The winners and the losers

• Winner: A new idea floating among some state lawmakers would finally allow Utah County voters to decide whether to add a quarter-cent sales tax so they, too, can enjoy commuter rail. County leaders declined to join a multicounty referendum on the subject five years ago, which has led to the start of construction on a commuter line from Weber County to Salt Lake City.

• Loser: Rep. Chris Cannon probably was just illustrating a point, but the idea he expressed this week to let presidents have the authority to allow energy development beneath national monuments should make even conservatives shiver. Cannon no doubt was trying to tweak the left. President Clinton used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to summarily declare a good portion of Southern Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, tying up a lot of mineral deposits and other natural resources.

The solution ought to be to weaken a president's power to create monuments, not to remove the public from yet another aspect of managing public lands.