Blunted reforms
 School bill to battle polygamous cult needs resharpening
 
Opinions
The Arizona Republic
 
The sword was sharp. It was a bill to allow the state to take over a corrupted school district being run for the profit of a bunch of polygamists in northern Arizona.

But the blade was dulled by unnecessary changes. The result could leave the cultist polygamists laughing once again at the inability of law-abiding, child-cherishing Arizonans to do anything against a foul and perverse lifestyle.

How foul? Women are considered property. Girls are married off as young teens to old men who have multiple wives. Young men are driven away. A lawsuit charges the cult's leader, "Prophet" Warren Jeffs, with raping his young nephew in God's name.

How corrupt? The polygamous cult calling itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints controls the Colorado City District School Board, which bought a $220,000 private plane while going more than $1.5 million in debt and issuing rubber checks to its teachers.

Ordinarily, angry voters would oust school board members who behaved that way. But in Colorado City, cult members vote the cult's ticket.

Attorney General Terry Goddard's office came up with a closely worded bill that allowed the court to appoint a receiver in cases of severe fiscal mismanagement like that in Colorado City. It was part of a larger strategy that includes legal efforts to remove Jeffs as head of the United Effort Plan, a trust that controls nearly all the land, property and financial assets of cult members.

In addition, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is working with Goddard to win the confidence of witnesses and build criminal cases against the cult hierarchy.

The school receivership bill should have been easy.

But state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne pushed a version of the bill that expands the state's powers to put a school in receivership for other reasons, and lawmakers initially went along.

Not surprisingly, support for that controversial change has now eroded and the legislation could be doomed.

This broader language is not needed to address the situation in Colorado City, and it interferes with local control of all the other districts that are not being run by a bizarre cult.

The legislation that was designed to deal with the outrage at the Colorado City schools ought to be resharpened to specifically address the Colorado City situation.

It ought to be passed for the sake of undermining the power structure of a perverse cult and demanding that public money be spent for its intended purpose.
 
azcentral.com
Originally published April 19, 2005
 
Back