Whose Ox Gets Gored: Kennewick Draws the Line on County Bridge Bonds

WE remember having once sat in a courtroom when two young ruffians were brought before the court to plead to a criminal charge. The complaint recited that the two had sandbagged an old man, relieved him of his bank roll, and then kicked him out the back door of a saloon into the snow on a zero night.

The prisoners pleaded guilty, but one sought to excuse their crime by saying, “Oh, well, the old man was on one of his periodical drunks, and if we hadn’t gotten his money he would have spent his last nickel over the bar, and we needed it much worse than did the saloonkeeper.”

While we can fully appreciate the prisoner’s excuse, we could never understand how it justified the crime or in any way lessened the heinousness of the offense.

We are reminded of this incident by an editorial in last week’s Prosser Independent-Record, which concludes as follows:

“In our mind there is not a question but that the board of county commissioners was acting within its power when it passed the resolution bonding the county, and there certainly would have been no objection on the part of Kennewick had the bonds been voted to make the improvement in the Columbia River town. Neither do we believe there would be any kick down there should the commissioners decide to bond the county to build a bridge across the Columbia River, and in all probability the people of Kennewick would consider 5 per cent bonds reasonable. Yes, it makes a great deal of difference whose ox is gored.”

Now, if the Prosser editor is willing to grant validity to the two ruffians’ excuse and chooses to argue that instead of being sentenced upon their plea of guilty they should have been given their liberty and the old man’s money returned to them because they needed it and because the saloonkeeper might have gotten it, we will admit that his premises are correct and his logic sound in the present controversy.

Evidently some of the Prosser citizens are of the opinion that the people all up and down the Columbia River lay awake nights trying to devise ways and means for building a bridge across the Columbia River. As a matter of fact, the only time the editor of this paper ever hears any bridge talk is when he goes to Prosser or meets some Prosser citizen. We have never been very backward in shouting the needs of the community or advocating any enterprise which we considered of benefit to Kennewick. We challenge the Prosser editor to point out where this paper has ever placed itself on record as favoring the building of a bridge or has so much as intimated that it would favor a bond issue for such a purpose. If he will consult the back files he will find, however, that we have gone on record as opposed to bonding the county for building a bridge at this time. We have always advocated the building of good roads on either side of the river that this point might be fixed as one of the main highway crossings and that the building of a bridge might be adopted as a part of the state’s road building program.

This is where we stand and have stood on the bridge proposition, and were a county bond issue proposed tomorrow for the purpose of bridging the Columbia we should oppose it. Neither would we have favored a bond issue a month or two months ago that we might have gotten the taxpayers’ money before the courthouse conspirators got it.

One thing we are in favor of is either to discontinue the practice of electing predatory commissioners or the repeal of the statute which gives them the power to bond the county without the consent of the taxpayers.