this alone. The European Union agrees there should be sanctions if Iran does not do what the International Atomic Energy Agency is now asking it to do: submit to unannounced, full-fledged inspections.
If Iran does not go along, diplomatic and political tools obviously should be employed before turning to any military option.
But this much should be understood: A nuclear-armed Iran would be a serious threat to the United States.
President Bush should also continue to speak out on behalf of Iranian dissidents whose tolerance for ayatollah dictatorship grows less by the day.
It's true that the Iranian president and parliament are elected, but the Guardian Council of Muslim clerics chooses the candidates, and the powers of the president and parliament are limited.
Clerics are in charge of the Iranian military and the judiciary, and this theocracy grants precious little freedom.
If the dissidents should gain power and establish a true democracy, the Iranian threat would be vastly diminished.
Even if it should turn out there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran, America should be true enough to its own ideals to support the cause of freedom there, at least through encouraging words.
Millions of human beings would live better lives if Iran became a true
democracy, and the world would be a better place.
Look Back
From Birmingham Post-Herald files:
Reacting to citizen complaints about road-hogging trucks, Birmingham
Police Sgt. Ben F. Robinson sends letters to trucking companies citing
city ordinance that requires slow-moving traffict to keep near right-hand
curb. Violators can expect to receive tickets.
Former FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. is reported to have startled
investigators probing 1963 bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church when
he told them he shot and killed black man during early 1960s in
Birmingham.
Your Views
Legislators strangle transit system
The Birmingham Post-Herald was too kind in saying Jefferson County's transit system struggles when, in fact, it is being strangled.The four executioners — John Rogers, Oliver Robinson,Mary Moore and Eric Major — are using a peculiar reasoning to cover a racist thinking and an inferiority complex.
The African-American control of city goverment in Birmingham is still in its infancy as is black representation on Goat Hill. That tiny minority of four sees public transportation as Birmingham's and don't want an intergration of the county's municipalities to become one and do the right thing. Since they don't see themselves the equal of the rest of the county a 100 percent of nothing seems greater than 40 percent of the whole.
The transit rider again in death valley has got to walk that lonesome valley.
The Post-Herald's piece mentioned, as it should have, that we need a fully funded system for the necessities of living. One item that doesn't get mentioned is that the transit rider has a life like everybody else. We want to get out and see and do things.
So as one Transit Rider speaking for many others, is it too much to ask that our representives scrounge up a little decency and even less common sense to help their carless citizens in need.
Butch Ferrell
Fairfield 35064-1464
Turned back
Bob Riley has worked hard to portray himself as a "good Christian," holding prayer meetings and using Christianity to try to pass his tax bill. In refusing to extend voting rights to ex-felons, he has turned his back on "the least of these."Christ spoke of prisoners in the same breath as the hungry, the naked, the poor, the thristy. Jesus himself was a felon, and the risen Christ is today an ex-felon. Riley doesn't want Him at the polls, and He will not be, due to Riley's partisan, racist act.
If you think this act wasn't racist, consider that the Board of Pardons and Paroles gave Guy Hunt, a white Republican ex-governor who was a felon, his rights back with no opposition — then rejected Pat Davis, a black Democrat.
The system is both racist and unforgiving, and Alabama has to be forced to change. Jerome Gray, state leader of the NAACP, is calling for a national economic boycott of the state until this atrocity is reversed. Maybe this will catch the attention of the business-loving Governor.
I was the original executive director of the National Democratic Party of Alabama, which elected the first blacks to political office in Alabama since Reconstruction. Six years later, we had more blacks in office than any other state in the union. We have a long way to go, but we have gone too far to turn back now.
Riley should visit the graves of Jimmie Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb, Jonathan Daniels and so many other who died to bring the vote to blacks. There he should repent. Christianity is more than piety and prayer meetings.
Rev. Jack Zylman
Birmingham 35205
Rivers in danger
Many probably are rightly concerned that Alabama negotiators in the "water wars" have, from the beginning, taken and continue to take a defensive position in the matter.Appropriately, Alabama filed suit in 1990 to prevent Georgia from constructing a reservoir on the Tallapoosa River, a proposal among other negative water flow measures the state had proposed.
This was a proper defensive response by Alabama at the moment but by no means should it have established a position from which to posture.
Might we have gained a more favorable negotiating position had we, at the time, not only filed this defensive suit to deny restriction of future water flow to Alabama, but also filed suit to recoup former water flow levels to Alabama, the reduction of which, over time, has already placed our rivers at serious marginal levels?
Does this suit to recoup sound a bit much? Maybe, but it would surely place all things in proper perspective.
Throughout our Earth, all rivers should eventually and ideally reach a water flow of optimal benefit to all, a flow arrived upon through careful study of costs versus benefits to the population and environment.
Many centuries-old, beautiful and productive rivers in Europe thrive today due to this optimal stage having been reached, recognized and respected.
Many other rivers throughout the world, sadly, have been swallowed up by reckless overextension of their capacities.
If Alabama has already reached the inevitable pinch where the water flow in its rivers has dropped to a point of no redemptive return, why are we even negotiating whether we accept and attempt to live with our existing critical river situation or exacerbate our existing critical river situation?
Sadly, the final decision ending this war will have nothing to do with water.
Armond "Si" Simmons
Pell City 35128
Gay marriages would protect family
Since the Supreme Court ruling on sodomy, the topic of gay marriage continues to come up. Conservative groups continue to use hateful rhetoric stating that they believe in protecting "traditional family values."What conservative groups don't understand is, "traditional family values" would be safest if gay marriage were made legal. After all, with a 50 percent divorce rate, gay marriage might actually help family values.
Think about it. Gay relationships are pretty much morally doomed from the start. First of all, gay couples have no choice but to become sexually involved out-of-wedlock because they have no means of legally binding their relationships. This means they also have no "contract" to stay together. Besides that, gay relationships are constantly being picked apart by the "moral" majority who calls them "detestable" and an "abomination" — making gay couples feel like second-class citizens.
If gay relationships were protected by law and gay couples were legally bound to stay together, wouldn't that make it easier for them to be monogamous — and in turn more "moral"? Conservative religious groups offer nothing but a double standard. They point the finger and call gays immoral, yet they don't provide any means for gays to work towards their ideal.
Michelle McHugh
Montevallo 35115
Values change
The statement by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist that he favors a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the evolution of societal customs and norms on his part, as well as intolerance of those different than he.First and his supporters on the conservative right argue that "Western values" have traditionally defined as marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. And while this is true, amendment advocates fail to realize that no standard definition of what constitutes Western values exists or has ever existed. Values are not stagnant, but rather, constantly changing along with society.
For example, consider that, just 50 years ago, segregation was common practice. Go back another 50 years and women were denied the right to vote. Go back still another 50 years and slavery was legal. The point of all this is that whether a society accepts something as just has only partial bearing on whether it should be so. Instead, if we are to have a virtuous society, we must not become ensconced with the often-archaic notions of those who have come before us, but strive for laws that lift up all members of society, not divide them.
A constitutional amendment banning marriage between gays would be nothing more than just another in a long line of iniquitous, divisive legislation. Isn't it time we let bias against homosexuals fade into history with other antiquated intolerances of the past?
Blake Pritchett
Anshan, Liaoning, P. R. China 114001
Other Views
Medicine goes to pot
by ARGUS HAMILTON
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
HOLLYWOOD — God
bless America, and how's everybody?
Canada's government complied with a court order on Wednesday to sell marijuana to sick people. That's all they have. There are no prescription drugs in Canada because their pharmacists sell everything on the black market to American discount shoppers.
The Mars Rover took off from Florida Tuesday to search for intelligent life on the Red Planet. Intelligent life knows better than to land here. The Earth has a reputation around the galaxy as a black hole of emotional and financial need.
President Bush is being blasted for telling Congress Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. It was based on discredited intelligence. The closest thing Saddam Hussein had to a nuclear arsenal was a box of Glow-in-the-Dark condoms.
Powerball Lottery fever swept a large area of the United States as the
prize reached $250 million. Lottery jackpots have gotten out of control.
First prize in the Massachusetts lottery is Rhode Island.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission from the editor is prohibited.