Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/280798
Without access to government records, we might never know about wasteful spending, excessive salaries, exorbitant pensions, de- fective bridge construction, plans for nearby subdivisions or teacher abuse of children in their classrooms. Just to name a few. Timely access to government documents should not be a dis- cretionary budget item subject to whims of elected politicians. But it is, as we saw last summer when the state Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown quietly gut - ted the Public Records Act as a cost-cutting move. They only reversed course after loud protests from media and good-government organi- zations across the state. After seeing the error of their ways, legislators placed Proposition 42 on the June 3 ballot to pro - tect the law in the future. Vot- ers should support it. The measure would fix the root cause of last year's mis- guided move. Currently, the state Constitution requires the state to reimburse local govern- ments for costs of complying with law changes passed since 1975. That includes practical amendments to the Public Re - cords Act to ensure prompt ac- cess to records. Rather than reimburse schools, city councils, county boards and special districts for following the law, state lawmak- ers last summer at first simply suspended the requirements — leaving local agency compliance optional. It would have been li - cense for secrecy, especially for those with the most to hide. Prop. 42 would change the state Constitution to remove the reimbursement mandate for the Public Records Act. State government would no longer be financially liable. A similar re - quirement that the state reim- burse local governments for compliance with the open-meet- ing law was lifted as part of a 2012 ballot measure. There's no reason the state should pay Walnut Creek, Oak - land or San Jose for merely pro- viding public records or proper notice of meetings. Local gov- ernment should not receive re- imbursement for fundamental transparency. If approved, Prop. 42 would also elevate to the state Con - stitution requirements that lo- cal governments follow the re- cords act and the Brown Act, the open-meeting law that re- quires local agencies conduct their business in public. This part of the measure could have been more artfully written. It would allow the Leg - islature and governor to alter the laws at any time. Thus law- makers could effectively change the Constitution without voter approval. We expressed con- cerns last summer that more time should have gone into the drafting to remove legal am- biguities. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Nevertheless, the measure provides new, much-needed protection for the Public Re - cords Act that will shield it from future state budget wran- gling. On balance, it's a ma- jor improvement that deserves your vote. This editorial was produced by Digital First Media's Bay Area News Group. Editorial Vote for access to government records Cartoonist's take WASHINGTON » While Vladimir Putin, Stalin's spawn, ponders what to do with what remains of Ukraine, remember: nine years before the January 1942 Wann - see Conference, at which the Na- zis embarked on industrialized genocide, Stalin deliberately in- flicted genocidal starvation on Ukraine. To fathom the tangled forces, including powerful ones of mem - ory, at work in that singularly tormented place, begin with Sny- der's stunning book. Secretary of State John Kerry has called Russia's invasion of Ukraine "a 19th-century act in the 21st cen - tury." Snyder reminds us that "Europeans deliberately starved Europeans in horrific numbers in the middle of the 20th cen - tury." Here is Snyder's distilla- tion of a Welsh journalist's de- scription of a Ukrainian city: "People appeared at 2 o'clock in the morning to queue in front of shops that did not open until 7. On an average day 40,000 peo - ple would wait for bread. Those in line were so desperate to keep their places that they would cling to the belts of those imme - diately in front of them. ... The waiting lasted all day, and some- times for two. ... Somewhere in line a woman would wail, and the moaning would echo up and down the line, so that the whole group of thousands sounded like a single animal with an elemen - tal fear." This, which occurred about as close to Paris as Washington is to Denver, was an engineered famine, the intended result of Stalin's decision that agricul - ture should be collectivized and the "kulaks" -- prosperous farm- ers -- should be "liquidated as a class." In January 1933, Stalin, writes Snyder, sealed Ukraine's borders so peasants could not escape and sealed the cities so peasants could not go there to beg. By spring, more than 10,000 Ukrainians were dying each day, more than the 6,000 Jews who perished daily in Auschwitz at the peak of extermination in the spring of 1944. Soon many Ukrainian chil - dren resembled "embryos out of alcohol bottles" (Arthur Koes- tler's description) and there were, in Snyder's words, "roving bands of cannibals": "In the vil- lages smoke coming from a cot- tage chimney was a suspicious sign, since it tended to mean that cannibals were eating a kill or that families were roasting one of their members." Snyder, a Yale historian, is ju - dicious about estimates of Ukrai- nian deaths from hunger and re- lated diseases, settling on an ed- ucated guess of approximately 3.3 million, in 1932-33. He says that when "the Soviet census of 1937 found 8 million fewer peo - ple than projected," many of the missing being victims of starva- tion in Ukraine and elsewhere (and the children they did not have), Stalin "had the responsi- ble demographers executed." Putin, who was socialized in the Soviet-era KGB appara- tus of oppression, aspires to re- verse the Soviet Union's collapse, which he considers "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century." Herewith a final description from Snyder of the consequences of the Soviet sys - tem, the passing of which Putin so regrets: "One spring morning, amidst the piles of dead peasants at the Kharkiv market, an infant suck - led the breast of its mother, whose face was a lifeless gray. Passersby had seen this before ... that precise scene, the tiny mouth, the last drops of milk, the cold nipple. The Ukrainians had a term for this. They said to themselves, quietly, as they passed: 'These are the buds of the socialist spring.'" U.S. policymakers, having al - lowed their wishes to father their thoughts, find Putin incompre- hensible. He is a barbarian but not a monster, and hence no Sta- lin. But he has been coarsened, in ways difficult for civilized peo- ple to understand, by certain continuities, institutional and emotional, with an almost un- imaginably vicious past. And as Ukraine, a bubbling stew of ten- sions and hatreds, struggles with its identity and aspirations, Americans should warily re- member William Faulkner's aph- orism: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com. George Will Buds of the socialist spring Rather than reimburse schools, city councils, county boards and special districts for following the law, state lawmakers last summer at first simply suspended the requirements — leaving local agency compliance optional. It would have been license for secrecy, especially for those with the most to hide. Greg Stevens, Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EdITORIAl BOARd How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151 ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FaCEbook.CoM/ rbdailynEwS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @rEdbluFFnEwS By dan Balz If President Barack Obama's campaign was known for anything in 2012, it was its voter mobi - lization operation, said to be the most sophisticated ever assembled in a pres- idential campaign. Which makes David Plouffe's com- ments over the weekend all the more telling for Demo- crats as they look nervously toward the November elec- tions. When Republican Da- vid Jolly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in Florida's 13th Congressional District a week ago, Democratic lead - ers explained away the out- come by arguing that the district tilted heavily in fa- vor of the GOP in midterm and especially special elec- tions. Rep. Steve Israel, D- N.Y., who chairs the Demo- cratic Congressional Cam- paign Committee, claimed that Republicans had a 13-point turnout advantage, and said Democrats had made up almost all of that ground, only to fall a few points short. Plouffe, who was Obama's campaign man - ager in 2008 and over- saw the 2012 campaign as White House senior ad- viser, put the onus back on the Democrats. Democrats lost because they couldn't get enough of their vot - ers — the ones who backed Obama in 2012 — to the polls. Plouffe called the loss a "screaming siren" for the fall. As he put it, "We have a turnout issue." Districts like Florida's 13th may look more Repub - lican in off-year elections than in presidential years, but as Plouffe pointed out, that's because Democrats have a turnout problem in those midterm elections. The Democrats' coalition includes groups of voters who are simply less likely to show up in midterm elec - tions. Younger voters turn out at lower rates in mid- term elections than older voters. Single women are less likely to vote than mar- ried women. At the beginning of each midterm election cycle, Democrats vow to do a bet - ter job of getting their vot- ers to the polls. But when history (a president's party generally loses seats in midterm elections) and the political winds are blow - ing in the wrong direction, they've fallen short. That was the case in 2010, when Republicans won historic gains in the House just two years after Obama and the Democrats celebrated his 2008 victory as a sign that the pendulum was swinging permanently in their direction. After the government shutdown, Democrats said to themselves that the Re - publicans were in such poor shape that the House could actually change hands with the 2014 elections. No one is suggesting that today, which may be one reason such longtime Democratic stalwarts as Reps. John Dingell (Mich.) and Henry Waxman (Calif.) have de - cided to retire. Republi- cans are favored to hold their House majority, and Democrats today are look- ing mainly at holding down their losses. The Senate is another story. Former Obama White House press sec- retary Robert Gibbs said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Democrats should worry that the elec - torate in November will look more like it did in 2010 than in 2012. If that's the case, he said, the Senate is definitely in danger of turning Republi - can. "If we lose the Senate, turn out the lights," he said, "because the party's over." Democrats have a turn - out problem because they have a motivation problem. In 2010, their biggest problem was that they ran into an energized Repub - lican electorate. The rise of the tea party and hostil- ity to Obama's health-care law brought Republicans to the polls while Demo- crats stayed home. Obama's vaunted political operation seemed powerless in the face of that aroused oppo - sition. What Democrats learned in 2010 was that Obama's personal appeal was not transferrable to Democrats running for the House or Senate. Plouffe and others said at the time that it was essen - tial for Democratic candi- dates to develop their own relationships with voters and not hope to rely solely on the Obama organization to turn out voters. Some did, many did not. There is a companion problem confronting Demo - crats this year, which is dis- satisfaction in their ranks. Obama has disappointed many of his own followers, and his overall approval ratings are low enough to give Democrats real con - cern. The lack of enthu- siasm for the president among members of his own party can easily lead to de- moralization and too many stay-at-home voters in No- vember. Republicans again are motivated by their dis- like of Obama's health-care law and by the prospect of taking full control of Con- gress. Republican National Committee Chairman Re- ince Priebus said Tuesday morning that Obamacare is "total poison" for Demo- cratic candidates this year. More than enough Sen- ate seats are now in play to put the Democrats in obvi- ous danger of losing their majority. Many of the most vulner- able seats are in states that Obama lost in 2012, which makes his ability to help those candidates — beyond fundraising — extremely limited. The president can at - tempt to frame this coming election as a choice, not a referendum, as he was able to do in 2012 against Mitt Romney. But what works for his overall coalition could be less effective with electorates in red states. He can press ahead with initiatives designed to mo - tivate core parts of his co- alition — on things, such as climate change or so- cial issues — but will those work as effectively in Sen- ate races in red states as in a national election? Democratic campaigns will have many of the same tools the Obama campaign used in 2012, but tools alone are not sufficient without a motivated electorate. Dan Balz wrote this for a col - umn in The Washington Post. MIdTERMS Election: Democrats are right to be worried OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Thursday, March 20, 2014 » MORE AT FaCEbook.CoM/rbdailynEwS AND TwiTTEr.CoM/rEdbluFFnEwS A6