As a gust of wind ruffled Gov. Gary Herbert’s hair, he said the weather Monday was symbolic of the Utah Transit Authority’s troubled past and its hoped-for better future after new restructuring.

“It is kind of a blustery day, but it is bright out here,” he said.

Then as two members of a newly revamped UTA board were then sworn in on the plaza of the downtown Salt Lake Central rail station, Herbert charged them to rebuild trust in the agency by improving transparency and more wisely spending its tax dollars.

But a final third seat on that board remains vacant as Herbert is locked in a legal tug-of-war with the Utah County Commission about whether he must appoint one of two nominees it made as required by law — but whom the governor rejected. He asked that county to send other nominees, but it has refused and filed a lawsuit.

“We’ve had some ups and downs” at UTA, the governor said at the swearing-in ceremony for new Chairman Carleton Christensen and trustee Beth Holbrook. “This really is a new beginning, a new opportunity to build upon the past for a brighter future.”

The Legislature this year voted to disband UTA’s old 16-member, part-time board and replace it with a new full-time, three-member group. State leaders see the commission as better able to oversee an agency criticized for high executive pay and bonuses, extensive international travel, secretive meetings, and sweetheart deals with developers.

“With new leadership, we have new opportunity to refocus, add a different perspective and improve our outcomes,” said Herbert — who has power under new legislation to fire UTA board members at will.

“There needs to be a new era of openness, a new era of transparency,” the governor said. “We need to understand and respect the taxpayers, and treat the taxpayers’ dollars as the sacred trust that it is.”

UTA is $2 billion in debt as it essentially took out mortgages to build new rail lines in recent years. Paying interest on that debt takes a bigger slice of its budget than operating its bus lines.

“We accept, governor, your challenge to us,” said Christensen, the new chairman who has been directing the Salt Lake County Department of Regional Transportation. “We will work with diligence to ensure the public trust.”

He added, “I know that sometimes good decisions are hard to make. Sometimes it takes a little bit of fortitude, and it certainly takes a lot of collaboration and discussion. As we go forward as an organization, I look forward to that opportunity.”

Holbrook, the new trustee who has been a longtime Bountiful City Council member, said she has already started working with cities and other stakeholders to understand their needs. “My intention is to dive in and really understand the dynamics. I will be visiting a lot of the stakeholders. I have already started.”

Herbert said that as Utah’s population is expected to double over the next three decades, “how we handle that growth is what keeps me awake at night.” He said mass transit will be an increasingly important part of the solution to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.

Greg Bell — the former lieutenant governor who chaired the old UTA board for the past year — said, “This is a momentous day.” He also led a moment of silence in honor of a maverick member of the old board who may be largely responsible for the new restructuring: Brent Taylor, the North Ogden mayor killed in action last week in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the new board is facing continuing controversy because of the stalemate between the governor and the Utah County Commission over appointing the new board’s final third member. With only two new trustees in office, it will require unanimous votes to move forward on anything.

Also, a lawsuit filed by Utah County last week with the Utah Supreme Court contends, among other things, that the new board actually has not been formed legally because it lacks all three members mandated by law and offers no representation to Utah County — raising legal questions about any of its actions.

Under new state law, Utah County, after consultation with Tooele County, was able to nominate at least two people to a slot on the new board. The other two members were nominated by Salt Lake County and Davis County (after consultation with Weber and Box Elder counties).

Herbert refused to appoint either of the two nominees sent by Utah County: Pleasant Grove City Council member Ben Stanley and former Cedar Hills Council member Rob Crawley. The pair have been publicly criticized as unqualified political allies of Utah County Commissioner Bill Lee.

Herbert asked Utah County to send him additional names more to his liking — a request he earlier also made to Salt Lake County, which complied. Instead, Utah County filed suit contending state law mandates that he appoint one of its current nominees.

On Monday at the swearing-in ceremony, Paul Edwards — Herbert’s spokesman — said nothing has changed in that situation.

Stanley, one of Utah County’s nominees, attended the swearing-in ceremony Monday, and has regularly attended other public UTA and legislative transportation committee meetings. He said he wants to be able to jump in and serve should Herbert change his mind and appoint him.

Stanley, who also is an attorney, has also been conducting what he calls a “consensus building tour” visiting officials in Utah and Tooele counties to help push his possible appointment.

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2018. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/11/03/bagley-cartoon-race/" target=_blank><u>Race-Baiter-in-Chief</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/11/02/bagley-cartoon-emotional/" target=_blank><u>Emotional Detachment</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/31/bagley-cartoon-all-best/" target=_blank><u>All the Best People</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/31/bagley-cartoon-scary/" target=_blank><u>Scary Times</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/29/bagley-cartoon-best/" target=_blank><u>Best Health Care System in the World!</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/26/bagley-cartoon-whats/" target=_blank><u>What’s Driving the Violence?</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/25/bagley-cartoon-its-mans/" target=_blank><u>It’s A Man’s World</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/25/bagley-cartoon-critiquing/" target=_blank><u>Critiquing the Saudis</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/23/bagley-cartoon-we-dont/" target=_blank><u>We Don’t Not Need Education</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/10/22/bagley-cartoon-friends/" target=_blank><u>Friends with Emoluments</u></a>

Want more Bagley? Become a fan on Facebook.

At what point do troubling concerns become troubling trends?

Donovan Mitchell suggested after the loss in Denver on Saturday that Game 9 of the season was too early to panic about the Jazz’s lackluster defense, but that they couldn’t have that same attitude by Game 20.

Perhaps Game 10 should be the wake-up call, considering it saw Utah allow a Toronto team missing Kawhi Leonard to shoot 57 percent from the floor en route to a 124-111 victory on Monday night at Vivint Smart Home Arena.

The loss was the Jazz’s fourth in a row, and dropped the team to 0-4 at Vivint Smart Home Arena this season and 4-6 overall.

Cottonwood Heights • The latest conservation vision for the beloved canyons east of Salt Lake City has been unveiled by the Central Wasatch Commission, which is poised to finalize draft legislation to expand protected wilderness and freeze ski area boundaries, while authorizing land exchanges that would concentrate development at resort base areas.

But the 80,000-acre boundaries of the proposed Central Wasatch National Conservation and Recreation Area excludes Alta Ski Area, whose owners want to keep open the option of expanding into their undeveloped holdings in Grizzly Gulch.

These expansion plans made it necessary to remove the famed ski resort, which operates largely in a national forest, from the proposed conservation plan that is vital to tackling traffic congestion and other problems plaguing Little and Big Cottonwood canyons, according to Chris McCandless, the commission chairman

“It [the proposed legislation] gives added protection against degradation of the canyons as a result of population growth. It’s coming,” said McCandless, who also is a member of the Sandy City Council. “It gives us the potential to further transportation solutions in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. It gives us sanitary solutions, gives additional wilderness in areas that need to be protected.”

Critics have long complained that the process that produced the legislation was rigged from the beginning to favor ski areas over small landowners. What started as a process to fix transportation issues, they allege, has morphed into a “land grab.”

“For the last three months, I have been asking the same question,” Vaughn Cox, a member of the Granite Community Council, told the commission Monday during a meeting at Cottonwood Heights City Hall. “How many acres of developable land are expected to be transferred to ski areas and what are their plans for development?”

Cox said he was frustrated that the neither the commission nor the U.S. Forest Service could answer those questions and speculated the resorts would acquire up to 400 acres for high-density development, inviting more people and cars into the already-choked canyons.

“If we transfer 400 acres, think of the number of hotels, the number of condominiums, the number of restaurants,” Cox said. “This will not be a great thing. This will be a great tragedy, and these canyons will be destroyed.”

Commission officials disputed Cox’s characterization of the land trades authorized in the draft measure.

“We will never hit 100 percent consensus,” McCandless said in an interview. “If we get to 70, I will be happy.”

Because of an agenda error, the 10-member commission could not vote Monday. It will reconvene in the next few weeks to finalize the plan, which was initiated under the Mountain Accord signed a few years ago by dozens of stakeholders.

The draft reprises legislation then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced two years ago, but with several key changes. When the commission finishes the proposal, establishing the Wasatch conservation area will be back in the hands of Congress, whose leadership could be in complete flux after Tuesday’s midterm elections.

“The designation itself says to the world and to us locally this area has magnificent recreation conservation values,” said commission Executive Director Ralph Becker, Salt Lake City’s former mayor. "And we are going to pay close attention here and assemble all our local, state and federal resources in a coordinated way to manage this area to make sure we protect the resources, provide recreational access, but not despoil either the resources or the recreational opportunities.”

The bill would be carried by Rep. Mia Love, assuming she wins re-election against Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams in Utah’s 4th Congressional District. If Love loses the close race, the legislation would likely be carried by whoever holds Chaffetz’s seat in the 3rd Congressional District, which covers the Central Wasatch. Chaffetz’s successor, Republican John Curtis, Provo’s ex-mayor, is expected to retain the seat in a challenge from Democrat James Singer.

The three other Cottonwood ski areas — Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude — remain in the legislation and are expected to participate in land exchanges. The deals are not acre for acre but rather value for value, so resorts would be giving up far more acreage on mountainsides in exchange for the precious buildable land that they currently lease from the Forest Service at their bases.

By excluding Alta from the legislation, the ski area could pursue ski-terrain expansion within its existing permit boundaries, such as Patsy Marley Ridge, which Alta currently uses for avalanche control, according to McCandless.

“The sad part is they don’t get the benefits of the conservation area,” McCandless said, “[such as] congressional approval to move forward with a land exchange.”

Other benefits for Alta would have been authorization for 100 new hotel units and other commercial development at its base, along with the water needed to accommodate that development, according to the terms hammered out in the Mountain Accord.

Alta prefers to remain in the conservation plan, according to General Manager Mike Maughan.

“Unfortunately, those who are unhappy with our decision and right to remove those private lands in Grizzly Gulch [from the exchange offerings] have become obstructive in moving this process forward,” he told the commission. “Instead of woking together for a win-win solution, they spread the rhetoric of half-truths and inaccurate information.”

Some environmental groups have accused the ski area of reneging on a deal and pushing development concepts that would harm the canyon.

The ski area holds 500 acres elsewhere in the canyon and another 1,300 acres of underground mineral rights outside Grizzly it would be willing to trade.

Other key provisions of the proposed legislation would:

• Create a 6,158-acre wilderness area encompassing Mount Aire and Grandeur Peak north of Mill Creek Canyon.

• Enlarge the existing Lone Peak Wilderness Area by adding foothill terrain near Draper

• Create an 1,800-acre White Pine special management area, which would function like wilderness with exceptions for heli-skiing and reservoir maintenance.

• Adjust existing wilderness boundaries along the foothills to accommodate bike riding, which is not allowed in designated wilderness.

• Allow ski areas to buy private land elsewhere in the canyons to use in land trades with the Forest Service.

Lauren McCluskey was killed on Oct. 22 by an ex-boyfriend who harassed her for weeks before murdering her. It’s time now for a reckoning, both on the domestic violence epidemic in Utah and the ways law enforcement failed to protect this student. We have to have an honest conversation about what will change — it cannot be what “can” or “should” change, but what will. Our state’s future depends on it.

The day of Lauren’s death, I arrived in Seattle to recruit for the University of Utah. I spent that night reassuring terrified high school students that their siblings would be OK, advising freshmen students to stay inside until we got more information, trying to keep my tone steady. I listened to quiet sobs of older students who had lived this nightmare just one year earlier, hiding in darkened rooms, remembering when a man who killed their classmate had fled into the darkness of the foothills.

Every day since, I’ve visited high schools in Washington. Even on the other side of the state, five hours and 300 miles from Lauren’s home of Pullman, the shadow of her death is everywhere. I never bring it up, but it usually comes out. Students have a sister who knew her friends, a cousin who knew her roommate, a friend whose boyfriend was in her class, an aunt who knows her mother. Some students unapologetically ask the tough questions — “Why did this happen? What are you going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen to me?” Some don’t comment on it at all, but I hear it in the sympathetic way they say “University of Utah.” Most tell me it’s OK, it can happen anywhere, reassuring themselves as much as me.

Yes, it can happen anywhere, but it happened to us. Now, we have to do something.

The onus should not always be on the victim to beg for help in an unsafe situation. Maybe Lauren didn’t believe her life was in danger, but that didn’t make it so. There were multiple red flags, opportunities to intervene, actions by Melvin Rowland that should have resulted in some kind of reaction.

Instead, Lauren endured two terrifying weeks, and now she is gone. That will never change. What we can do is move forward with a clear message: Domestic violence took Lauren from our community and the people who loved her. We will not let her death be in vain.

When it comes to campus police, perception is reality. Procedure and protocol aside, the perception is Lauren tried to ask for help, and the people who were supposed to protect her didn’t do their jobs. We need to work from that reality, and we need to come to accept that if following protocol allowed a student to be killed, then the protocol is broken. Leadership must be held accountable, and procedure must be changed.

We cannot allow people in our community to be continually victimized by the silence of our culture and the inadequacy of our resources. I love the University of Utah with everything in my heart. When you love something, you want the best for it. I want the U to move forward from this tragedy with real healing on campus, and demonstrate to future students that we take their safety seriously. I want the U not to shrink under the daunting specter of campus violence that is a problem across our nation, but to take this opportunity to lead.

I want the best for the University of Utah. That means an honest, painful reckoning, and a bold, meaningful path forward.

Madalena McNeil has worked at the University of Utah since June 2015. She is also a community organizer and youth mentor.

Shortly after the Kavanaugh debacle President Trump declared that "It is a very scary time for young men in America.” He is right, but not for the reason he envisions.

Many women were galvanized into action after the hearings: Some recalled previously hidden episodes of sexual abuse. Others reassessed their attitudes towards men in general and to their husbands or partners. They have become hyper-vigilant about seeming episodes of sexual prejudice on the part of men.

Trump’s plaint rings hollow. He is a man who has a record of insensitivity towards women and chauvinistic behavior, not to mention his alleged affairs.

It is indeed scary time for young (and old) men in America; they need to be sensitive to the sea change and act accordingly.

Women need to believed, supported and valued and men need to be called out when their attitudes are destructive to women.

Louis Borgenicht, Salt Lake City

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Washington - President Trump and the Republican Party have run the most racist national political campaign since the 1968 presidential bid of segregationist George Wallace. We shall soon see how much the country has changed in 50 years — and in what direction.

I grew up in the South under Jim Crow, so I’ve seen and heard this garbage before. Trump claims that Democrat Stacey Abrams, who happens to be African-American, is “not qualified” to be governor of Georgia because of her “past.” What past? Her degrees from Spelman College, the University of Texas and Yale Law School? Her work as a tax attorney? Her service as minority leader of the Georgia state legislature?

In Florida, referring to another African-American candidate, Trump has said that “Andrew Gillum is not equipped to be your governor. It’s not for him.” He has also, apropos of nothing, called Gillum “a stone-cold thief.” Gillum has a degree from Florida A&M University and has been mayor of Tallahassee since 2014.

Trump chooses his attack words carefully. "Not qualified" and "not equipped" are of a piece with the "low-I.Q." jibe he uses when he tweets about Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. — smarmy and unsubtle suggestions that these accomplished black Americans are intrinsically inferior to whites. Implying that Abrams has a shady past and that Gillum is a thief echoes the old segregationists' claim that black people simply cannot be trusted. Trump might as well have called the two candidates lazy and shiftless.

I understand that Trump is in a panic — Gillum is slightly favored to defeat Republican Ron DeSantis, and Abrams has been running neck-and-neck with Republican Brian Kemp. For Democrats to win governorships in these two big, important Southern states would be an ominous sign for the future of the GOP, not to mention for Trump's re-election bid.

But I also understand that the president is blatantly encouraging his white supporters to buy into ugly, long-discredited racist stereotypes about African-Americans. Even Wallace — who stood in the schoolhouse door to try to prevent integration of the University of Alabama — was less openly bigoted during his run for the White House.

Trump's racism toward Latinos is worse. And the Republican Party shamefully goes along without even a word of protest.

Last week, Trump tweeted a campaign spot that made the infamous Willie Horton ad look mild by comparison. It features an undocumented Mexican immigrant named Luis Bracamontes, who brazenly boasts of having slain two California police officers in 2014 and says he wishes he had killed more. “Democrats let him into our country,” the ad states. “Democrats let him stay. ... Who else would Democrats let in?”

As the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column noted, the ad is a lie. Bracamontes came into the country illegally under both Republican and Democratic administrations — and was deported under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Nobody "let him into our country." Nobody "let him stay" — not even the Republican prosecutor in Arizona who, at one point, decided to dismiss drug and weapons charges against him. Bracamontes is an evil individual who now resides on death row.

But facts are never the point with Trump. The theme of the ad isn't law and order; it's immigration. Bracamontes is presented as the kind of person who will terrorize your neighborhood if you vote for Democrats — one of the "bad hombres" who, in Trump's dystopian fantasy, have created an acute crisis along the border.

Trump began his presidential campaign by portraying Mexican immigrants as drug smugglers and rapists. He has ended the GOP’s midterm campaign by pretending that a ragtag “caravan” of Central American asylum seekers — still in southern Mexico, far from the Rio Grande — poses such a threat that 15,000 combat-ready troops are needed to guard the border.

Except for Trump's short-lived policy of separating asylum-seeking parents from their children, the GOP has been content to go along with Trump's general program of demonizing Latino immigrants. Republicans know that illegal border crossings are far down from their peak; that undocumented immigrants are not responsible for any kind of crime wave; and that most asylum seekers who are provisionally admitted to the country dutifully report for their court hearings. But when Trump lies about all of this, Republicans just smile.

Trump encourages his base to hold and express racist views about African-Americans. He encourages the crowds at his raucous rallies to see Latinos as predatory criminals. He stokes fear, anger and resentment toward minorities. Republicans who do not reject and condemn Trump's demagoguery are complicit in it and will share in history's judgment.

Eugene Robinson’s email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Quin Snyder was coach of the D-League’s Austin Toros from 2007 to 2010, but even though it was — at the least — nearly a decade ago, he still remembers specific plays Toronto coach Nick Nurse ran against Snyder as coach of the Iowa Energy.

“Yeah, I still remember an out of bounds play he ran against our zone," Snyder laughed.

The two coaches met on Monday night for the first time since their D-League encounters, the first time in NBA history there’s been a meeting of former D-League Coaches of the Year.

Both Snyder and Nurse are cut from the same cloth: details-oriented coaches who have found their path from the D-League to assistant coaching to the NBA head coaching ranks. Even at the beginning of their journey to the NBA, though, they found themselves becoming friends, talking and learning from each other in Des Moines and Austin.

“I didn’t know him very well, or much about him. We started coaching against each other and quickly developed a lot of respect for him,” Nurse said. “His teams were really well organized, really well coached, and he was one of the really good ones in the league. We kind of became friends out of mutual respect.”

Coaches often become friends, sometimes out of sheer understanding for each others' situations. In the NBA, there are only 30 men who really understand the pressures of being a modern NBA head coach.

In the D-League in 2007, though, there were only 14 teams; only 14 coaches to know. The D-League then felt even more minor league than it does today: Salaries were only about $15,000 per season, and far fewer players and coaches got big bonuses from an NBA-affiliated franchise.

It also involved more player movement than today, according to Snyder and Nurse.

“The thing about the G League is that your team was always changing. Some of that was your ability to always adapt to your roster,” Snyder said. “It was one of the ways as a coach you could grow, and what looked like difficulties could be opportunities.” Nurse noted that the changes developed his “management of organization, quick teaching, and developing chemistry several times throughout the year.”

But despite the differences, both appreciated the training ground of basketball that the D-League presented, and both coaches are using tactics that they picked up at the D-League level.

“One of the questions you get when coming from the minor leagues is ‘well, maybe you could do that in the minor leagues but you can’t do that in the NBA.’ You hear that a lot,” Nurse said. “I’m not so sure that a lot of that is true. Basketball is basketball. There’s more talent here, supposedly more pressure, but a lot of it is just the same. It’s about getting your guys to play hard and play together, and that carries a lot of weight at any level.”

Nurse, for example, is rotating his starting lineup in a way that mirrors what some D-League coaches do. Though Serge Ibaka picked up a career-high 34 points on Sunday night, he found himself out of the starting lineup on Monday against the Jazz, as Nurse picked Jonas Valanciunas instead.

But while the experience may have been lonely — both coaches remembered small crowds of dozens or hundreds of people at best — that also had its benefits at times, too.

“One of my favorite things about the D-League was going on the road and losing and having to talk to no one after the game,” Nurse joked as he faced a couple of dozen media members.

After Monday’s loss, that’s a perk Snyder wishes he had back, too.

You’ve likely seen the video. A Salt Lake City detective wrestling a screaming nurse out of the University of Utah emergency room more than a year ago. And you may know he lost his job over the incident. But you haven’t heard what Detective Jeff Payne has to say about his confrontation with nurse Alex Wubbels, which made headlines around the world.

He wants you to know that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong and he isn’t sorry. He’s planning to sue the city for $1.5 million and he criticizes the police chief, who he thinks should have defended him.

But Payne said he doesn’t have any ill will toward Wubbels.

“She was doing her job,” he said. “I was doing my job. And unfortunately, it conflicted. And I am the one who bears most of the burden for it.”

Payne sat down with FOX 13 for his first interview since Wubbel’s attorney last August released police body camera footage that showed the arrest, which drew widespread condemnation.

The arrest

On July 26, 2017, Wubbels refused to allow Payne to draw blood from an unconscious patient who had been involved in a fiery crash in Cache County earlier in the day.

Wubbels pointed out that the crash victim was not under arrest, that Payne did not have a warrant to draw the blood and that he could not obtain consent from the patient because the man was unconscious.

Payne insisted he had implied consent to get the blood and eventually arrested Wubbels. He handcuffed her and placed her in a police car outside the hospital, then released her after about 20 minutes. Charges were never filed against Wubbels.

The former detective told FOX 13 that he had been at the hospital for about three hours trying to sort out the situation. He insists he was only following orders that day — his boss, Lt. James Tracy, had ordered that he arrest Wubbels if she didn’t let him draw the patient’s blood.

Wubbels was also following her boss’s instruction. It was when a hospital administrator, who Wubbels had called and put on speaker phone, told Payne he was “making a huge mistake” that the officer said he felt he had no choice.

“I didn’t want it to go that route,” Payne said. “The reason it took as long as it did to get to that point, I was hoping I could do anything to avoid arresting her. But when the barrier was put up by her boss, I felt there was no other alternative than to do what I had been ordered to do.”

So he told Wubbels she was under arrest. Payne’s body camera video shows her backing away as Payne reaches out to grab her wrist. The detective then drags Wubbels out of the hospital as she screams, “Help! Help! Somebody help me! Stop! Stop! I did nothing wrong!”

Asked about whether he felt the arrest was too forceful, Payne said he was just following his training: Use force one step higher than the person you are arresting. He believed Wubbels was “resisting arrest” as she backed away, so he had to grab her.

“She kept struggling with me,” he said. “So I had to use that little bit of force to get her out the door and get this situation under control.”

Backlash

As soon as the video was made public on Aug. 31, 2017, Payne and the police department became the focus of a barrage of criticism and anger. The footage was watched millions of times around the world, and the department received hundreds of emails and thousands of emails. Some even called 911 to complain.

“I couldn’t believe this incident went worldwide,” Payne told FOX 13. “I still don’t understand why it would go worldwide for this. There’s a lot more serious cases out there that you don’t hear about. Mine happened to hit the internet and it went worldwide and all of the social media jumped in and everybody who hates cops has something negative to say.”

Weeks later, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski announced an internal affairs investigation had found Payne and Tracy had violated several department policies. Payne was fired and Tracy demoted to the rank of officer. Both men still are actively appealing the punishment to the Salt Lake City Civil Service Commission.

Payne said as the fervor grew last summer, an attorney who had represented him told reporters that Payne wanted to apologize. He thinks that lead to the city giving Wubbels a $500,000 settlement so she would not file a lawsuit.

But he said he never intended to say he was sorry.

“I don’t think there is anything that I need to apologize for,” he said.

Wubbels’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

‘The sacrificial lamb’

After nearly 30 years at the Salt Lake City Police Department, Payne’s career was over. He was also fired from his part-time job as a paramedic.

He felt betrayed, especially by Chief Mike Brown. The chief should have stood up for his department, Payne said, but instead he felt Brown vilified him. And once the mayor got involved, Payne felt the situation became political — and he became “the sacrificial lamb.”

He lost his livelihood and his career as a police officer. He struggled to find a well-paying job — ”Nobody even wants to consider me,” he said — but has found a job that pays just above minimum wage.

“My life was destroyed because of this,” he said. “And I don’t know how many years it will take to have some sort of peace to rebuild my life because of this incident.”

Sgt. Brandon Shearer, a police spokesman, disagreed that Payne was punished because of public outrage. He pointed to the chief’s letter where the discipline is outlined, saying Payne made questionable decisions when other avenues could have been taken.

“He could have asked her to step outside,” Shearer said. “Or step into another room, rather than arresting her in the middle of the emergency room.”

Shearer said Payne also should have informed his supervisor of one critical development: that he had called Logan police, who had been investigating the crash, and officers told him not to worry if he couldn’t get the blood. That might have changed Tracy’s decision to order an arrest, Shearer said.

Payne said that while he was in the moment, he had forgotten to pass on the information from Logan police to Tracy.

Shearer said Brown still stands by his decision to fire Payne.

“It was the chief’s decision,” he said. “And no one else’s.”

Payne in September filed a notice with the city that he planned to sue, according to documents obtained by FOX 13. He plans to seek $1.5 million associated with lost wages and benefits, emotional distress and defamation of character.

He believes the situation could have ended much differently if only the police department had given him better training on blood draw laws. And he called his firing “extremely excessive,” saying department leaders instead could have offered him training to correct any mistakes they felt he made.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune is a content partner with FOX 13.

At what point do troubling concerns become troubling trends?

Donovan Mitchell suggested after the loss in Denver on Saturday that Game 9 of the season was too early to panic about the Jazz’s lackluster defense, but that they couldn’t have that same attitude by Game 20.

Perhaps Game 10 should be the wake-up call, considering it saw Utah allow a Toronto team missing Kawhi Leonard to shoot 57 percent from the floor en route to a 124-111 victory on Monday night at Vivint Smart Home Arena.

The loss was the Jazz’s fourth in a row, and dropped the team to 0-4 at home this season and 4-6 overall.

It seemed to spark a sense of urgency from some of the players afterward.

“You don’t wanna get to the point where we were last year, where we have to be 10 or 11 games under [.500] to flip it around. We wanna do it now,” said Joe Ingles, who suffered a finger injury late in the game and shot just 3 for 13. “It’s obviously frustrating — we haven’t won at home, we haven’t played to where we think we can. It’s frustrating, but we’ve got too good a group; the guys in this locker room are too high-character to let it go and not save the season.”

Jingles, being very blunt after the game: “We haven’t executed — at all.” pic.twitter.com/OfMg71ilz6

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 6, 2018

It looked initially as though this might the game the team broke out of its defensive funk, forcing the Raptors into a turnover on each of their first three possessions and racking up four steals in the game’s opening minutes.

But, as has been the trend for much of this season, a leaky defense that simply allows the opponent too many wide-open looks undid the solid start. Toronto committed seven turnovers in the first quarter, but trailed by only one point by virtue of shooting 68.4 percent from the field.

And while Toronto couldn’t quite maintain that kind of pace, the Jazz simply couldn’t keep up at all.

“I thought we came out of the gate with good energy. And [then] we made a lot of mistakes,” Quin Snyder said. “When you’re passive — and really, as much as anything, we were passive, not communicating with each other — that results in breakdowns.”

Rudy Gobert got an earful from Snyder after failing to challenge a Jonas Valanciunas 3-pointer. The reigning Defensive Player of the Year was later subbed out after failing to challenge Serge Ibaka on a short floater in the lane.

His teammates weren’t having much more success getting stops.

Quin: Shooting covers up a lot of sins. ... When you don’t shoot well, you have to be even more committed defensively. pic.twitter.com/NACoCQMFBN

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 6, 2018

Toronto’s lead was 11 by halftime (thanks to 63.4 percent shooting) and 22 by the end of the third (with its field-goal percentage down to a positively mortal 61.9).

Meanwhile, the Jazz continued to have issues on the other end of the floor, too.

The team has shown itself capable of scoring points — even with Mitchell sitting out Monday with a sprained ankle — but continues to leave many more out there. Utah’s outside shooting touch remains inexplicably absent (the team was 1 for 6 from deep after the first quarter, 1 for 12 at halftime, 2 for 17 after three, and 8 for 31 overall — 25.8 percent — after a relatively hot fourth quarter and the game out of hand.

“Obviously, shooting covers up a lot of sins,” Snyder said. “And when you don’t shoot well, you have to be even more committed to the defensive end.”

The Jazz also failed to properly capitalize on their huge free-throw advantage. Toronto didn’t even get its first freebie until 20 minutes of action had passed, and Utah went into the break with a 21-5 margin in attempts. However, they converted only 13 of them (61.9 percent). Utah finished 27 of 41 at the line for the game (65.9 percent).

Still, in the end, the team knows that the biggest reason for its struggles thus far has been its inability to consistently stop other teams from scoring.

“We know that we’re a defensive team, we know that a big part of the reason we’ve been successful in the past is our defense. It’s frustrating to watch teams come here and score 130 points. That’s what hurts the most,” Gobert said. “As a defensive team, we have a lot of pride, and the goal is to get better every day individually and mostly collectively.”

Rudy: We have a group of guys that, when we lose, it hurts pic.twitter.com/IOp2kxJQDH

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 6, 2018

That pride means that, even if frustration is setting in, there’s still a belief that things can and will get turned around.

“We know the team we can be, and I still believe in everyone in this room, and the coaching staff, the game plans that we have,” Ingles said. “But we haven’t executed it at all.”

Three thoughts on the Jazz’s 124-111 loss to the Toronto Raptors from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz get outrun, out-hustled by Raptors team on back to back

Remember how this game was a “Schedule Alert” game for the Raptors? Well, it certainly didn’t look like it.

The Jazz just got absolutely blasted by a Raptors team playing on a back-to-back, without their star Kawhi Leonard. Yeah, the Jazz didn’t have Donovan Mitchell, and that would be a good excuse if they played well defensively, but not offensively.

That’s not what happened. The Jazz were a trainwreck on the defensive end, especially in transition. The Raptors were supposed to be tired, and instead they just ran right past the Jazz: 20 percent of their offensive possessions were classified as transition, and they scored 183 points per 100 possessions on those plays.

That wasn’t just after turnovers by the Jazz, it was after missed shots. Fully 30 percent of the time after a Jazz miss, the Raptors got out and running, and even on just those plays they scored 188 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning The Glass.

It’s stuff like this. Ricky Rubio comes up the court and takes a shot that would be decent for many point guards (well, if his foot wasn’t on the line), but just isn’t a good look for him. He misses, and Rudy Gobert wildly goes for the rebound even though he’s 20 feet from the basket. That means when he inevitably doesn’t get the rebound, Pascal Siakam is matched up with Rubio down at the other end (maybe Ingles could have taken Siakam?), and he quickly takes advantage of for the and-one.

So it’s shot selection, it’s shot-making ability, it’s floor balance, and it’s intelligence. Give some credit to the Raptors for taking advantage of these opportunities, and they are one of the league’s best teams in transition. But the Jazz just have to be so much better.

The weird thing is that the Jazz have been historically very good at transition defense in the Quin Snyder era: last year, for example, they ranked third overall, thanks to holding teams to 116 points per 100 transition possessions. Off of live rebounds, they were the league’s best defense, getting back nearly every time for a 104 defensive rating.

There’s been a lot of focus on how the Jazz might be struggling with the new defensive freedom of movement emphasis, but I don’t think that’s really it: transition defense is about getting back, being in the right spots, and staying in front of your man. The Jazz just aren’t doing that as well as they did last year.

“I don’t think we’ve got guys purposely taking bad shots, but with teams on a back to back, and at home, we should be ready to go,” Ingles said. “Sometimes we’re back and just not talking, and sometimes we’re not doing either.”

2. Rudy Gobert needs to be better defensively

The other reason that the freedom of movement thing isn’t a satisfying explanation for me: theoretically, the Jazz’s defense is less based on limiting freedom of movement than anyone. Instead, it’s about keeping players in front in pick and roll, and then relying on the longest, most fearsome shotblocker in the league to dissuade shots and force misses.

Except that guy isn’t doing it at his best right now. The Jazz are still much better with Gobert on the floor, but players seem to be having a surprising amount of success against the Defensive Player of the Year.

This play, for example, made Quin Snyder furious. I get that Jonas Valanciunas is not the biggest threat on the Raptors, but he still made 30-74 last year, or 40 percent. He’s definitely capable of hitting a shot like this:

Gobert was subbed out at the next dead ball.

Later on in the quarter, Gobert was subbed in, and again failed to make his usual impact. It is nice and talented of Fred Van Vleet to use his body to prevent the shot block here, but it felt like Gobert was in a bad position to begin with. Gobert is trying to prevent Serge Ibaka from getting a lob pass, but the path for Van Vleet is too easy here.

Again, it’s not that Gobert’s been awful, or even below average. He’s just not playing like the best defensive player in the league right now. For what it’s worth, Gobert understands that he has to do better as the leader of the Jazz defensively.

“As a leader, I have to hold myself accountable before I hold everyone else accountable,” Gobert said. “That’s what I’m really trying to do. Everyone is looking up to me and I have to show them that I’m there.”

3. The importance of free throws vs. other things

Despite all of the above problems, the most common complaint I heard about from fans about the Jazz after the game was about their free throw shooting. I don’t mean to call Howard out here, but he’s just an example. Sorry Howard!

This free throw problem is ridiculous! I would have thought Quinn would have solved this mental lapse problem by now. There’s an underlying problem here. https://t.co/UWlf0lH9RQ

— Howard M Headlee (@hmheadlee) November 6, 2018

Yes, the Jazz have been bad on free throws during their four-game losing streak, shooting 61 percent over their last four games. And yes, if they had made their free-throws at a league average rate, they would have beaten Minnesota. That would have been nice! Do you know what else would have been nice? Not allowing Derrick Rose to score 50 points.

Tonight, not allowing the Raptors to get out and score in transition nearly every single time would have been nice. In fact, average defensive efforts in essentially every category would have made a much bigger impact than if they had been average at the free throw line.

If the Jazz would have been average from the free-throw line against the Raptors, Utah would have scored four more points, and still would have been blown out. Yes, missed free throws are annoying. But every player, and certainly Quin Snyder, should be focusing on more important things right now. Improving five percent on, say, pick and roll defense, will matter a whole lot more than improving five percent at the free-throw line, and is significantly more teachable.

The free-throw shooting will come around. There’s no reason to believe that, say, Joe Ingles has just immediately become a significantly worse free-throw shooter overnight. Instead, it’s probably just a dose of randomness.

Dover Air Force Base, Del. • Six U.S. soldiers carried the flag-draped transfer case with the remains of Maj. Brent Taylor of the Utah National Guard as family members wept nearby.

It was near 4 a.m. Tuesday, the tarmac damp from a daylong rain and the darkness portraying the somber moment of returning a fallen soldier from the battlefield.

Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden, was killed Saturday in Afghanistan by a rogue Afghan security officer. The Utah National Guard officer leaves behind his wife, Jennie, and seven children, the youngest only 11 months old.

Jennie and family members watched, grief-stricken, as an Army honor guard lifted a metal case holding Taylor’s body from a nearby jet that had whisked him to American soil. The soldiers carried the case a short distance to a waiting gray van as a crowd of dignitaries and enlisted service members saluted.

Army Undersecretary Ryan McCarthy; Gen. Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff; and Gen. Joseph Lengyel, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, were among officials who welcomed Taylor back along with Utah National Guard Maj. Gen. Jeff Burton and Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Anderson.

They stood, heads bowed, as chaplain David Kruse, an Army major, offered a short prayer, praising Taylor as a “fallen hero” who gave the “ultimate sacrifice.”

Few other words were spoken. The moment spoke for itself.

Two hours later, Jennie Taylor stood before TV cameras in a park to talk about the feelings that washed over her as her husband’s remains came home.

“To call it a sobering event would be an unspeakable understatement,” she said. “To say that our hearts are anything but shattered would be nothing short of true deceit. And yet, to deny the sacred honor that it is to stand that close to some of the freshest blood that has been spilt for our country would be absolute blasphemy.”

Taylor’s family couldn’t be seen during the transfer, though seven white chairs were awaiting the mourners. Jennie said her two oldest sons and their grandparents attended the early morning event.

It was fitting, Jennie said, that Taylor’s remains came back to America on Election Day; she noted that before his death he had implored everyone to vote.

“The price of freedom surely feels incredibly high to all those of us who know and love our individual soldier,” she said. “But the value of freedom is immeasurably high to all those who know and love America and all that she represents.”

Taylor, who was serving his second tour in Afghanistan — his fourth overall assignment in a war theater with the other two in Iraq — has been praised as a principled leader whose name had been mentioned for higher political office.

He had deployed to Afghanistan in January for a yearlong tour, saying it was his duty as a soldier to serve his country and help train Afghan forces.

“Right now there is a need for my experience and skills to serve in our nation’s long-lasting war in Afghanistan,” he said at the time. “President [Donald] Trump has ordered an increase in troops, and part of the new strategy focuses on expanding the capabilities of the Afghan commando units.”

An Afghan soldier shot and killed Taylor and wounded another soldier while they were on a foot patrol in Kabul. Other Afghan security forces killed the assailant.

Taylor’s funeral arrangements are still being planned.

The base here is the first stop for fallen soldiers brought back to the U.S. Airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines meticulously prepare for the solemn transfer of caskets from a cargo plane to the on-site mortuary. No detail is too small in the choreographed ritual that runs deep with military protocol but is aimed at showing deference to a grieving family.

Thousands of military officers and enlisted men and women killed in war and peacetime overseas are traditionally brought to this base en route to their final resting sites. At the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some 20 to 30 bodies were flown here sometimes daily, a scene that Americans didn’t see until 2009, when President Barack Obama allowed media access to the transfers with permission of the fallen service members’ families.

“Debate is to war what trial by jury is to trial by combat; a way to settle a dispute without coming to blows.”

— Jill Lepore in “These Truths: A History of the United States”

Sadly, this is not true in Trump’s era.

During the 30 years preceding the Civil War, shootings, knifings and fist fights occurred in the

U.S. Congress. Now, in President Donald Trump’s time, vitriol is reaching new levels like then, as pipe bombs are added to the conflict overtaking the slander of “Liddle Mark” Rubio or “Pocahontas” Elizabeth Warren or kneeling NFL players.

Trump doesn’t debate; he vilifies, using lies and half-truths. He degrades with insults of enemies, Republicans or Democrats. It’s not surprising that his words have stimulated threats of violence just as in the 1850s before the Civil War. Now pipe bombs, next assault rifles.

In all the Republican “debates” in the last election, Trump personally and politically attacked the 14 or so Republicans vying for the presidency. I don’t remember one moment when Trump didn’t go out of his way to ridicule or vilify everyone on the stage. It was the same with “Crooked Hillary.” I think this is verbal war.

Now Trump, almost two years in office, has expanded his vial rhetoric to previously friendly democracies in the European Union while he puts his arm around Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. This as he threatens treaties established to lessen the possibility of war or strengthen the weak over the strong like Ukraine over Russia. Trump is the ultimate trasher spreading vermin.

What we have with Trump is an emerging warmonger, someone who sees the world, other than his political base, as did the Pied Piper of Hamelin piping town children toward destruction.

He likes dictators and autocrats because he is one himself.

Richard H. Keller, Salt Lake City

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It sounds very powerful, but it’s not if we don’t use the power we were given. I’ve seen politicians speak who gave me goosebumps and others who made me want to throw up. One things is certain: The powerful have invested in one side or the other, and We the People need to take back our power.

This election, let’s do something radically different. Stop being “Republican red” or “Democrat blue,” and instead be 100 percent American (purple). Quit being silent, let your voice be heard and vote. Vote not for one side or the other, but vote out the incumbents. Let’s start with a clean slate. Career politicians are the keepers of “the swamp.” We the People have control to enact common sense by:

1. Setting term limits. I don’t believe that our Founding Fathers ever meant for Congress be a career. Our senators and representatives are supposed to do the business of We the People. They are now doing the business of We the Party.
2. Bills that are enacted should be pure and simple. Cut the “pork barrel” fat!
3. Outlaw lobbying. They are not working for us.
4. End gerrymandering. Every vote should count.

Renn Charlesworth, Midvale

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I’m reluctant to write what feels like a prediction, but events in Pittsburgh compel me to speak.

Many interpretations of the shooting are being circulated. One interpretation is worth repeating: There is a clear connection, a cause-and-effect sequence, between Donald Trump calling economic refugees, walking to the U.S. from Honduras, “invaders” with ties to Middle Eastern terrorists and Central American gangs, and the killing of 11 Jewish people in the Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 27 by 46-year-old, white-nationalist Robert Bowers.

Trump’s language, as we’ve come to know, is the language of ridicule, reduction, dismissal and demonizing. He pigeon-holes competing Republicans and Democrats as corrupt, low energy, lazy, inept and (comically) liars.

He characterizes the nation’s “mainstream” journalists as purveyors of “fake news.” They are not, mind you, writers of difficult, incomplete, unfolding news, but “fake” or illegitimate news. He depicts Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals, with a few “good” ones amongst them. He characterizes the men and women, who were critical of, or opposed to, his Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as “a mob.”

His is the language of dehumanization and division, particularly between some supposedly “great” America and the people, external or internal, who would (in his opinion) do it harm. It (Trump speak) is oversimplification, it is distortion. But this is the president’s way of describing our current reality to Americans who are predisposed to vilify, who need scapegoats to blame for their difficult, confusing, or dead-ended circumstances, or for their inability to navigate an increasingly complex, diverse and environmentally challenged nation.

When I was a boy growing up in the Bronx in the early 1960s, my parents, Hungarian Holocaust survivors, would occasionally tell me about the circumstances they and their parents, siblings, aunts, and uncles faced as the Nazi noose began to tighten around the nation, in 1944. I listened as they provided stories of family members too trusting (and, thus, too paralyzed) to act, people who believed in the goodness of Hungary, in the nation’s commitment to keep them — “loyal citizens” — safe.

My parents’ accounts horrified, and mystified, me. As a youth, I couldn’t grasp how Hungarians “turned” from being generally inoffensive neighbors, co-citizens, co-workers, to killers. What moved these so called “Christian” Magyars to see Jewish people, like my parents and our extended family, who were genuinely committed to the nation’s well being, as a danger that needed to be eradicated. This dark puzzle is what the Pittsburgh shooting has helped me understand.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we’re at the start of a nationwide anti-semitic campaign, or that American Jews are in imminent danger of suffering genocide. I am saying that if we look carefully at the events of Pittsburgh, we can see the relationship between the dehumanizing, destabilizing rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, American president, and the actions of people like Bowers, who fully ingest his garbage.

Leslie Kelen, Park City, is a child of Holocaust survivors and the author/editor of five books, including “This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement.”

After months of attack ads, robocalls and nasty mailers, Election Day arrived Tuesday with 44 percent of active registered voters already having cast a ballot and more en route by mail.

“More than 600,000 people have already voted statewide. By raw numbers, that is more people than had voted in the last midterm elections,” said Justin Lee, state election director for Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, said Tuesday. That was before the latest totals showed the number had grown to 700,444 by-mail ballots had been received by county clerks by early Tuesday.

In Salt Lake County, the state’s most populous, Clerk Sherrie Swensen said her office has already seen record turnout for a midterm election, with 54.7 percent of voters already having returned ballots.

As Election Day arrived, it is now too late to vote by mail. By law, ballots had to be postmarked by Monday to be counted. In-person polls will be open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

“People can still drop off the ballots that they received in the mail at voting centers. County clerks like to call them ‘fast passes,’ because voters can drop them off without standing in line, and be on their way,” Lee said. Ballots may also be dropped at special drop boxes set up by counties.

Lists of polling places and drop boxes may be found online at vote.utah.gov. That website also has lists of candidates and propositions, and voter information guides.

“Voters can vote at any polling place in their county," Lee said. "They don’t have to go just to the one nearest where they live,” but could visit one near where they work or shop.

For example, Salt Lake County has 43 Election Day voting centers and 20 other ballot drop boxes.

“For the first time ever statewide, voters can register at the polls on Election Day,” Lee said. Some counties previously offered that as part of a pilot program that has now been made permanent.

“They just need to go to the polls with two forms of identification that show who you are and where you live, such as a driver license plus a utility bill or bank statement,” Lee said. Then they will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot.

The weather should be no obstacle for Election Day voting, with a forecast of partly cloudy, a 10 percent chance of rain and an expected high temperature of 48 degrees.

Lee said that voting is heavier than usual for a nonpresidential year for several reasons, including by-mail balloting, the tight congressional race between GOP Rep. Mia Love and Democratic Salt Lake County Ben McAdams and interest in ballot initiatives on medical marijuana, Medicaid expansion and gerrymandering.

“By-mail voting has made it easier for voters, and we see numbers continue to increase because of it,” Lee said. Now, 27 of 29 counties in the state use it — all but Carbon and Emery.

“The ballot propositions have also created a lot of interest in this election,” he said. And the Love-McAdams race is so hot and close “that I wouldn’t be surprised that we won’t know who wins that Tuesday night. The winner may not be known until more ballots are counted over coming days, or maybe not until the canvass.” Counties have their canvasses two weeks after the election and the state three weeks after.

The Salt Lake Tribune will update election results throughout the night online at sltrib.com.

Shortly after the Kavanaugh debacle President Trump declared that "It is a very scary time for young men in America.”

He is right, but not for the reason he envisions.

Many women were galvanized into action after the hearings: Some recalled previously hidden episodes of sexual abuse. Others reassessed their attitudes towards men in general and to their husbands or partners. They have become hyper-vigilant about seeming episodes of sexual prejudice on the part of men.

Trump’s plaint rings hollow. He is a man who has a record of insensitivity towards women and chauvinistic behavior, not to mention his alleged affairs.

It is indeed scary time for young (and old) men in America; they need to be sensitive to the sea change and act accordingly.

Women need to believed, supported and valued and men need to be called out when their attitudes are destructive to women.

Louis Borgenicht, Salt Lake City

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In their 2015 song "Stressed Out," which got an astonishing 1.5 billion views on YouTube, the band Twenty One Pilots had a line lamenting student loans. Atlantic writers Conor Friedersdorf and Megan Garber declared the song to be the anthem of the millennial generation. Many educated millennials would likely agree - since 2006, student debt has approximately doubled as a share of the economy.

The increase seems to have paused in the past two years, possibly due to the economic recovery (which allows students and their families to pay more tuition out of current income) and a modest decline in college enrollment. But the burden is still very large, and interest rates on student-loan debt are fairly high.

New information sheds light on just how bad things have gotten for student-loan borrowers. Education researcher Erin Dunlop Velez crunched data that was recently released by the Department of Education, and found that only half of students who went to college in 1995-6 had paid off their loans within 20 years. Given the vast increase in the size of loans since then, repayment rates are likely to be even worse if nothing is done. Velez also found that default rates are considerably higher than had been thought.

To make matters worse, a recent report from the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank, finds that the increased burden has fallen especially heavily on black households. That comes as little surprise, given that black households tend to be poorer, and thus are less able to pay for their kids' tuition out of their current income. If poor kids' economic futures are being crushed by debt, while rich kids remain relatively unencumbered, the student loan system isn't exactly providing the disadvantaged with a leg up.

Some people may feel little sympathy for the problems of student borrowers, reasoning that the educated class doesn't need a bailout when college-degree holders already earn much more than others. But it's students from poorer backgrounds, trying their best to climb up the ladder of opportunity, who get hurt the most. What's more, afflicting educated people with huge, hard-to-repay debt burdens isn't a good way to fight inequality. Because debt constrains borrowers' life options, it prevents them from starting businesses that might have employed non-college-educated Americans and raised labor demand - one possible reason that business-formation rates are falling is because educated people are too indebted to take on the additional risk of founding a startup. Student debt also makes it harder to buy a home or start a family.

What's more, student lending has almost certainly contributed to the rise in college tuition, which has outpaced overall inflation by a lot. When the government lends students money, or encourages private lenders to do the same, it increases demand for college, pushing up the price. If the loans are subsidized, that represents a transfer of money from the taxpayer to the university. If the easy availability of loans nudges inexperienced 18-year-olds to spend more money on college than they otherwise would, the loans represent a transfer from the borrower to the university. Either way, the money isn't flowing into the pockets of future workers, but to university coffers, where some of it gets used to offset reductions in state funding for higher education, and some gets spent on salaries for an ever-expanding army of administrators.

All of this raises the possibility that the entire student loan system is, in the words of one Roosevelt Institute researcher, a "failed social experiment." The National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Higher Education Act of 1965 got the government into the business of guaranteeing and subsidizing student loans, as a means of creating a more educated workforce and boosting equality of opportunity. In 2010, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act effectively nationalized the student-lending industry, eliminating guaranteed loans and replacing them with direct government lending to students. The percentage of student debt held by the federal government rose from about 30 percent to almost 80 percent.

Student loans now comprise about 45 percent of the federal government's total financial assets.

This means that not only are loans hurting the people they're supposed to help, but they have given the government a strong incentive not to change the system. It will be an uphill political battle to push the federal government to forgive student loans. But some form of loan forgiveness, especially for the hapless generation that graduated during the Great Recession, is in order.

The government also needs to shift the way it does student aid. More grants, and fewer loans, should be the order of the day. These grants should flow entirely to disadvantaged students. Reducing loans for the well-off and replacing them with grants for the poor won't solve the problem of high tuition - only increased state funding, coupled with stringent cost controls, will do that. But it will shift more of the burden of tuition onto those most able to pay it, and do a better job of equalizing the playing field. It will also result in a more dynamic economy that hasn't hamstrung the next generation of workers.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

While I respect The Salt Lake Tribune’s opinion that Ben McAdams and Mia Love might best help local progression by staying in their respective positions, I believe they are missing the bigger opportunity. Arguably, the biggest challenge our country/world faces today is the growing polarization of wealth and opportunity. Too much data supports how this social disease is ripping our society apart.

A major obstacle to rebalance is, the longer politicians take to learn their job, the more they lose their altruism to improve things as they get tied to the funding sources they must grow to stay in office. Generally, the funding sources with the most impact come from businesses/organizations/individuals who have legally created the largest moats around their respective interests. Moats decrease competition, improve margins and profits. That in return increases their influence.

To rebalance our polarized country, we need to reduce the impact of money-controlled influence over long-term politicians and lobbyists. A component to success would be forcing lawmakers to accomplish more in shorter terms, which, in turn, would help them stick to their initial altruistic beliefs of making quality progression.

The less reliant they are on funding their future political career, the better decisions they can make.

Scott Reichard, Holladay

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The media was pilloried in 2016 for giving its viewers and readers the impression there was little chance Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could lose and for “missing” the phenomenon that was President Donald Trump. This year, editors and executives from several major news outlets told POLITICO they will be prepared for any surprises — and will make sure their audience is, too. “We’re ready for every outcome,” said CNN Washington bureau chief Sam Feist. [POLITICO]

Happy Election Day.

Topping the news: A judge threw out a last-minute lawsuit filed against Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen over missing ballots, ruling that she complied with state election law in issuing by-mail ballots to voters in a timely manner. [Trib] [DNews] [Fox13] [KUTV]

-> The U.S. Justice Department is sending a watchdog to San Juan County on Election Day to monitor polling locations during its first election with new boundary lines. [Trib] [DNews] [Fox13]

-> Campaign tactics have taken a religious turn as Election Day bears down on Utah, with some voters receiving a campaign mailer depicting a favorite scripture within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint that encouraged voters to elect a Republican candidate. [Trib]

Tweets of the day: From @ConanOBrien: “This is an unbelievable statistic: 18% of all statistics are falsely inflated 106% of the time.”

-> From @aedwardslevy: “At least it’s onlypollthatmattersday”

-> From @BarackObama: “When we've been at such crossroads before, Americans have made the right choice. Not because we sat back and waited for history to happen -- but because we marched, and mobilized, and voted. We made history happen.”

Happy Birthday: To former state Rep. Richard Greenwood.

In other news: Some 44 percent of registered voters in Utah have already cast their ballot as of Election Day, marking a strong turnout compared to the 2014 elections, in which only 46 percent of registered voters cast their vote. [Trib] [APviaDNews]

-> Republican Rep. Norm Thurston of Provo wants to end daylight saving time, and is contemplating whether to put the question to voters as a non-binding ballot question in the next round of elections. [Trib]

-> Salt Lake City is the likely front-runner for another Winter Games bid by the United States Olympic Committee set to be announced by the end of the year — due largely to calculated steps on the part of the city and state to keep their name in the conversation. [Trib]

-> An Afghan national army pilot who served alongside Maj. Brent Taylor, the North Ogden mayor who was killed in an insider attack on Saturday while stationed in Kabul, wrote an emotional letter to Taylor’s wife mourning the loss of his comrade. [Trib]

-> Taylor’s remains were returned to the United States in Delaware early Tuesday morning as his wife, Jennie, and other family members looked on. [Trib]

-> Gov. Gary Herbert swore in two members of the newly restructured Utah Transit Authority board on Monday, urging them to work to restore public trust in the agency. [Trib]

-> The Utah Transit Authority will hold a public hearing on Nov. 14 by to receive input on its 2019 budget proposal. [DNews]

-> From medical marijuana to an open Senate seat and a close battle for Congressional District 4, here are the headliners in Utah’s midterm elections. [KUTV]

Nationally: New sanctions on Iran went into effect Monday, and experts are concerned they will lead to price increases for oil and gasoline. But it remains to be seen who will feel the brunt of the sanctions. [NYTimes] [BBC] [WSJ]

-> Congress has largely stopped doing its job of keeping the president in check and creating compromises between competing groups and has instead become a weakened legislative branch where party leaders dictate agendas and government shutdowns are commonplace, according to a new analysis of congressional data and documents by the Washington Post and ProPublica. [WaPost]

-> A record number of LGBTQ+ candidates are running for office this year, with at least 244 in the 2018 midterm, all of them Democrats. Some 21 are gunning for Congress and four for governor. [NYTimes]

-> Turnout numbers aren’t just high in Utah. At least 31 million citizens had voted nationwide as of Monday morning — far more than the 19 million who had voted at this time in 2014. [CNN]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Send us a note to cornflakes@sltrib.com. And if you want Cornflakes to arrive in your email inbox each morning, subscribe here.

-- Taylor Stevens and Cara MacDonald

https://twitter.com/tstevensmedia and Twitter.com/carammacdonald