Unchecked power remains a menace
Our nation's founders were suspicious of unchecked power and believed that anti-democratic abuses would inevitably follow from it.
To counter this danger, they created three separate and equal branches of government and a system of checks and balances that prevented any one branch from grabbing power and subordinating the others.
However, the executive branch has recently thumbed its nose at the legislative branch by announcing the Justice Department wouldn't be allowed to prosecute contempt of Congress violations against President Bush's staff or advisers ("House panel plans contempt vote," July 24).
This raises the same underlying issue with which the founders grappled: the balance between the legitimate needs of the executive branch to function fairly and effectively under the Constitution on the one hand, and the legitimate needs of Congress to carry out its constitutional oversight responsibilities on the other.
Essentially, the president is claiming that he can't get the counsel he needs if advisers think their advice might become public. (This argument is weakened by the leaks routinely made by every side of every issue in Washington.)
Congress, for its part, claims it must have access to information and documents to perform its oversight function on behalf of the people.
What's understood but rarely mentioned by either side is that partisan politics and the election calendar drive the scripts of most of the actors.
The cynical view is that this administration, with only 17 months left in its term, knows how long a constitutional test can take and is deliberately stonewalling and running out the clock while taking an obviously untenable position.
But as Justice Louis Brandeis once observed, "Sunshine is the best disinfectant."
So regardless of which party holds the presidency, let's hope that in the future, the executive branch will offer more openness, more access and more information.
Roger C. Kostmayer
Baltimore
Teachers not cause of city's fiscal woes
George W. Liebmann's comments on the city teachers' contract should anger any resident of Baltimore ("Contract holds back city schools," Opinion
Commentary, July 25).
His comments do more to reveal Mr. Liebmann's bias against unions and ignorance of the city school system than to provide an accurate assessment of the teachers' contract.
Mr. Liebmann maintains that teachers' automatic step salary increases drive the school system's "recurrent fiscal crises."
But there is no "fiscal crisis" in the Baltimore schools. The school board has reported a balanced budget for the past several years.
And the fact is that automatic step increases are common to every teachers union contract, not only in Maryland but throughout the nation.
Step increases are a standard part of a teacher's career ladder. Their elimination would do much to exacerbate the critical shortage of teachers in the city and make it even more difficult to recruit qualified teachers to the area.
Further, Mr. Liebmann appears to insinuate that because such increases are automatic, they are given to teachers regardless of their level of skill.
In fact, automatic increases are based on performance and can be - and often are - denied to teachers when their performance is unsatisfactory.
Teachers who do not perform at satisfactory levels are put on notice, placed on a performance improvement plan and, in some instances, denied a step pay increase.
Moreover, step increases do little to increase the personnel costs of schools. The retirement of teachers who have reached the top of the scale and the corresponding entry of new teachers at lower salary levels help balance personnel costs.
Mr. Liebmann complains that the teachers' health plan includes no co-pays for most in-network services and co-pays of only $10 for branded drugs. But he fails to mention, that in prior contract negotiations, teachers agreed to forgo salary increases to acquire and pay for such benefits.
Moreover, teachers currently pay a substantial portion of their health care premiums in addition to co-payments for office visits.
Mr. Liebmann also decries the seven-hour, five-minute minute school day in Baltimore, and notes that other jurisdictions utilize longer days.
But the length of the school day in Baltimore has been in effect for more than 30 years and is specifically designed to accommodate the particular conditions of the city's schools - including some dangerous community environments, crumbling infrastructure, overly large class sizes and the absence of adequate lesson plan preparation time.
Baltimore's schools allow teachers less class preparation time for elementary school students than any other school jurisdiction in the state allows.
To prepare such lessons, teachers often must use the 45-minute lunch period that Mr. Liebmann says is too long.
Mr. Liebmann also appears not to know that the Baltimore Teachers Union has attempted on several occasions to negotiate additional pay for more experienced teachers.
