Salt Lake County Attorney Doug Short is going to have a slow December. He'll have plenty of time for Christmas shopping and holiday sightseeing. The County Commission has banned him from representing the county in any matter whatsoever.
So he's an attorney without a client.But Doug Short, being Doug Short, won't just lounge around his office or take an extended vacation. He'll obsessively spend his time plotting how to get back at the commission right up to the final hour of his term in January (and probably beyond).
Over the past four years, the relationship between the commission and Short has had all of the decorum of a junior high cafeteria food fight.
We've witnessed shouting matches, dueling lawsuits, all manner of charges and countercharges. Personal attacks and nasty accusations have become so routine we barely pay attention. Short, at various times, has been thrown out of meetings, thrown out of county offices, locked out of his own office and told to "shut up and sit down." He's been stripped of power, criticized by his own staff, and various judges have rolled their eyes and chewed out both sides in the sad saga.
The squabble exposes the serious weaknesses of Salt Lake County's government structure. Almost any form of government can work reasonably well if the participants are sensible citizens who are willing to see other viewpoints and work for the common good of the people.
But combine a bad government structure with irrational people, and you get just what we've witnessed for the past four years -- chaos and political gridlock.
The new county government approved by voters in November will improve things quite a bit -- but not enough. It will divide the executive and legislative branches of county government that were combined in the old commission.
But it won't solve the basic problem of having too many elected positions. I'm all for democracy, but when the executive branch of government is split into more than half a dozen political fiefdoms, and then personality and political clashes occur among these officials, it's a recipe for disaster.
When you have a separately elected county attorney, assessor, clerk, sheriff, surveyor, auditor, recorder and treasurer, in addition to commissioners, then who the heck's in charge? Who is responsible for providing a cohesive vision and direction for county government? Who has the power to pursue that vision? If things go wrong, who should be blamed?
Executive branches at any level of government ought not to be chopped up into all these pieces. I want to know who's in charge and who should get credit or blame.
The rights of citizens are adequately protected through the separation of powers in three competing branches of government that offset and balance each other, not by having a bunch of elected officials in the executive branch.
Let the executive branch fight with the legislative branch. Let the judicial branch battle both of them. That's the American system of government. But the executive branch ought not to fight with itself. It ought to have a leader who is accountable and responsible, and that leader ought to be able to pick his or her supporting cast.
The U.S. Constitution provides the best model. We elect a presidential ticket. That's all. The president gets to pick cabinet members, the chief law enforcement officer and so forth. If an appointee doesn't perform, he or she is fired.
What chaos would reign at the federal level if the executive branch was sliced and diced like it is in Salt Lake County.
Voters at the ballot box should hire someone to run the executive branch, elect council members to make the laws in the legislative branch, and then hold them fully accountable.
Separating the executive and legislative branches was a good idea for Salt Lake County. Next step ought to be eliminating some of those elected offices to avoid more Short shenanigans.
LaVarr Webb, Deseret News managing editor/operations, may be reached by e-mail at lwebb@desnews.com