Standard-Examiner Guest Editorial: Appointment Appropriate for Attorney General Position

A tantalizingly interesting proposal, wethinks

One Smart Dude

In the wake of the steady torrent of bad news concerning our sitting Utah Attorney General John Swallow, and that of his immediate predecessor Mark Shurtleff, we'd like to shine the spotlight on a top-notch guest editorial in this morning's Standard-Examiner, in which Utah State Senator Todd Weiler marshals what we believe to be a strong argument for changing the method of choosing Utah's Attorney General.  Weiler contends that Utah should dump the current method of  "electing" our top Utah law enforcement official, and that we should convert the Utah Attorney General position to one which would be filled by means of gubernatorial appointment instead.

Read up, folks:

• Appointment appropriate for attorney general position

At risk being accused of taking "liberties" with Sen. Weiler's three main reasons to "change to appointment" of  Utah's Attorney General, here they are they are in a nutshell, boiled down as we see them, at least:

1. An appointment process would de-politicize (and professionalize) the role of  Utah Attorneys General, and remove the grubby influence of political party partisanship and favoritism from the office.
2. Such a process would eliminate the incentives for campaign fund-raising "bad behavior" which are inherent in the current Utah Attorney General "election" system.
3. An appointment process would remove the responsibility of choosing our Attorney General from Utah's relatively uninformed (read gullible) Utah electorate, and place it in the hands of a better-informed "commission," a proposed body of legal "experts" who'd have the added advantage of screening candidates and making appointment recommendations from a "greater pool of qualified candidates" (than those who emerge from Utah's current nomination and election process.)

Down below this morning's guest commentary we find this comment from one gentle S-E reader, who voices what probably amounts to the typical knee-jerk reaction which we might expect from the average politically-cynical Utah voter, one who's fearful about being taken "out of the loop" in the A.G. selection process:

Election, appointment, same-o. We get a crooked Republican who gave the Gov and UDOT a get out of jail free card. As long as the "Party" rules, there is no justice. 

We believe such an objection lacks merit, however, inasmuch as removing the current party-partisan "taint" is precisely what the good GOP Senator does propose:

In New Jersey, the attorney general serves for a fixed term in an  appointment system. This provides independence, without substituting  dependency on voters and campaign contributors. In the best judicial  appointment systems, like Utah’s, governors select judges from a group  of five nominees who are screened and proposed by a commission. This  adds an assurance of candidate quality and to limit executive  discretion, which includes avoiding purely patronage and unqualified  appointments. This process is adaptable to attorney general selection.

It's a tantalizingly interesting proposal, wethinks.

So what do our ever-savvy and gentle Weber County Forum readers have to say about all this?