The Standard-Examiner Poses a Hypothetical Question

One bold mayoral candidate declines to "take the newspaper's bait"

Amidst a sea of genuinely "ripe" issues churning around Emerald City's upcoming municipal election, we were amused to see what the Standard-Examiner deemed, in this morning's edition, to be pressing front page news.

As the lumpencitizens of Emerald City sit on the edges of their seats, awaiting Ace Reporter Schwebke's reporting on the positions of all mayoral candidates concerning last Friday's Ogden Sierra Club "bunkerbuster" press release, (and the pending State Auditor's examination of the American Can transactions,) our very most favorite Std-Ex reporter apparently received a tangential assignment -- to pose what presently remains a hypothetical question -- "Can you be Ogden mayor and a lawmaker at the same time?"

This morning's Std-Ex article reveals that Mr. Schwebke probably expended substantial effort in recent days tracking down various mayoral candidates and other "experts," each of whom (with the exception of Rep. Neil Hansen) responded with what we consider a to be a knee-jerk "no." The term "conflicts" also come up in a couple of the quotes. Rep. Hansen's response was far more thoughtful than that of any of the other quoted respondants, in our opinion. "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," Hansen told the Standard-Examiner on Wednesday.

We've considered this same question ourselves over past weeks, and we confess we've been unable to come up with a simple "yes or no" answer either. As we see it, Representative Hansen's "potential" conflicts break down into two key areas. We'll attempt to address them briefly here, one-by-one. We don't pretend however to have the ultimate answer; and when our short analysis is completed, we'll turn the discussion over to our readers.

1) Conflicting constituencies. If elected to the mayoral office without resigning his house seat, Representative Hansen would be representing two technically-distinct constituencies: The people of Emerald City in general, and the folks who reside in Ogden's house legislative district 9, a district apparently completely overlapped by Emerald City's physical boundaries. In considering whether these two constituencies have substantially differing political interests, we're inclined to believe that they don't.

2) Conflicting time constraints. As most of our gentle readers are well aware, our current mayor, Boss Godfrey, who has acted as the business agent for his crony Chris Peterson (and contrarily to the interests of many of the citizens of Ogden) for the entirely of at least the past two years, isn't the first person we'd ask for ethical advice. But he does raise an interesting question regarding time constraints for a mayoral candidate who might not be immediately ruling out a dual legislative-mayoral role. Boss Godfrey mentions that he devotes sixty hours per week to "working," (about which we'll say many of us wish he'd cut back his hours.) Although he is quoted as characterizing such a dual role as a "real challenge;" he nevertheless doesn't characterize it as an impossibility. And for a recent example of a currently serving legislator who effectively serves a similar dual role, we need look no further than Emerald City's own Police Chief/State Senator Jon Greiner. Would the sheer constraints of available time prevent a legislator/mayor from adequately serving his constituents? Frankly we do not know. It doesn't however appear to pose much of a problem for Chief Greiner, we hastily observe.

Two other important points from today's article:

1) Representative Hansen makes it quite clear that whatever his decision, his primary obligation would be to serve the citizens of Ogden; and,

2) He is still nurturing hope of bringing several bills to the legislative floor for votes. One of these, NOT mentioned by Ace Reporter Schwebke, is his Anti-Ticket Quota Bill, which narrowly failed to make it to the Senate floor by a tied 2-2 Senate comittee vote last legislative session. In our opinion, all of Rep. Hansen's percipient legislation is important, not only to the citizens of Ogden, but to Utah residents in general. We believe that it is thus imperative for Rep. Hansen to arrange for these bills to be carried forward by some other legislator, before he commits to resigning his house seat, upon his still-hypothetical election as Emerald City mayor.

We also believe that if elected mayor, Representative Hansen will make the obvious practical decision, and devote himself full-time to managing the affairs of our city as our new mayor. Nevertheless, we congratulate him at this early juncture for not "playing it safe," and for his heretofore decision not to take the "Standard-Examiner's bait" -- and answer a hypothetical question better suited for one of those preposterous Standard/Net online polls.

And one other thing -- just for fun. Imagine the following scenario: a certain Ogden police chief/state senator (Greiner) who reports on his regular day job to an Ogden mayor/house representative (Hansen.) The possibilities in this also-hypothetical fact-set are quite delicious, we think.

Take it away, gentle readers. Web-surfers all over cyberspace are waiting to know what YOU think.