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The economy is still teetering. Pakistan is in serious trouble. The swine flu could reach pandemic proportions. Violence is up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And Congress convened a hearing today ... on college football?

That’s right. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights stared the pig flu straight in the snout and opted to talk about pigskins.

Among those testifying before that august committee on Capitol Hill was ACC Commissioner John Swofford

Swofford also serves as coordinator of the BCS, the self-serving racket that has made college football such an interminable bore in recent years.

His defense of the silly system was as lame as Carolina’s defense against State last season.

But I digress.

Why is Congress fooling with this?

To do nothing substantive but look good before all the TV cameras doing it.

Yes, college football needs a playoff. But Congress should have more important things to do.

I spoke to A&T's journalism graduates today.

It was not an easy speech, given the upheaval in the profession today.

So I told them the truth: Times are tough and the nature of the business is fundamentally changing.

But they will find jobs if they are willing to be providers of information, not merely newspaper or television or even radio journalists.

They need to embrace new technology and become fluent in it: podcasts, video, blogs, Web site building, and so on.

They need to expect the fast pace of change to continue.

I believe newspapers will remain (at least the strongest ones) in a smaller package with a tighter focus.

But they will be only part of what most of us do.

The students comprise the largest graduating class in the journalism department's history. Seventy-seven will receive their degrees next month.

They struck me as energetic, bright and creative. I was especially impressed by several award winners, on of whom won recognition for the student newspaper, the campus radio station and a Web site. They may see some bumps in their careers early on, but they will make their impact. In the long run, they'll be fine.

.

This week's column.

N.C. A&T is intent on finding a replacement for departing Chancellor Stanley Battle by June 30.
Members of the search committee say they are confident that can be accomplished — and that there will be no need for an interim leader.

I commend them for their optimism, but humbly suggest that they might consider a Plan B, just in case.

Consider the plight of Delaware State University, a historically black land-grant school, like A&T, that recently culled its list of candidates for president to three finalists, hosted those finalists for a round of interviews — and proceeded to choose none of them.

After an eight-month search, the trustees simply felt the finalists were not the right fit for the school. “I don’t think we attracted what we were looking for in the first search, and that is some cause for concern because it is an indication that DSU hasn’t exactly decided what kind of institution it wants to be,” Steve Newton, a history professor, told The News Journal of Dover.
So the school will reopen the search, even as student and faculty morale continues to waver under an acting president, trustee board member Claibourne Smith.

The school also faces major budget challenges, funding fights with the state legislature and a dwindling endowment. The search committee will meet later this month and start over, with a new recruiting plan and a new crop of candidates.

This does not happen often.

“Frankly, I’ve never heard of it happening before,” Bruce Slater, managing editor of the online newsletter, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, said last week.

But the process could provide a cautionary tale for A&T.

The search for a new president at Delaware State has taken eight months ... thus far.

A&T has given itself four months.

I thought the state Senate might stick to its guns on a tough smoking ban in most public places.

I thought wrong.

The Senate's Health Care Committee voted today to prohibit smoking at all restaurants and bars, but not work sites.

That's a shame. The workplace ban is more important. People can choose the bars and restaurants they patronize much more easily than where they work. Especially in this economy.

The bill also includes exceptions for cigar bars, country clubs and similar private clubs.

Any ban would be a measure of progress. But this is a disappointment and not at all in the public's best interest.

What Matt Brown wanted, he got Tuesday night.

The planned Greensboro swim center will be built at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, which Brown directs.

The ACC Hall of Champions project also is moving forward, in the coliseum Special Events Center.

The City Council authorized the freeing of $2 million in state funds to begin the first phase.

Neither development is a surprise, but both are significant.

I was never a big fan of the $12 million swim center as a publicly financed project. I still am not.

It is a want, not a need, and it will incur considerable operating expenses beyond the construction.

It was a fluke at the polls, passing only because it was folded into Parks and Recreation bonds that provided safe cover from voter skepticism.

A few more sour grapes: It would have been nice to see at least one of these attractions go downtown.

A consultant’s study advised against it for the ACC hall being built in the center city. And Brown makes a compelling case that the swim center can be operated less expensively on the coliseum grounds, using coliseum staff and some of the complex’s existing facilities.

Downtown land is hardly cheap.

Now that I’ve gotten these reservations off my chest, I need to get over them.

The swim center should be a community asset that attracts visitors and boosts the economy.

Greensboro’s passionate and very active swim community finally will have access to a first-class facility.

And if the city holds true to its promise, the facility should be made accessible to citizens outside of the competitive swim circles.

If it can help expand swimming instruction to more children, it should.

And if it can uncover talent from untapped sources, it should.

My quibbles with how these projects came to be pale in comparison to what they can accomplish, if they’re done right.

Now I’m pulling hard for both.

It seemed only a matter of time before photos of Carrie Prejean, Miss California USA, surfaced, depicting the beauty queen in various states of undress.

This kind of stuff tends to happen to beauty queens, dating all the way back to Vanessa Williams.

It especially tends to happen to beauty queens who take controversial stands on sensitive issues.

The pageant people may care about the photos, which Prejean explained this way: "I am not perfect, and I will never claim to be ... I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos."

Yawn. I don't.

Prejean may lose her crown, which she may lose anyway for campaigning against gay marriage, a violation of her contract.

There is no small irony that a pageant featuring women in scant swimwear would get so huffy about lingerie photos, even a topless one.

The bone I have to pick is not the photos or pageant rules.

I just think she's dead wrong on gay marriage, both on logical and moral levels.

But that ought to be the crux of the debate, not some old photos.

I was especially curious to hear what former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, the man behind the best show ever on TV, “The Wire,” would have to say during the Senate hearing Wednesday on the future of newspapers.

He didn’t disappoint.

Arianna Huffington had just boasted about the Huffington Post's investigative chops, noting 10 full-time investigative reporters on her 60-person staff.

She rattled off scoops that citizen journalists were reporting that supposedly would be lost without newspapers.

In response to such huffy pronouncements by bloggers (bless our hearts) about their emerging place in the media landscape, Simon said:

“The day I will run into a Huffington Post reporter at a zoning board hearing is the day we’ll reach equilibrium.”

To their credit, many of our local bloggers will do precisely that.

But they still have the luxury of choosing pet causes or issues. Newspapers feel an obligation — and readers fully expect for us — to do and be much, much more.

Newspapers still do most of the scut work from which bloggers draw inspiration — and content.

For free.

We can only speculate what state Alcoholic Beverage Commission Chairman Doug Fox may have been drinking when he transmitted a racist e-mail about President Barack Obama 14 days after the election.

The e-mail, uncovered by a Charlotte Observer reporter, depicted a watermelon patch on the White House grounds. “There goes the neighborhood,” the caption above it said.

Now Fox is the former ABC chairman.

Gov. Bev Perdue rightly saw to that this week after news of the e-mail surfaced.

What it is about the Internet that makes people do such dumb things with the “Send” button remains a cosmic mystery.

It also recalls whole stacks of e-mails former District Court Judge William L. Daisy dispersed to other judges, lawyers and public officials.

Those e-mails were not only racist — offending, in fact, several groups, not just one — but sexist as well, and sexually explicit.

At least Daisy, who a year later got into more hot water over complaints of sexual harassment from courthouse employees — and was censured — made an apology.

Fox simply said he was resigning to make way for new blood.

The governor was more direct.

“I have accepted Doug Fox’s letter of resignation,” Perdue said. “E-mails and images of this nature are offensive and unacceptable.”

I’ll drink to that.

This week's column.

What Matt Brown wanted, he finally got Tuesday night.

The planned Greensboro swim center will be built at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, which Brown directs.

Next door to it will be the ACC Hall of Champions project. The first phase of the hall will be built in the west wing of the coliseum’s Special Events Center.

The City Council authorized the freeing of $2 million in state funds to finance an exhibit area and a 200-seat theater.

Brown hailed these developments with characteristic understatement.

“I think these decisions made on Tuesday were highly significant and even historic,” he said.
But Brown is right. These initiatives are a big deal.

Not that I haven’t had big reservations, all the same.

In particular, I was never a big fan of the $12 million swim center as a publicly financed project. I’m still not. It is a want, not a need, and it will incur considerable operating expenses beyond the construction.

It also was a fluke at the polls, passing in a 2008 referendum only because it was folded into Parks and Recreation bonds that provided safe cover from voter skepticism.

To add a few more sour grapes to my whine, it would have been nice to see at least one of these attractions go downtown. But now that I’ve gotten these concerns off my chest, I need to get over them.

A consultant’s study advised against the ACC hall being built in the center city. And Brown makes a compelling case that the 44,000-square-foot swim center can be operated less expensively on the coliseum grounds, using coliseum staff and some of the complex’s existing facilities.

“I don’t think I’ll need to hire more than two full-time employees,” he said.

Six months ago some folks were taking bets on the likelihood that Skip Alston and Steve Arnold had concocted a master plan for remaking county government:

Here’s how it went:

1. Force out County Manager David McNeill by pressuring him to “retire.”
2. Force out Deputy Manager Ben Brown by eliminating his job.
3. Force out County Attorney Sharron Kurtz.
4. Replace McNeill with interim Manager Brenda Jones Fox, the county finance director.
5. Make county HR Director Sharisse Fuller Fox’s interim assistant.
6. Conduct a “search” for a new manager.
7. Decide, “Goodness gracious, our best person is already right here, under our noses.”
8. Make Fox the permanent manager.
9. Make Fuller the permanent assistant manager (see Gerald Witt’s story).
10. When Fox retires, replace her with Fuller.

So far, it has played out to Step 9.

And it all makes sense. There is something in it for Arnold and Alston: spending cuts, favorites moved to high places, even Arnold’s uncharacteristic support of (at least, lack of opposition to) funding for community-based organizations. The deal-making is sheer, diabolical genius.

This is all a theory, of course.

Arnold and Alston will tell you they’re doing it all for us.

No offense to our good neighbors to the west.

But who’s charge in Winston-Salem anyway: the City Council or Dell?

If that seems a harsh assessment, you should have seen council members’ abject eagerness to sing the computer maker’s praises at Monday’s long-awaited Finance Committee meeting in Winston.

Dell executives were supposed to be there to explain to the council and the public why they had been so unwilling to release employment figures that were critical to meeting state and city incentives guidelines.

I’m not sure they needed to come.

Council members were more than eager to speak for them.

Dell’s vice president for operations in North America, Frank Miller, was pleasant enough. But he didn’t even say, in plain English, how many employees the struggling computer maker had laid off at the Forsyth County plant.

Dell employed 1,400 workers in January, he said. Now it employs 1,140.

You do the math.

Other than that, neither Miller nor the rest of the Dell contingent, which took almost three rows of chairs in a small, second-floor meeting room at City Hall, said much else.

They made no commitments to keeping the Forsyth plant open long term.

They could convert the plant from desktop production to laptops, where the higher demand is now. But they have no plans at this point to do that.

Most importantly, they made no commitments to be any more open to the public than they have been, despite the $280 million incentives they negotiated with Winston-Salem, Forsyth County and the state in hardball discussions that demanded everything from free dry cleaning to free gas to free golf.

Also, a Dell official made a fairly unconvincing argument that Dell would not release employment figures for individual plants because it created a competitive disadvantage ... something having to do with “triangulation,” he explained.

Finally, Dell has established a rehire program, company officials said. In the event that business improves, workers would be called back, they said.

A current Dell worker and a former one at the session seemed skeptical.

To be fair, it is hard for a city council to talk tough when good jobs are so hard to come by.

But Winston-Salem and Forsyth County have paid Dell a combined $22.2 million in incentives.

A little fortitude would have been helpful. And appropriate.

What’s more, Dell had stonewalled city leaders, the media and the public on the size of its workforce after three rounds of layoffs over the past seven months. And it had done so with no small degree of arrogance.

Two hundred eighty million bucks ought to be worth an ounce or two of outrage by somebody around here.

“Perhaps the communication could be more frequent to your community partners,” Finance Committee Chairwoman Wanda Merschel said, politely.

That’s tellin’ ’em.

Make no mistake, Dell is a major catch for the state and the Triad.

But that doesn’t mean it is above accountability to taxpayers, who have feathered the company’s nest with lavish tax breaks.

Computer sales may be down, but Dell’s smugness is not.

If you're wondering whatever happened to Jim Renick, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reports:

James C. Renick was named executive assistant and senior adviser to the president of Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. Renick was a senior associate at the consulting firm Penson and Associates. Formerly he was chancellor of North Carolina A&T State University.

Dr. Renick is a graduate of Central State University. He holds a master’s of social work degree from the University of Kansas and a doctorate from Florida State University.

The General Assembly’s new smoking ban legislation isn’t all that it can or should be.

It should have been tougher and should have gone further.

But the bill, which passed Wednesday, is a healthy and historic step forward, all the same.

The bill bans smoking in all bars and restaurants in the state. It removes both the serious health hazards and annoyances of secondhand smoke in those settings. It also protects the health of employees who, until now, would have had two choices in establishments that allow smoking: breathe noxious air or get another job.

Ideally, an earlier, more comprehensive Senate version of the bill would have survived. That bill also would have prohibited smoking in nearly all workplaces. An estimated 26.8 percent of North Carolina workplaces still permit smoking, according to a 2007 US. Census study.

Of those businesses, bars and restaurants comprise only 7 percent.

Further, people can choose the bars and restaurants they frequent much more easily than they can decide where to work. You get a job where you can in this day and age.

The health argument was compelling.

Secondhand smoke has been proven to be a threat that can increase cancer risk, cause respiratory infections and aggravate heart ailments among nonsmokers.

The political landscape was another matter. The more sweeping version probably would not have mustered enough support to pass.

Even the less stringent version passed in the House only 62-56.

“It is not the bill we would have liked to have,” the bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Hugh Holliman, D-Lexington, said last week.

But make no mistake. The bill that passed on May 13 and Gov. Bev Perdue promised to sign into law marks a significant milestone in a state in which such legislation would have been considered sacrilege not that long ago.

Tobacco is still the No. 1 cash crop in the state and a formidable, though declining force in the economy.

Some hold fast to the idea that this is an issue of personal choice — that this bill is as frivolous as wanting to ban a distasteful perfume.

Good try. But as unpleasant as it can be, bad perfume has not yet been documented to kill anyone.

It was well past time for lawmakers to clear the air.

Kudos to Greensboro's Alma Adams, Pricey Harrison and Maggie Jeffus for voting yes.

A frequently repeated complaint among some parents at Northern High School, which has been forced to forfeit a state basketball title for using ineligible players, is that “everyone does it.”

That’s a poor excuse and a poor moral example to set for students.

Northern's baseball team also was forced from the state playoffs, and ineligible athletes were found in other sports as well.

Wrong is wrong and using ineligible players is clearly against the rules.

That said, it is important for school officials to investigate and sanction other schools that are found to violate the rules.

Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green has said he intends to do precisely that.

“If that’s what our community wants to do, that’s what we’ll do,” Green said Thursday night during a meeting at Northern.

Good. Enforcement should be fair and consistent throughout the school system.

Meanwhile, parents should give the flimsy excuses a rest.

This week's column.

No offense to our good neighbors to the west.

But who’s in charge in Winston-Salem anyway: the City Council or Dell?

If that seems a harsh assessment, you should have seen council members’ abject eagerness to sing the computer maker’s praises at Monday’s long-awaited Finance Committee meeting in Winston.

Dell executives were supposed to be there to explain to the council and the public why they had been so reluctant to release employment figures that were critical to meeting state, county and city incentives guidelines.

I’m not sure they needed to come.

Council members seemed more than eager to speak for them.

“Thanks for being here and thanks for being one of the largest private employers in the county,” Councilman Robert Clark said.

“I truly understand these difficult times.”

As a businessman, Clark added, he sympathizes with Dell’s plight in a challenging economy. “I wasn’t sure the sun was coming up one day, much less the number of people I employ,” he said. “I feel your pain.”

Of course, Dell did say something on its own behalf, though not nearly as much as the packed room may have expected. Dell’s vice president for operations in North America, Frank Miller, wouldn’t even say, in plain English, how many employees the struggling computer maker had laid off at the Forsyth County plant. Dell employed 1,400 workers in January, he said. Now it employs 1,140.

You do the math.

Other than that, neither Miller nor the rest of the Dell contingent, which took nearly three rows of chairs in a small, second-floor room, said much else.

Former WXII anchor Tolly Carr will be released from prison in McLeansville today.

It will not be easy for him to resume his life after striking and killing a man while driving drunk two years ago.

But he has a second chance nevertheless. His victim, 26-year-old Casey Bokhoven, does not.

Part of what Carr should do now is speak to the dangers of drunken driving to young people beyond the 100 hours of community service he is ordered to provide. He has a gift as a public speaker.

And he knows firsthand that drinking while driving can leave deep and painful scars all around.

The A&T chancellor search is down to two finalists whose names have been submitted to UNC President Erskine Bowles, Joe Killian reports.

The good news about this development is that the chancellor search committee has accomplished the winnowing processes in a relatively short time frame.

The bad news is we don't know who the finalists are. Our local UNC schools continue to insist on revealing absolutely nothing until the new chancellor is announced.

That deprives the public and the university community of any input except at the very beginning of the search, when they can only think in abstract terms of the qualities they want in the school's next leader.

Let's also hope the speed of the process hasn't outpaced the quality. This is a very critical selection at a critical time in A&T's history.

(I hope one of the finalists is Harold Martin.)

Let’s see ... your boss wants you to resign.

Your boss’s boss wants you to resign.

You’ve had a job created for you at N.C. State University under some (to be kind) suspicious circumstances.

Questions continue to mount about how and why you received a five-year, $850,000 contract that more than doubled your previous salary while your husband was serving as governor.

State Chancellor James Oblinger has said you should resign.

UNC system president Erskine Bowles has said you should resign.

Your Board of Trustees chairman and the man who hired you both have themselves resigned because of their connections to you.

And you’re not budging?

Former first lady Mary Easley, it’s time to call it a day, give it up, say “no mas,” step away.

You’d be doing N.C. State a favor. And you’d be doing yourself a favor.

A new security precaution at the Guilford Courthouse is taking some getting used to .

Now you have to hand over your belt as well as your keys and spare change at the metal detector.

One courthouse employee says that has created problems for some men who wear droopy pants. Some barely can keep them up even with a belt.

If this measure helps prod them to wear pants that fit, maybe a small measure of justice would have been served after all.

Two things continue to bother me concerning the Northern Guilford debacle:

1. The continuing lack of contrition on the part of many parents.

2. The amount of time and resources this problem has siphoned from more pertinent matters.

When can we get back to discussions about EDUCATION?

Mary Easley not only will not go quietly; she will not go at all.

Her attorney says the former first lady intends "to continue to make outstanding contributions" in her $170,000-a-year job at N.C. State created especially for her.

This is not good for the Democrats or N.C. State. It also defies the wishes of N.C. State Chancellor James Oblinger and UNC President Erskine Bowles, both of whom say she should step down.

The Board of Trustees Chairman at State resigned over this matter, as did the provost who hired her.

But somehow Mary Easley sees herself as above that fray?

The Parks and Recreation folks justifiably are miffed that the city’s new aquatics center has been placed on the fast track with little input or involvement from them.

It is highly unlikely that bonds for the facility would have passed in 2008 without the good reputation of Parks and Recreation behind it. As far as anyone can remember, city parks bonds always pass.

Swim center bonds are another matter. They’ve failed miserably when placed alone on the ballot. Then last year they were included in the parks and recreation package and passed solidly.

Of the $20 million placed on the ballot for those bonds, $12 million was earmarked for the swim center.

Be that as it may, the Parks and Recreation department will not be involved in the facility’s construction.

Even worse, a committee was formed by the City Council to consider locations for the few swim center ... then ignored.

The council decided on its own to place the facility at the coliseum.

Finally, Parks and Recreation commissioners rightly wonder about the status of other bonds passed for recreation facilities, some approved by voters as long ago as 2000.

There may be sound fiscal reasons those projects, which include recreation centers and a skate park, have been put on hold.

Whatever the reasoning, it would be nice to know.

As for the swim center, in all likelihood it would have wound up at the coliseum anyway. It’s clearly the most cost-effective location. And the case for moving quickly to build it to take advantage of cheaper construction costs is convincing.

But both the Parks and Recreation Department and commissioners understandably feel they were used to get the swim center bonds passed, then kicked to the curb.

The council should have respected the process. And it should have respected the Parks and Recreation Department.

A correction: Amanda Lehmert tells me the committee I mentioned was not specifically charged with advising on a swim center location. It was formed to offer general advice on the facility. It was not consulted on the location question.

Posts may be sporadic for the next few days.

Getting married this evening.

This week's column.

If you got ’em, snuff ’em.

North Carolina lawmakers have finally agreed to a statewide ban on smoking in most bars and restaurants and Gov. Perdue cheerfully signed the legislation into law last week.

This is a big deal in the land of the golden leaf and was until recently about as likely around here as a blizzard in July.

Tobacco has meant a lot to this state. It still does.

But it is inherently dangerous, not only to smokers, but to those unlucky enough to be near them.

Smoking also is smelly, unclean and disgusting. How could anyone ever have considered inhaling noxious chemicals, then blowing them back into the faces of others, socially acceptable?

Even so, many smokers insist they’ve been burned. Nonsmokers have a right to choose where they eat and drink, they say. They can choose not to patronize hazy bars and eateries.

Smokers have a right to choose as well. Maybe now they’ll choose to quit. Maybe the sheer frustration of finding somewhere to light up will make them throw up their hands ... give up, quit, desist. And stop standing alone in the cold, doing something they know is bad for them.

But even that part of the equation is a source of controversy.

At issue is an approach called “harm reduction.”
Harm reduction proponents say one viable path to quitting smoking ought to be a lesser evil: smokeless tobacco products.

But can’t smokeless tobacco kill you just as dead as cigarettes?

Well, yeah, they concede, but smokeless tobacco is less likely to be fatal. And smokers can wean themselves off cigarettes by switching to other products such as snuff and chewing tobacco.

Brad Rodu, an oncology professor at the University of Louisville, argued passionately in these pages that smokeless tobacco provides a nicotine fix without causing smoking-related diseases. “Unlike cigarettes, smokeless doesn’t cause lung cancer, heart disease or emphysema,” he wrote. “The health risks from smokeless are only about 1 to 2 percent those of smoking. Statistically, lifelong smokeless users have about the same risk of dying from that habit as automobile users have of dying in a car wreck.”

Further, smokeless tobacco does not produce smoke, hence it eliminates the dangers of secondhand smoke.

Don’t reach for that pouch of chew just yet.

Smokeless tobacco contains at least three known carcinogenic agents: N-nitrosamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and radioactive polonium 210. It increases the threat of various oral cancers. It also has been associated with esophageal, pancreatic, prostate and kidney cancer, possibly even heart disease, says Dr. John Spangler of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

And when it does kill, it can do so with a vengeance.

Even for those who survive, it can leave behind scars and disfigurement, including the removal of all or part of the jaw and the loss of the ability to chew, smile, swallow or kiss.

Further, it already appeals to young people. According to the National Cancer Institute, smokeless tobacco use already is most common among adults ages 18 to 25.

Promoting it as a safe alternative could encourage even more use by young people.
Coincidentally, the company formerly known as Philip Morris, Altria Group, sees smokeless tobacco products as an integral part of its growth strategy. Altria Chief Executive Michael E. Szymanczyk told shareholders last week that the company’s recent acquisitions and emphasis on smokeless products placed it in a “strong position” for long-term growth. Those alternatives include chewing tobacco and moist snuff known as “snus,” some marketed under the popular Marlboro brand.

Forgive me if I’m not impressed.

Neither is Wake Forest’s Spangler, who directs tobacco intervention programs at the medical school. “Those who argue in favor of smokeless tobacco as a means to quit smoking —an 'alternative’ to cigarettes, if you will — ignore the fact that there is not a shred of scientific evidence showing, in a randomized, controlled clinical trial setting, that smokeless is effective in helping patients quit smoking,” Spangler says.

“This is the level of evidence that the FDA requires before a drug company can market a drug. We should insist on that level of evidence before we start pushing a product that is already known to be unsafe.”

Harm reduction can be an effective approach in some cases — for example, providing clean needles to drug addicts to help control the spread of AIDS. But not in this instance, when other, safer alternatives such as nicotine patches are readily available.

Those who are considering going smokeless should chew on that first.

Kirk Perkins makes one thing perfectly clear to Inside Scoop: He intends to be anything but perfectly clear.

The subject at hand is where he stood on the forced resignation of former Deputy County Manager Ben Brown by eliminating his job. The only thing we can tell from Perkins' cryptic comments is that he plainly doesn't want us to know where he stood.

Which was on both sides ... uh, yes and no .. in the middle ... which is to say he was for it before he was against it.

Or something like that. Kinda sort of.

City Councilman Mike Barber called the other day and restated his views on the White Street Landfill.

He still argues that the landfill was closed prematurely to household waste and that it is costing taxpayers huge amounts of money each year.

In this economy, he argues, the city can't afford that kind of expense.

When this issue has surfaced before the City Council has quickly quashed it with minimal discussion.

Some people believe reopening the landfill would amount to environmental racism.

I don't know about that. Although the area largely consists of African American residents today, the landfill predated most of them.

The area was majority-white until the early 1970s. I know. I lived there.

The landfill was built in the 1940s.

The City Council this week directed city staff to consider the costs of reopening the landfill to household trash — and of buying the homes surrounding the landfill.

That makes sense.

There are legitimate questions about the actual pros and cons of opening the landfill or keeping it closed.

At this point I don't know whether Barber is right.

I'd like to find out.

The city — including those who live nearest the landfill — would benefit from an informed discussion based on facts, not emotions.