noinlonWalla Walla Union-Bulletin

John A Blethen Chairman ol ttw Board

Donald Sherwood, PublisherChristian Anderson, Managing Editor

W J Penmiwton President

F. A. Blethen. Associate PublisherF. G. Mitchell. Vice President

Sunday, August IS, 1976

Present system not working

Prison staff shortageunsafe, uneconomical

It's pretty obvious the nextlegislature is going to have todo something about the staffingsituation at Washington StatePenitentiary for the sake ofsound economics and security.

There's just no logic inpaying guards at the un-derstaffed prison well over$100,000 a year in nonholidayovertime instead of beefing upthe staff.

It also is illogical for thelegislature to place a ceiling onthe number of employes thatcan be hired, thus forcing theexcessive overtime pay.

If the division of correctionshas the authority to pay over-time, the legislature alsoshould give it the authority toincrease or decrease the num-ber of guards as the prisonpopulation fluctuates.

In the past year the convictpopulation has risen from 1,274inmates to well over 1,500. Butthere is no provision by thelegislature to hire more guards.

Legislators should realize

our opinionthat prisons aren't like collegeswhere student enrollment canbe cut off when there aren'tenough instructors to goaround. Convicted felons haveto be housed and guarded.

Last month guards at thepenitentiary put in 1,465 hoursof nonholiday overtime. That'sthe equivalent of about 36 40-hour weeks and cost the state$13,000.

And according to the guardunion's president a number ofofficers aren't happy with all ofthe overtime which makes ithard for them to get time off forholidays, vacations and illness.He said there are even in-stances when ill guards arecalled at home and asked toreturn to work.

This shortage of personneland working hours could go along way toward explainingwhy there is such a high tur-nover — expected to reach 70per cent at year's end.

Understandable anguishThe howls coming out of

Snohomish County over thepossible cost of retrial of aWashington State Penitentiaryinmate are falling onsympathetic ears here.

The Snohomish Countysheriff raised a fuss about thestate's plan to house about 30inmate witnesses in the countyjail during the trial. So nowthey will be housed in the statereformatory at Monroe.

But he's still unhappybecause of the anticipated costsof shuttling the witnesses bet-ween the reformatory and theEverrett courtroom.

We can sympathize with thecounty's complaints over anycosts they face in connectionwith the trial of an inmatedefendant from the WallaWalla prison. Walla WallaCounty for years has borne thecost of trials of inmates whocommit crimes while servingsentences here — probablymany of them from SnohomishCounty.

The alternative, however,would be not to conduct theretrial of the defendantcharged with first-degree mur-

der, and that wouldn't be in thebest interests of justice. (Thefirst trial ended in a hung juryin June. The jurors favoredconviction 11 to one.)

Walla Walla County has beentrying for years to get the state.to offset the cost of inmatetrials. Maybe the SnohomishCounty experience—and howls— will generate support fromthe legislators on that side ofthe mountains when WallaWalla County's pleas forassistance comes up in the nextsession of the legislature.

lettersWilbur alreadyis a speedwayTo the editor:

Please do not increase the speed limiton Wilbur Avenue.

School children will soon be talkingto Edison, Pioneer, Berney and Assum-ption schools.

It is already a speedway with motor-cycles and through traffic to thefreeway.

Think of the residents andhomeowners.

CallaD.Stazel118 Brock StWalla Walla

'And by telecasting more political

convsntions, our regular shows won't

have to get better... they II SEEM better/

Is a new federalism needed?On May 21,1969 President Nixon an-

nounced the issuance of an executiveorder which, as he put it, would markthe beginning of a "new federalism." Ithas not worked out quite that way, butNixon was trying to cope with what hedeemed to be an urgent national need.

His executive order required theestablishment of 10 federal ad-ministrative regions, each of whichwould be staffed by a chief executive of-ficer, an executive center and aregional council. Thus organized, eachof these federal regions or districtswould be charged with the duty of ad-ministering federal legislation in itsown area, particularly federal grants-in-aid and revenue-sharing measures.

The main objective of this plan was todecentralize federal administrativeoperations and at the same time securebetter coordination of our multitude offederal agencies. The need forsomething to tighten up and"debureaucratize" our greatlyoverladen federal system had becomespecially acute by reason of thetransformation of this country from aunion of states into a widespreadscramble of metropolitan populationsprawls. This was a condition that ouroriginal federal system was notdesigned to cope with or even to livewith.

The f ramers of our Constitution werehighly knowledgeable aboutfederalism. Most of them had beenthrough the fine-grinding mill ofclassical education and werethoroughly grounded in Greek andRoman history. They knew a good dealabout the Achaean League, the Am-phictyonic Council, and the variousother unions of Greek city states.

They were keenly aware of the dif-ference between a federation and a con-federation, and were determined, forthe most part, not to repeat the mistakewhich had been made in the adoption of

ByCHESTER MAXEY

o! Walla Walla

the Articles of Confederation in 1781.Ideologically there are two ways of

setting up a true federal union. One is toset up a dual system of central and non-central entities with the central havingall the powers not specifically given tothe non-central. The other is just the op-posite scheme of the central having thespecified or delegated powers and thenon-central the non-delegated orresiduary powers.

All federal governments follow one orthe other of these two principles. Thetrainers of our Constitution opted forthe second alternative for the simplereason that it was the one most likely tobe accepted by our original 13 states.

The crux of controversy in federalsystems is in the distribution of powersbetween the two authorities — centraland dispersed. In pre-ReyolutionaryAmerica the central authority was thehome government in England and thedispersed authorities were the colonies.

The task assumed by the framers ofthe Constitution was to replace the cen-tral authority of Britain with one begot-ten of a union of 13 state governments

under a distribution of powers limitingand yet maintaining the supposedsovereignty of both. This was ac-complished by expressly delegating tothe central government powers thoughtto be requisite for general governmentand reserving to the states every powernot so delegated.

Lest there be too much rigidity in theforegoing federal distribution, theframers included the famous "elasticclause" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18)which gives Congress authority "tomake all laws which shall be necessaryand proper for carrying into executionthe foregoing powers, and all otherpowers vested by this Constitution inthe government of the United States, orin any department or officer thereof."

These unspecified powers of the cen-tral government are commonly called"implied" powers, and the SupremeCourt of the United States has finalauthority, as cases come before it, todecide what they are.

The implied powers have been con-strued liberally enough to enable ournational government to cope with mostof the gigantic problems which havearisen through our growth from a tinyAtlantic seaboard republic to a massivecontinental empire.. There are,however, a few exceptions to this suc-cess story, and the most baffling one atthe present time is what to do about theproblem of urban sprawl.

Still not half realizing what has hap-pened, we have become a predomi-nantly urbanized people. Populationhas spread like a tremendous lava flowover all formerly established politicalboundaries and state and local govern-ments have become a gigantic jumbleof wretchedly governed and sometimes

quite ungovernable slices of politicalchaos.

Neither the states nor the centralgovernment have as yet been able tocome to grips with this problem. TheConstitution reserves all authority overurban government to the states (whichdeal with it in a piecemeal fashion), andthe Supreme Court has not as yetdiscovered any implied powers whichwould sanction direct federal action inthe urban sphere.

There seems to be little chance for aconstitutional amendment empoweringthe national government to move intothe urban sphere. The consent of thelegislatures of three-fourths of thestates is too forbidding a hurdle to getover.

The logic of Nixon's "newfederalism" was to find an escape fromthis predicament by means of ad-ministrative action not requiring eitherCongressional or state approval andluring objectors into compliancethrough politically selective revenuesharing. As noted above, that has notsucceeded.

John V. Undsay, when mayor of NewYork, made the suggestion that theeasiest way for the central governmentto get a handle on the problem of urbansprawl would be for Congress to charter25 "national cities" embracing most ofthe great metropolitan areas of theUnited States. Lindsay did not go intodetail as to just how this might be ac-complished, but he assumed that theimplied powers of Congress wouldsustain such Congressional action.

He may be right, and if so and hisproposal were put into effect, we mightindeed achieve something on the orderof a new federalism.

He wants to buy many new 'toys'

Shah has long shopping fist for PentagonWASHINGTON—The State Depart-

ment makes everyone write an essaywhen he or she comes back fromvacation. Here is the one HenryKissinger wrote.

"I went to Iran on my summervacation. I met a new friend namedShah. He is a very nice person and wehad a lot of fun together in his palace.Shah likes to play with missiles andairplanes and specially fitteddestroyers and tanks and guns and toyslike that.

"He asked me if there were any toys

ByARTBUCHWALD

Los Angeles Times

we had in America that he didn't have. Isaid we had a lot of toys that he wouldlove and he said he would like to buysome.

"Shah has a very big allowance andhe said he would give me $10 billion if Iwould send him some new toys when Igot back hone. I told him it would be noproblem and all he had to do was giveme a list of what he wanted and I wouldgo to the toy store in the Pentagon andbuy them for him.

"He seemed very happy because hesaid that if he couldn't buy the toys inAmerica he was going to buy themsome place else. I told him Americamakes the best toys there are and theyare all brand-new and they can dothings no foreign toys could duplicate.Some of them had lasers and otherswere controlled electronically and stillothers had heat-seeking devices onthem that could blow other people'stovstobits.

"He got very excited and said maybe

Candidatesin Oregonrun long(Rqmtedfran 11* Eugene RegBMrGa»nl>

In Washington state, politicians arejust now lining up at the post for theSept 21 primary election. In Oregonthey've been lined up officially sinceMarch 16. Oregon candidates who filedMarch 16 and survived the primary willhave been on the campaign trail foralmost eight months, compared to a lit-tle more than three months for those inWashington-

Oregon could shorten its long cam-paign season except for one importantcontest That is the presidentialpreference primary, which Oregonpioneered and of which it is veryjealous. It would be cumbersome to call* special election for that every fouryears. As it is, the Oregon primary isquite late, hardly giving delegates toearly conventions time to pack theirbags.

Also, it can be argued that the date offiling and the time of the primary hivelittle to do with the actual length of thecampaigns. In Oregon, candidates of-ten start sounding like candidates mon-ths before they file officially for the of-fice. The same is true in Washingtonand every other state.

The Oregon system has the ad-vantage of giving the candidates, andthe voters, a breathing .spell betweenthe primary and the genera] election.

'...and der socks. Ve promised also der socks!'he should buy $15 billion worth of toysinstead of f 10 billion.

"I told him that was a very good idea.I described a new American toy air-plane called the F-16 fighter andanother called the F-18. They were sonew that American kids didn't evenhave them yet. He liked that and said hewould buy as many of them as I couldget my hands on. Then he asked me ifthere were any new toy ships that wouldbe coming out for Christmas.

"I told him about a guided missile at-tack fngate that could fire 20 missilesat one time in 20 different directions.His eyes lit up and he made me promiseI would send them a dozen of them assoon as they were available.

"He also told me how much he loved

submarines and I said he would go nutsover the submarine toys that had justbeen designed. They could stay un-derwater tor months at a time. He gotso excited that he bought me an ice-cream soda.

"Then he asked me if I could get him25 nuclear energy plants for hisplayroom. I said that they were con-sidered dangerous toys and the storescouldn't sell them to him unless theycould control the waste material thatthe plants made, because if it got intothe wrong hands it could hurtsomebody.

"He got very angry at this and said hedidn't want to play with me any more ifhe couldn't have the waste material forhimself.

"I told him I would try to worksomething out if he promised to be verycareful of the waste material and nottell anybody what he was going to dowith it He apologized for getting madand said he would probably buy another$5 billion worth of toys next year andanother $5 billion the year after.

"I never saw a kid who had so muchmoney to buy toys in my life. We had aswell dinner and the next morning as Ileft he gave me a World War H collec-tion of bubble gum cards as a going-away present I thought that was realnice of him because I really hadn't doneanything to deserve it. I like buyingtoys for other people. It makes me feel

'I've done something to earn myvacation."

Reverend wins his case

Closure of school threatenedBy JAMES KILPATRICKTl» Waaxngnm s»

The struggle for personal freedom isa long and drawn-out war, composed ofinnumerable battles. The defenders offreedom, sad to say, don't win manyfights these days, but they do win a few.They do win a few. And they won a fineone the other day in Columbus, Ohio.

There the state Supreme Court han-ded down an opinion dismissing allcriminal charges against the Rev. LeviWhisner and his co-defendants in thematter of the Tabernacle ChristianSchool Word of the decision got back toBrother Levi's flock in the small townof Bradford about 3:30 in the afternoon,right in the middle of a week-longrevival.

"I tell you," says Mrs. Whisner,"there was jubilation. There wereshouts, and hymns, and testimonialsand praises. It was a hallelujah time.'"

And well it might have been. For theease of State v. Whisner was a combatof Goliath and David if ever suchacom-bat came to court

The State of Ohio marshalled itspower not through a civil proceeding,but through criminal prosecution, in aneffort to punish a handful of parents fora dreadful crime against the state. Theparents had dared to send theirchildren to an anchartered privateschool!

Not long after the case arose, nearlythree years ago, this correspondentwent to Ohio to meet the Rev. Whisner(be immediately became "the Rev.

Wiz" around our shop) and to have alook at the school. We found a brand-new, modern school house, marked bysimplicity and sunshine, in which 60 or70 children manifestly were receiving athorough grounding in educational fun-damentals.

The children were receivingsomething else also — a pervasive in-doctrination in the Bible and in the sun-pie, unsophisticated religious faith oftheir parents. In his opinion of July 21,Ohio's Justice Frank D. Celebrezze ac-curately described the defendants as"God-fearing people" whose beliefs are"truly held." Their whole lives revolvearound their religion.

Dissatisfied with the available publicschools. Brother Levi's flock createdtheir own school in 1973 to meet theirreligious needs. The question of ac-creditation immediately arose.

Without a state charter, the schoolcould not continue; but in order to ob-tain a state charter, the school wouldha veto meet "all" requirements of thestate's Minimum Standards for OhioElementary Schools. The Rev. Wiz readthese standards and balked. He thus gothimself arrested on criminal charges.

Justice Celebrezze found theMinimum Standards "pervasive andall-encompassing." The regulationsallocated instructional time "almost tothe minute," with the result that notime could be set aside for religious in-struction.

The rules demanded that "aO" schoolactivities must conform "to policies

adopted by the Board of Education."Under the Minimum Standards, theChristian Tabernacle School would becompelled to submit constant writtenevidence of its "cooperation and in-teraction" with the community.

Within this little school house, thestate decreed, "organized group life ofall types must act in accordance withestablished rales of social relationshipsand a system of social controls."Brother Levi couldn't figure out whatthat sentence meant, but be figured itmust mean something or it wouldn't bethere. He saw his religious freedom in

Eparty, and he fought hack.Udujah!Hewon.

The couipiehensive Minimum Stan-dards, said the court, could result in"the absolute suffocation of in-

ndent thought and educationalThe effect of the standards to

•to obliterate the philosophy of theschool andtoimpose that of the state."

Two members of the court JusticesLeonard J. Stern and Thomas M. Her-bert dissented from tic majorityophrion. but aD participating justices{NkUcuJ'Ku in the judgment: Convictionsicvtiscd and defendants dismissed.

It was a victory not only for the Rev.Wiz, but also for Wuuam B. Bail ofKairisUag, Pa., the brilliant lawyerwho five years ago led the fight for theAnton that resulted in Wisconsin v.Voder. On the long hard road torritgkiai fiMduiu, this Ohio case to ahappy mflestane. Mark ft, friend, as weall pass by.

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