Canton Observer for May 11, 1995 - Canton Public Library

20A(C)
Willow Run
Local involvement is needed
CAnion should take a role in planning
the expansion of Willow Run Airport
because it's easier to be on the inside
making significant changes than on the outside
complaining
Willow. Run will be an international cargo
airport no matter what critics have to say. and
becoming part of the process will allow residents
lo be heard.
Plans for Willow Run include extending one
of five runways from 7.000 to 10,500 feet to allow
747 jets loaded with cargo to land and
take off The extended runway would be about
one mile from Canton
Willow Run expansion would allow the airport
to serve as an international cargo facility,
boosted by automakers, who plan to include
the empty Willow Run GM plant.
The disclosure of those plans has sparked
• x»ncrm from Canton residents who want to
know how much more noise and air traffic they
will have to put up with. The residents have
formed a group.
As a result of the concern. Canton Township
recently hired former Metro Airport "Noise
( zar" Bryan Amann. a Canton attorney, to deal
with those concerns. It was a good decision Air
t raffic patterns are a complex subject and
Amann has the expertise to deal with them
Amann's message is that the community
get involved. "We want to make sure the
process accurately and actively involves the
concerns of Canton residents," he said shortly
aftef being hired-
Canton ffibsmrer
OPINION
• Plans for WUftow Run include axtencflng
one of five runways from
7,000 to 10,500 feet to afow 747
jets loaded with cargo to land and
take off. The extended runway would
be about one mile from Canton.
The project has been misunderstood, partly
because of its complexity. Planning is occurring
on at least five levels of government, including
federal, state. Wayne and Washtenaw
counties, and township governments, namely
Van Buren and Ypsilanti. Eastern Michigan
University and the University of Michigan
also are involved
That's a lot of red tape to cut through to
get answers. However. Canton can take the
first step by becoming involved in the Willow
Run environmental assessment, which has
started Noise and other similar concerns
voiced by Canton residents would fall into
this phase.
There's also another factor involved in the
concern about Willow Run and concerns about
airport noise from Metro Residents who
moved to Canton knew there were two airports
nearby, when they bought their homes Both
airports have been there for decades
It will do little good to stand on the outside
and be critical of airport noise. Canton has a
chance to get on the inside Residents should
take it.
Judicial mess hits everyone
The chaos in Detroit Recorder's Court is
bigger than Detroit. The chaos affects
suburban courts, too. Michigan needs
court reform — defined as a single "trial
court." instead of circuit, probate, recorder's
and district courts — serving larger districts
and with state funding.
Recorder's Court handles felony cases arising
in Detroit. Everywhere else in Michigan,
countywide circuit courts handle felony cases
Several Wayne County circuit judges are assigned
to Detroit Recorder's Court. A confusing
system? Yes — a mess
The latest news reports say Detroit
Recorder's judges have a backlog of cases that
is growing. Results: The accused commits
more crimes while waiting trial or simply vanishes;
witnesses forget; and cases fall apart.
How does it impact the suburbs? First, suburban
district judges often have been assigned
by the state court administrator to
help out on Detroit benches. That's not unfair,
but it does slow down justice in the suburbs.
Suburban communities ask for more judges,
but the governor and Legislature say no because
there's too tittle money.
Second. Detroit Recorder's judges sre also
reassigned — to help out on the state Court of
Appeals. It amounts to putting a stressed-out
worker on overtime.
Meanwhile, the Michigan Supreme Court is
about to act. Hie justices hare heard arguments
in a 1969 lawsuit brought by 80 counties
who want the state to fond their courts,
not just Wayne County's and Detroit's. The
Supreme Court is expected to decide that case
foil.
QUESTION:
We ask edthts
question at the
Csnton Ubtwry.
1 dont hove s
problem with It.
Canton
Later thin month, the Supreme Court is to
announce its plan for court reform. We don't
' know details, but we expect it will look like
this: A single "trial court." districts of about
one million populatioi^ach. and full state
funding. Each district would have an administrative
judge with authority to assign other
judges wherever needed.
Such a court reform plan would correct our
current twin ailments: ngid geographical
lines of counties and districts, and uneven
workloads within districts Every trial judge
would have authority to hear every kind of
case. Every trial judge would have a relatively
even workload. Every judge would be expected
to travel — but not too far — to help out a
neighbor.
Michigan has some 611 judges. In 1991, the
last time anyone tried to tally the total cost, it
was $511 million. And yet our system is so
rigid, both geographically and jurisdictionally,
that we can't deploy judges easily as needed.
It's l«k» the old railroad union "featherbedding"
rules, where you had to have X-number
of oilers or brake men whether you needed
them or not.
Judicial chaos may be most visible in Detroit.
but the mess is statewide, reaching all
the way to the part-time judges in remote corners
of the Upper Peninsula. We hope the
Supreme Court will think boldly in its reform
plans. We hope our legislators will resist the
objections of jurists who would stick with the
current byzantine system.
Court reform is ss big an issue in 1996 as
school was in 1972-94. The change
will be massive but good.
COMMUNITY VOICE
Tvs lived
around airports
my whole Wa
There's no prot>
Canton
Turnery concerned
with the
flight pattern.
Ons community
could and up
with them
Canton
744 WING, PLYMOUTH, MI 48170
WeVegot
enough traffic
from the other
Csnton
nmNSe.
W
School question
ARKIE HUDKINS
A itsistahicforce nccta an. taawableciktfect.
Try to envision a business department
representative going to an annual budget
review, and saying:
1 We don't know exactly what we will
spend or where we will spend
2. We can't (or won't) fully explain past expenditures.
3. We need more money to fund item No. 1.
One can but assume what the career
longevity may be for that particular department
manager.
But this is exactly the approach that the
school officials and board members are trying
to pawn off onto the voters
Rather than provide a clear, concise rationale
of needs, they predictably: (1) Attempt to
place fear into the parents that their progeny
will not be prepared for the future, and (2)
wait until the last minute to issue data, real
or implied, as a basis for that need. (By design,
shortening time allowed for critical review
— thus ensuring a degree of fuzziness to
prevail).
This Trust me" and "Feed me" operational
mode of the schools does very little to negate
the current distrust (disgust) felt by the voter.
C. Lingg, Canton
Wrong business
In response to your article of March 23,
"Kmart shoppers offer advice to new
CEO," I would like to offer my "two cents"
worth get out of the porn business.
The American Family Association has been
spearheading a boycott of Kmart for four
years because Mr. Antonini has refused to order
Waldenbooks to stop their sale of pornography
sold in their Walden books store (profits
go into the parent company Kmart). The company
suffered tremendous decline
since the boycott began.
The financial problems facing Kmart parallel
AFA's four-year boycott. This is a matter of
public record and can be verified by any investment
fund manager. The boycott has not
been totally responsible for all the financial
problems, but has been a significant factor,
however, this has not been mentioned by the
business or secular press.
Barb Schmid, Canton
Mourn all children
We have been hearing much rhetoric
and lamentation about the recent
tragedy in Oklahoma City, particu-
Uirly concerning the horror and inhumanity of
the murder of innocent children. Do we not
LETTERS
THURSDAY, MAY II, 1995
see that a life is a life, regardless of age. sex,
or nationality, and that all human life is sacred?
Are our children somehow more precious
than the multitudes of children killed by our
nation in Iraq, Vietnam. Korea, or Japan''
Why were these lives expendable and so
easily extiguished?
Our government, in the name of peace (or
war), has made some morally reprehensible
decisions. We are not just citizens of a country.
we are all members of the human race,
and as such we have a duty and an obligation
to one another. We seem to have set ourselves
apart and above all other people on this earth.
Tliis is a grave mistake and I fear that there
is truth to the saying, "what goes around,
comes around."
Children in our society are abused, starved,
tortured, neglected and murdered every day.
These children are every bit as innocent and
deserving as those we mourn, yet we fail miserably
to protect and value them.
There is an inconsistency in our intense
grief over the handful of unfortunate children
in Oklahoma and in the way we fail to meet
the basic needs of so many of our nation's
youngest and most helpless citizens.
Our laws routinely protect the rights of
abusive adults at the expense of these "victims,"
and fathers often shirk their financial
obligation to their own children
We have allowed violence to become glorified
and commonplace, and we have allowed
deadly weapons to be easily accessible to virtually
anyone, even children. If we fail to value
our children, a society's greatest asset and
its future, then we do not value ourselves and
our way of life. Such a society cannot endure.
Our moral outrage over prolonged and extreme
suffering should be equal to or even
greater than our outrage over premature instant
(or near instant) death. Both are senseless,
unnecessary, and inhumane. We must
begin to see and face reality, to put things in
their proper perspective and get our priorities
in order, and to live morally responsible lives
— and we must demand and expect the same
from government and our elected officials.
Christine L. Kurth, Plymouth
(ganton (Dbseroer
Opinions are to be ehared: We welcome your
Ideas, as do your neighbors. That s why we offer
this space on a weekly basts for opinions in
your own words. We will help by editing for clarity.
To assure authenticity, we ask that you
sign your letter and provide a contact telephone
number.
Letters should be mailed to: Editor, The Canton
Observer. 744 Wing, Plymouth 48170.
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— Philip Power
The Observer! THURSDAY. MAY 11, 1995
POINTS OF VIEW
America's changes start at grass roots level
I
t seems thst no sooner than someone
ssys, 'Things just can't get any
worse," some new crisis occurs to
shock the public into a new level of
awareness of just how out of control
and unpredictable the crisis in Americs
has become.
Persons) experience at a professional
level compelled me to write an essay
titled "The Secret Sabotage Inside of
Black America," which was copyrighted.
earlier this year.
The document concludes with a
model offered as sn alternative to the
destruction in black America aa well as
in mainstream America.
I named this radical solution to our
growingxrrisis The Master Builders
Roll-Csll For Social Accountability, of
which this editorial is the first official
public exposure.
The plan calls for a public roll call of
the nation's governors, county administrators
and city mayors. The goal
is to create standardised gosls and systems
of social accountability across
America.
Cities should be divided into districts,
precincts or areas. Then, their
efforts to develop the community
should be highly publicized.
The theory here is that if Detroit is
in highly publicized competition with
Grand Rapids to organise its citizens,
including prisoners and ex-offenders as
well as leaders and average citizens, we
will shape the culture of consciousness
for safety, unity and welfare across po-
GUEST COLUMNIST
LUKE LAMPWN
• CMes should bo divided
Into districts, precincts or
srsns.
pu 1st ions.
The plsn could chsnge America's ap
prosch to crisis management and social
development by using strategies now
used to promote sports and market
goods and services.
The plan calls for oommunitywide
and nationwide motivational campaigns
of standardized social participation
and collaboration to restore community
competence, confidence and
credibility in America to rich and poor
communities.
It would also provide for a structure
to organize, research, and manage social
patterns of individual and group
(P,C)21A
behavior and organize volunteer systems
of community management in cooperation
with government agencies at
local, state and national levels.
We may reverse the cycles of social
disorganization, destruction and crisis
I at the point that we invest the same
levels of planning, effort and enthusiasm
that ia invested in political campaigns
and athletic promotions. But
probably not a minute sooner.
Luke Lamphin Jr. is a Canton resident
and social worker in the Detroit
area. The Observer uses guest columns
on a regular basis. For more information
about writing one, call Jeff Counts,
the editor, at 459-2700.
Legislators right in seeking to cap suit damages
h-h-h-h. Don't give Geoffrey
Fieger this information. It would Sspoil
his dreams and shock him
into a numerical reality.
Fieger is a Southfield trial lawyer
who makes a living suing doctors and
manufacturers who allegedly injure his
clients. That kind of law is called
• tort." There is a big movement, nationally
and in Michigan, to reform tort
law Naturally. Fieger is against it and
professes not to understand the oppo
sition.
The reformers never have proposed
that the injured shouldn't be compensated
for actual injuries. Those are
known as "economic" dartiages. They
include medical treatment, wheelchairs.
lost wages and the like. They
are noncontroversial
The controversy is over "non-economic"
damages; known as pain and
suffering. A state Senate bill would
limit P&S damages to $280,000 in police
chase cases. Horrors, says Fieger,
chanting the trial lawyer's litany: "Let
the jury decide." He goes on to say it's
just the insurance companies, not the
city or the business or the professional
person who must pay
To test that proposition, let us take a
simple but realistic case from the real
world. Let's say you and I and eight
others are merchants of Venice, and
each owns a caravel, a total of 10. We
send those caravels on trading expeditions
to Spain and the Middle East,
but Mediterranean pirates get one in
10
So we decide to share the risk. Each
caravel is worth 10,000 lira, and one
won't return. If we each pay a "premium"
of 1,000 lira, we have a reserve of
10.000 lira The unlucky entrepreneur
who loses a ship to pirates collects.
Now let's let the plot thicken. Suppose
one shipper says his caravel had
30,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 lira worth of
cargo. We have only 10,000 in the pot.
The shipper kicks and screams and
moans and demands 100,000 lira. The
doge's jury says the rest of us mast
pay. But it's the last time we'll do business
with that whiner.
Non-economic damages, or pain and
suffering, are much like that. How do
we calculate our premiums when we
have no advance idea what the damages
will be?
That's how insurance works. To calculate
each insured's premium, we
must have some calculable idea of
Fund state's universities
using policy, not politics
One annual spring ritual in Michigan is
the squabble over how the $1.3 billion
budget for higher education gets doled
out among the state's 15 public universities.
With no coherent state policy driving appropriations
decisions, the process has become the
single most totally parochial donnybrook in
Lansing. Legislators pick partisan sides. Those
representing Lansing favor Michigan State University,
and those from Ann Arbor push the
University of Michigan. Or Spartan alums
square off against Wayne State graduates.
But over the past decade or so, a kind of tacit
gentlemen's agreement has emerged that put at
least the Big Three — U-M, MSU and WSU —
at rough parity. If U-M got a 4-percent increase,
so too would MSU and WSU.
This year, however, Gov. John Engler
surprised everybody by proposing a bud&t with
sdditionsl special appropriations of $10 .1 million
for MSU. $4.2 million for Western Michigan
University and $1 million for Grand Valley
State University. The net effect was to pick
three winners (each receiving around a 6-percent
increase) and 12 losers (each receiving
around 3 percent, below the cost of inflation).
Right away, talk erupted of special deals and
political deck-stacking. Gov. Engler was intimately
involved in picking new MSU President
Peter McPherson. Rep Don Gilmer, who will be
a m e m b e r of the all-powerful conference committee
on higher education appropriations, is
from Augusts, near WMU's campus in Kslama
aoo. And Grand Valley, located nesr Grand
Rapids, benefited from the general west side-ofthe
state tilt of the Engler Administration^
A period of ferocious - even by higher educetion
appropriations standards - lobbying ensued
Lad by Sen John Schwarz, a physician
and alum of both U-M and WSU. and chair of
the Senete Approprietiona subcommittee on
higher ad, a compromise proposal emerged
week that would give all universities general in
cveaaee of 6 percent while maintaining the special
outlays for the three winners.
State revenue projections will come outnext
Monday. Senete and House leaders will meet
with Engler in the middle of next week to set
Plainly. Michigan needs a policy-driven way
to allocate funds to higher education. Political
srm-twisting Is hardly a sensible basis for sup
the greet universities on which much ot
*l foture —
PHILIP POWER
The baais can be found in the report of the
Commission on the Future of Higher Education
in Michigan, published in 1984. This bipartisan
panel, which included former MSU President
John Hannah, unanimously recommended a
funding system based on twin facts:
a Naturally, the roles and missions of Michigan's
universities differ. Research universities
do not pretend to do the same thing as regional
state colleges.
B So, too, do costs per student. It does cost
much more to educate a doctor at U-M than it
does to train a lab technician at Oakland Community
College or Schoolcraft College.
The brilliance of the commission's report was
to suggest thst Michigan's funding targets for
each type of university be set by examining how
other states support their peer institutions -
that Is, those with similar roles and missions.
If, for exsmple, other states support their regional
colleges st a level of $X per student, this
should become a target for state funding in
Michigan.
You don't need a Ph.D. in rocket science to
realize that once the current funding donnybrook
is over, Michigan should adopt a rational
system for supporting higher education based
on the commission's model.
Phil Power is chairman of the company that
owns this newspaper He also is a regent of the
U-M and was a member of the Commission on
the Future of Higher Education in Michigan
His Touch-Tone voice mail number is (313) 963-
2047, Ext 1880. '
TIM RICHARD
what the loss might be. It's this concept
Fieger professes to be unable to
understand, repeatedly and at length,
when he hassled the Senate Judiciary
Committee last week.
It's a convenient misunderstanding
because plaintiffs' lawyers who work
on a contingency typically collect onethird
of the jury award (In fairness. I
must report Fieger said, "I,don't do it
for the money any more. 1 do it because
it's right." Yeah, sure.)
Remember, the question isn't calculating
economic damages. It's calculating
"pain and suffering."
• The controversy Is over "non-economic" damages,
known as pain and suffering. A state Sonnto bill would
limit PAS damages to $280,000 in police chase casos.
Horrors, says Roger, chanting the trial lawyer's Htany:
'Let the Jury decide.'
Some folks are stoic about pain and
suffering. They'll force a smile and pre
tend it doesn't hurt. They may go off in j
a corner and bear their wounds quietly,
like our poodle who avoided UB for two
days after he'd suffered a gash in the
side of his neck.
Other folks make an operatic production
out of it. They can emit melancholy
wails that will rip your heartstrings.
I recollect a drug addict, a veritable
bum and drag on the public
exchequer, a man who had forsaken his
relatives. When he died, relatives emerged
from the woodwork demanding
tens of millions of dollars for the loss of
the dear, dear departed.
Should pain and suffering be judged,
as Fieger would have it, by a jury lis-
tening to the sighs and moans of the
injured or the survivors? Juries don't
calculate actuarial tables. They don't
tally how many $7 million sobs, $5 million
sobs and $250,000 sobs they will
hear in a year. They determine one case
at a time. Juries can't judge pain and
suffering.
Our lawmakers are moving in the
right direction when they say, hey,
there's got to be a monetary cap on
what a jury calls "pain and suffering
But don't tell that to Geoffrey Fieger
He doesn't understand these things, by
his own admission, and doesn't want
to.
Tim Richard reports on the local implications
of state and regional events
His Touch-Tone voice mail number is
(313) 953-2047ext. 1881.
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