July 30, 1999

Politics dissuades the voters

As a news junkie, I've been uncomfortably close to the media stage where our culture now takes the role of the indecisive Dane. Isn't it ironic that while everyone prattles on about "closure," both officials and voters lack the will to resolve even the most basic leadership dilemmas?

America's has let itself go. At some point - I think it was in 1974 - we threw away our moral compass in a well-meaning attempt at cutting social hypocrisy. Today that ethical paralysis has frozen most citizens into either Bible-quoting religious automatons or rudderless situational ethicists. We're drifting in the becalmed seas of politics by default.

Whoa, I must've channeled Joyce Kilmer's psychic mixed-metaphor line for a minute there.

But seriously, the Solano County Board of Supervisors has a potential opportunity to display clarified values and big-time leadership skills if the allegations against County Counsel Dennis Bunting are proven true.

The county's grand jury voted to dismiss Mr. Bunting as its civil law attorney, claiming that he had tipped Vallejo's City Council about impending subpoenas to be served on Vallejo officials and that he had advised the grand jury to destroy its old records. This is the judicial equivalent of insider trading and it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

If either of these changes is true, supervisors simply must let him go. This is his second no-confidence vote: Mr. Bunting failed to be retained as a sitting judge in 1994 when voters just said no, but he was appointed county counsel at a higher salary than the lost judgeship had paid.

While we're on the subject, District Attorney Dave Paulson has shown a distinct lack of discernment by firing the attorney who allegedly released the memo instructing DA's office personnel to alert him to any possible hard-time cases assigned to Judge Luis Villarreal's court.

Even if the dismissal isn't illegal, it appears to be vindictive against Judge Villarreal for overturning two murder convictions in a case that let the guy who did the actual stabbing go free.

We will have a hard time inspiring the worn-down electorate to believe in a system whose legal officers are subverting the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

Did we learn nothing from the Clinton fiasco? All politics is local, so let's start cleaning things up right here in Solano County.

© 1999 Cynthia Hahn