Avoiding the issue

Those silly Democrats. They used the word "fired" instead of the word "terminated" in their press release regarding Attorney General Shurtleff's letter "terminating" Jean Hill and Carol Lear as special assistant attornies general. Such was the conclusion of the Salt Lake Tribune's Matt Canham in his Out of Context blog. We can only assume Lavar Webb concured given he dutifully reprinted Matt Canham's comments in Utah Policy Daily while studiously avoided providing any link to either the original press release or Chairman Wayne Holland's comments on this blog regarding the same subject. The Deseret News settled for words like "revoked" or "rebuked."

To all of this I borrow a phrase from my teenage daughter, "whatever." Apparently with some the question is not whether Mark Shurtleff should have done what he did, but whether terminating someone from a position is the same as firing them from one. (Since Shurtleff used the word "terminated" I assume we can all agree the attorney general did "terminate" them).

There are two larger points here that apparently Matt Canham, Lavar Webb and others are more than happy to overlook. Points Chairman Holland was attempting to articulate in both his blog yesterday and in the subsequent press release issued by the Utah Democratic Party. First, the termination of two special assistant attorneys general with authority under the law to provide legal counsel to the agency they are assigned to is an inappropriate abuse of power when the only reason for doing so amounts to a simple difference of legal opinion. Second, Jean Hill and Carol Lear provided sound legal counsel in the first place, as today's Utah Supreme Court decision makes abundantly clear.

Title 67 of Utah Code outlines the duties of the attorney general. The attorney general alone has the power to serve as legal counsel for state agencies or to "hire legal counsel for each such agency." If he does exercise his/her right to appoint an "assistant attorney general" or "special assistant attorney general" these may act as legal counsel to the agency to which they have been assigned. So Jean Hill and Carol Lear could provide legal advise. Their sin, at least so far as our attorney general was concerned, was providing advise with which he disagreed.

That brings us to the second question of whether or not Jean Hill and Carol Lear were providing sound advice. If not, obviously the attorney general might have good reason to "terminate" them. Today the Supreme Court weighed in and essentially agreed with Hill and Lear, ruling unanimously that HB 174 was linked to HB 148 and that if vouchers go down in flames in November both bills go down together. So much for any question about the soundness of the legal counsel Lear and Hill were providing the State School Board. Voters can address the soundness of Attorney General Shurtleff's legal analysis in 2008.

With so many questions and issues swirling around the statements and actions of Utah's chief law enforcement officer in recent weeks, one wonders why Matt Canham and others seem more concerned with whether the use of the word "terminated" in Attorney General Shurtleff's letter amounts to something entirely different than "fired." To call it an "Error on steroids" amounts to little more than an exaggeration on steroids, not to mention a monumental effort to avoid covering the real questions surrounding Shurtleff's action on the part of the media.