Four good county charter amendments

  • Evan Smith<br>
  • Monday, March 3, 2008 11:34am

The Snohomish County charter review commission can give us four sensible proposals that we should consider in November.

One would replace an elected county clerk with a clerk appointed by Superior Court judges. A second would give line-item veto power to the county executive. A third would create an independent salary commission for elected officials. A fourth would allow two-year county budgets

Don’t ignore I-747

I said last week that a King County court was correct when it invalidated a property-tax limitation initiative. Still, I think local governments should continue to act as though the measure were still in effect.

Voters will probably pass it again next year; so, government entities should continue to live with its limitations.

Flag-burning amendment

State legislatures everywhere can focus on important issues now that they won’t need to vote on a federal constitutional amendment to outlaw burning the American flag.

The U.S. Senate recently fell a single vote shy of the 67 needed to join the House of Representatives in providing the votes to send the proposed amendment to the states. Had the proposal won a two-thirds majority in both houses, it would have needed the support of 38 state legislatures to become part of the Constitution.

Legislatures have enough to do to properly provide for education and transportation while balancing their budgets. We should spare them emotional decisions like the proposed amendment.

Banning flag burning is a solution in search of a problem. It arouse in 1984, when a demonstrator at the Republican National Convention in Houston burned a flag as a crude form of protest. He was convicted of violating a Texas flag-desecration statute, but appealed, based on a First-Amendment right to free expression. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court said that burning a flag could be a form of symbolic speech.

Since then the House of Representatives has passed several proposals for a flag-protection amendment, but the Senate has always kept it from going to the states.

Flag burning is offensive, but so is a lot of written and spoken expression. Putting up with a little offensive expression is part of the price we pay for living in a free society. It’s a small price. Supporters of the proposal can point to only three examples of flag desecration this year.

Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com.

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