A spooked county commission
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1 Comment [ View ]To be honest, we aren't big fans of cage fighting. And we certainly don't know much about the sport. But we do know it requires strength, power, conditioning and courage to compete in the cage.
Last year the Weber County Fair Board OK'd cage fighting at the fair. It was a huge success. No one was forced to attend cage fights. The fans were well-behaved. There were a few people who complained, but it was a financial hit and the fair board agreed to bring the sport back.
But then the anti-cage fighting activists contacted Weber County commissioners. Apparently, a few people scared the heck out of them. Commissioner Craig Deaden told the Standard-Examiner there were several calls. "We had one person say they would bring 200 people to our commission meeting to show how much they are against it," he said.
Imagine that: people coming to a commission meeting trying to influence commissioners. The very idea seemed to spook commissioners so much they ran for the hills and, in secret meetings, overruled the fair board's unanimous decision, nixing cage fighting at the fair this year.
It all seems a very cowardly act by commissioners. Mind you, we have nothing against citizen activism. Perhaps 200 people really would have shown up at a commission meeting voicing their disapproval of cage fighting. That would have been called democracy, and it would have been really cool if commissioners would have listened to them and then explained that, last year, thousands of well-behaved fans enjoyed cage fighting and, guess what, the community's values did not fall apart. They could have added that, in fact, people enjoyed themselves.
How disheartening that our commissioners, elected to serve all of us and take tough stances, were spooked by a few loud phone calls. We sincerely hope the many Top of Utahns who enjoyed cage fighting last year will let Commissioner Dearden and his colleagues know how displeased they are.
But it's not just the commissioners' stance that displeases us. It's how they did it. Public bodies are not allowed to make these kind of decisions in secret, David Reymann, an attorney for the Utah Press Association, told the Standard-Examiner.
"If the county commissioners indeed met and discussed whether or not to offer cage fighting at the fair this year, and then decided not to, that was a discussion and decision that should have occurred in an open meeting under the (Utah Open and Public Meetings) act, with proper agenda notice to the public," Reymann told the Standard-Examiner's Marshall Thompson via e-mail.
Dearden told the Standard-Examiner he would make nixing the mixed-martial art event an agenda item if necessary. "It doesn't matter to me. The decision won't change," he told the Standard's Thompson.
It should matter, though; it was a shortsighted, hasty, secret move by intimidated elected officials. Fairgoers deserve better.
Add Your Comment
I totally agree with your editorial. Yet another example of elected officials ignoring the facts. I attended the fight last year with my wife and we enjoyed the athleticism, the raw emotions, and our fellow fans when we all rallied behind one of our hometown boys. I didn't see one single child, pre-teen or otherwise in the stands. There was no one that I could see that was being forced to watch and I didn't see the devil descend upon the crowd and turn us all into evil, corrupt law breaking mongrels.