Greed, scandal among leaders must be halted

In a class I teach at Brigham Young University, I often tell young journalists they need to develop a skepticism toward people in power, but they should never let that slip into cynicism.

Skepticism, in the modern sense of the word, implies having a healthy sense of doubt and a desire to confirm claims and arguments independently. Cynicism, on the other hand, is a much darker word. It is the absence of belief. It affords no one the benefit of any doubt. A cynical person, according to Webster's Dictionary, is "contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives."

That has been a tough line to walk lately.

A week ago, this newspaper published a rundown, of sorts, of the scandals that have plagued local and county governments over the past two years. It's a cynic's dream.

The list begins on March 7, 2003, with the case of a town clerk in Tabiona who was charged with taking $100,000 in public funds over a four-year span. From there, it proceeds at an even pace, with scandals every couple of months or so. A town manager in Springdale was charged with embezzling more than $150,000. The Ephraim city recorder ended up with 44 felony counts of misuse of public funds. The Iron County sheriff was charged with six felonies and three misdemeanors last summer. An Orem city employee confessed in November last year to stealing $50,000, but investigators believe the actual figure is much larger. In Draper earlier this month, a city employee was charged with diverting $43,000 in public funds into her own bank account.

Then, of course, we had the famous Salt Lake County scandals. The longtime auditor pleaded guilty last year to stealing at least $8,600 with the help of his county gasoline credit card.

And almost lost in all of this was the story this week that the former deputy executive director for college savings in the Utah Education Savings Plan Trust, Dale Hatch, was charged with stealing more than $85,000 — money he said was supposed to make up for the salary cut he took when he left his job with the state of Utah.

I knew Hatch when I was a reporter covering Gov. Norm Bangerter's administration many years ago. I would sooner have suspected the sky to dump purple snow on the mountains than to suspect him of doing something so wrong.

Take it all together and it's easy to scoot, inch by inch, toward cynicism. I wonder how many other folks are already there?

Public officials are like any other group. Their ranks are populated with good and bad. But the one characteristic common among many of them is a desire to serve the public in order to accomplish a greater good. That seems to be getting lost in the cacophony of greed.