OUR VIEWS

About right

The commission ruled Wednesday that state legislators may not seek no-bid contracts with government agencies, but that their business partners may do so so long as the legislators are not directly involved in the transactions.

The ruling was requested by state Rep. Oliver Robinson of Birmingham, who left a job with a local bank to help create an investment advisory firm, but it applies to any public official whose profession traditionally seeks no-bid governmental contracts. That could include investment, legal, accounting, architectural and advertising businesses, with lawyers the most likely to be affected because of the large number who hold public office.

For legislators, the ban applies to all state and local governmental entities. For other part-time officials, the ban would apply only to those public entities over which their office exercises some influence.

The ruling is not perfect because it is still possible for the firm to which a legislator or other public official belongs to gain contracts while disguising the official's role with some winks and nudges.

But the alternative of completely banning such firms from governmental business would be to drive some good people out of public office and keep others from seeking to serve. They couldn't afford the loss of business on top of the sacrifices that part-time officials already make to serve.

Of course, the best protection against conflicts of interest — and actual corruption — is the quality of the people we elect to public office. The ethics ruling is simply a first line of defense.

Potential of biotech foods

These groups, an Associated Press account says, are fretting about getting more money for research and getting out from under some tough intellectual property rights so that biotech crops can be used to overcome health and malnutrition problems affecting literally millions of children and adults around the world.

The issue raised by these groups, which include the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Academy of London, is in some respects a difficult one. A spokesman for the industry is quoted as saying the biotech companies donate quite a bit now and the scientific report acknowledged as legitimate the search for profit.

But whatever conclusion one arrives at on this broad and complicated matter, it is interesting that these international scientists were not warning people away from biotech foods that have never caused so much as a bellyache. They were underlining that the potential of genetically manipulated food is to serve human needs on a vast scale.

A sprinkling of groups in America and large numbers of people in Europe have resisted the marketing of biotech foods, partly, it seems, out of a superstitious fear of the increasingly sophisticated technology the modern world has wrought. It's not as if genetically manipulated foods don't bear watching — they do — but then so does anything else that will reach consumers, from children's toys to automobiles. To the extent there are dangers, they can be contained. There are also great benefits, powerful benefits, as this recent report demonstrates.

New day for tennis?

Let's hope so. On top of increased social equality, tennis itself would benefit if more people took it up, and it would be enriching for people from all kinds of backgrounds to have another outlet — especially this superb one — for their athletic energies. There is already considerable worldwide geographic diversity as could be seen by the lists of players' names shown television audiences.

An advantage of tennis over some other sports is that people can play it for most of their lives.

Meanwhile, Americans can feel proud of the sisters and of the men's singles winner, Pete Sampras. As other commentators have noted, their on-court performance was accompanied by demonstrations of good manners, character and affection.

YOUR VIEWS

Tank regulations raised gas prices

THE MAIL

The conspiracy that brought on the latest fuel price-hike originated on U.S. soil. The oil industry is not the only industry guilty of playing the game. Let me use another industry to show you how it works.

In the airline industry, the major carriers offer big discounts and cheap seats on the same routes offered by smaller, often new, carriers. At times, the smaller carriers try to compete, but there is no way that they can match these rock-bottom discounts for any length of time. Eventually, the smaller carriers fold.

After the small carriers go out of business, the discounts and cheap seats become history until it is time to bring other small carriers to their knees.

In the case of the recent fuel price hikes, our money-hungry politicians played a major role.

For several years, we saw gasoline prices under a dollar. Even with the price of a gallon of gas hanging in at or around $1, the fat cats in the United States and the oil sheiks abroad still enjoyed a healthy profit, and there was no legitimate reason to raise prices, but we all know that greed can lead to a variety of selfish and dishonest practices.

This is what they did. The fat cats of the U.S. oil industry oiled the palms of unscrupulous politicians throughout the country. Trust me, an unscrupulous politician is not hard to find; they practically grow on trees. For this good (bad) old-fashioned palm greasing, a service was to be rendered. The service to be rendered was passing legislation that would bankrupt the smaller independent gas stations all over the country. These smaller companies already had difficulty matching the prices of the bigger companies, and most had to charge a few pennies more just to stay afloat and show a profit.

The politicians passed legislation requiring all gas stations to upgrade the underground gasoline containers by replacing them with more expensive ones. The reason offered for the new legislation had to do with the older containers being harmful to the environment. This was practically impossible for most of these small stations.

Replacing the underground gasoline containers by these independent stations could be compared to a person working for minimum wage replacing an engine and transmission for a new Mercedes that was willed to one by Uncle Joe.

So with thousands of gas stations going under, the fat cats ended up in a position to get together and jack the prices up and charge whatever.

H. C. Hall

4309 Meadowbriar Court

Montgomery

Can do better

The July 4 revelers in the hundreds of boats who traveled great distances as well as those who joined in the celebration at Lakeside Park must have been disappointed to settle down and sit back to enjoy the popular annual fireworks display only for it to be abruptly over.

As usual, the festivities weren't included in Birmingham news media announcements of local happenings, a fortunate oversight this year in that it saved the city even more embarrassment.

Armond "Si" Simmons

Young's wrestling attack lacks facts

Did Young offer facts? No. Did Young demonstrate insight into the chopping block that Title IX has become? No.

One prong of the interpretation of Title IX known as proportionality has led to an unfair and discriminatory quota that has started a massive dissolution of male athletic opportunities .

Proportionality works this way. The number of athletic slots at a college are tied to the proportion of men and women attending the college. If a school is 60 percent female (the national average), then 60 percent of the athletic slots must be given to women.

This quota makes no sense. No one can offer proof that athletic participation correlates to enrollment ratios. But, the federal government has decided that's the way it should be and, consequently, male athletic opportunities are being cut by the thousands. A well-intentioned law (Title IX) is being mutated into a harmful and dangerous social engineering program.

Young zeroed in on wrestling, and the wrestling community's attempts at organizing against this awful quota. Unfortunately, cuts associated with Title IX run more than just across the wrestling mat. Golf, tennis, swimming, diving, baseball, track and field, cross country, lacrosse, and soccer are just a few of the male sports that have been dropped because of proportionality. What is even more alarming is that proportionality reaches into even programs that haven't been cut.

Alabama is known for its football prowess. I'm sure more than a few kids grow up dreaming of playing for the Crimson Tide or other college teams. Many schools have a tradition of allowing athletes to "walk-on" without the benefit of an athletic scholarship. But, now, because of the misinterpretation of Title IX the future of the dedicated walk-on is in doubt. Many colleges have moved to a system that forces them to limit the number of participants to align with proportionality.

Thus, even if you're are a dedicated athlete with no athletic scholarship at stake, a college would have to turn you away.These are hardly the minor cry-baby problems Young would have you believe.

Unfortunately, Young seems to be a fan of bad interpretation of a well-intentioned law (Title IX). I'm wondering how far he would go in his support of proportionality. Although Title IX never once specifically mentions athletics, the law has morphed into the governor of college athletic slots.

My view is proportionality has already gone too far, and Young did a poor job in discussing the issue.

Ted Witulski, coordinator

National Coaches Education Program, USA Wrestling

6155 Lehman Drive

Colorado Springs, Colo.

Mean-spirited

As a former wrestler, it bothers me, naturally, when I see college wrestling programs being eliminated year after year. Despite this, I think Title IX is a good and necessary law, and I wish the wrestling community would dispense with the histrionics about reverse discrimination and concentrate instead on raising enough money privately to keep these valuable programs in place.

What struck me was the mean-spirited method Young used to make his point. Essentially, he might as well have written that wrestling is a useless and stupid sport populated by slack-jawed, emaciated cretins. Such vitriol is certainly effective, but it reveals a startlingly insensitive attitude toward young athletes in my sport.

Believe it or not, most wrestlers are good kids who work hard and simply desire the chance to pursue their sport in college. To any impartial observer their frustration would seem understandable.

Joe Cory

2951 Satellite Blvd. No. 1722

Duluth, Ga.

OTHER VIEWS

Governments misuse 'privacy' to hide information

By JANE E. KIRTLEY
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

I'm not talking about the Fourth Amendment guarantee protecting us from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Nor do I mean the right to be "let alone," as Louis Brandeis, who later became a Supreme Court justice, defined privacy, in an article in the Harvard Law Review in 1890.

What I'm referring to is a poorly defined word that has become the justification to close off access to public records, to shutter the doors of courtrooms and to stop journalists from doing their jobs.

If ever a concept were tailor-made to give governments around the world an excuse to shackle the press, "privacy" is it.

At the beginning of June, France adopted a law that prohibits journalists from photographing suspects who are wearing handcuffs. The justification?

Depicting people in shackles undermines the presumption of innocence.

The French public, apparently, is so gullible that it equates being in police custody with guilt, so it must be protected from seeing such potent images.

In the fall of 1999, the new Hong Kong Law Reform Commission announced plans to create a Press Council.

Its mission would be to review complaints, filed by the public, against news organizations that supposedly had violated privacy, and to impose fines in appropriate cases.

The Commission explained that this step was necessary in order to protect the public from the press.

In the United States, we have the First Amendment, which forbids the government to impose restrictions like this on the American media.

But that doesn't mean that the rallying cry of privacy isn't a threat to the press in this country.

In state legislatures and in Congress, as well, countless bills were introduced this year, all with the announced intent of protecting privacy.

Many of them are designed to cut off access to government records that have been available to the public for years.

Why? Blame it on new technology.

Not so very long ago, it took time and effort to gain access to public records.

If you wanted to find out whether your baby sitter had a criminal record, or how much your neighbor paid in property taxes, you'd have to spend hours poring through metal cabinets stuffed with paper files, or paging through dusty deed books in the basement of the county courthouse.

No more.

These days, most state and federal records are available in electronic form. Many of them can be accessed online.

This should mean that the open records laws that often worked better in theory than in practice finally have some teeth.

At last, the presumption that the government's business is the public's business, and that we all have a right to check up on it, really means something.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the modem.

Privacy advocates began to point out that all kinds of commercial requesters were retrieving names, addresses and phone numbers from government databases, and using them for solicitation.

In their view, the government was aiding and abetting those folks who interrupt your dinner with a phone call, trying to sell you aluminum siding.

And so, in the name of protecting privacy, those databases are being restricted. The government still maintains them, but now, most requesters can't see them.

This is particularly disturbing when we talk about law enforcement records.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that California could pick and choose who could see arrest records, which, until a few years ago, were open to anyone who wanted to see them. Now, if you are member of the general public, or a commercial requester, you can't.

Perhaps the Supreme Court shared the view of a New York judge, who ruled last year that, when police brought an arrested man out onto a public street so that a local television station could videotape him, they violated his privacy.

Taking photographs of someone in police custody, the judge said, served no public interest.

The Founding Fathers would be aghast.

One of the first things the drafters of the Bill of Rights did was to make sure that criminal proceedings would be public.

They knew all too well the danger of allowing the government to arrest and hold someone secretly.

And they knew that the best check on government abuse of power was an independent watchdog press.

But now, it seems, we value our privacy more than the right to be informed.

And we will allow the government to impose restrictions to protect the public from the press.

The only question is: Who will protect the public from the government?
Professor Jane E. Kirtley can be reached at 111 Murphy Hall, 206 Church St. Southeast, Minneapolis, MN. 55455-0418

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