Triple feature — Transparency, nicotine and cannibals

It's not quantum mechanics or neuroscience or discovering a fifth season.

It's really very simple.

If you're doing something you think people, taxpayers especially, would want to know about, tell them. If it's something you know will cause even more embarrassment if you get caught looking sketchy, you'd better tell them. If you'd want to know if you were in their shoes, by all means, tell them.

This week, we learned that the City of Cedar Rapids tucked a $450,000 legal settlement into a high pile of weekly claims, aka the bills. Did officials hope no one would notice? We can only speculate. However, they must know weekly paid claims, in terms of web hits, are no adorable cat video. Nobody reads them.

Well, except for Carol Martin, vigilant citizen and diligent reader of claims.

Martin came across a $450,000 payment to something called Dittmer Partners LLC. It's right there on page 31 of the 148 pages of claims issued April 14, alongside deposit books for the Jones golf club house and a $36 water refund. Curious.

Turns out it's the settlement for a lawsuit filed against the city in 2007, when the council and then-City Manager Jim Prosser slapped a development moratorium on Westdale Mall and its surrounding lots. The city was hoping to spark and control redevelopment, but a couple of lot owners sued.

It's all very nostalgic. My very first Cedar Rapids City Council meeting addressed the Westdale moratorium. Good times.

The lawsuit was news. So the settlement is news. And $450,000 is no paltry sum. So the City Council really should have said something before voting to spend it.

Most of the council, the mayor and the current city manager weren't around in 2007. But now, thanks to the silent treatment, they get to take guff for the settlement. An unforced error, to be sure.

But these are the same folks who tuck the city manager's pay raises into the council's 'consent agenda,” a list of stuff approved without council comment. Bills also are approved in the consent agenda.

Claims are available online, and can be interesting reading if you want to understand which ingredients are going into the sausage we call governing. You'll find everything from $20 towels to $1.4 million for a street construction project.

And being informed can be a powerful thing. Just ask Carol.

SLOW SMOLDER ON OUTDOOR NICOTINE

A few columns ago, I panned a move by the city's Parks, Waterways and Recreation Commission to ban nicotine in all its forms from parks, trails and four city golf courses. As an infrequent golfer and cigar smoker, I balked at tightening the already considerable grip of our nanny state for dubious public health benefits. I don't need to be saved from the dastardly Arturo Fuente.

But no ban will happen without City Council action. And, based on what I've heard from council members, they're in no hurry to light the fuse.

'Council's going to take its time on that one. It won't just be ramrodded through,” said Mayor Ron Corbett.

'Regarding smoking in parks, etc ... At this point we need the broader community to weigh in and I'm confident that together we'll come up with the right solution for our city,” said Council member Susie Weinacht in an email. She chairs a council committee that would get first crack at an ordinance.

Corbett says he's no fan of smoking. But he sees a potential nicotine ban as akin to a city ordinance banning goose-feeding, with a possible $75 fine. Such ordinances send an educational message to citizens, but stringent enforcement isn't the objective.

No one has been fined for feeding geese, according to the city, and Corbett doubts a golf course smoker would have much to fear.

'We have bike police. I don't think we'll have a golf cart patrol,” Corbett said.

Still, I don't see the need for a law that won't be enforced. Much worse would be a law selectively and unfairly enforced.

If the council can work something out that gets at protecting park and trail facilities where non-nicotine users might be affected by smoking, etc., OK. Otherwise, let's move on.

'I golf on city courses and I very rarely see anyone smoking,” Council member Ann Poe said in an email. 'I don't smoke, never have, and I was a big proponent of a smoke free environment in restaurants. However, this is outside and really feels like we are going too far.”

Council member Scott Olson said the commission's move caught him off guard, but he's open to the idea.

'I think, in my mind, this is part of the Blue Zone effort,” Olson said.

Sure, Blue Zones.

When the Blue Zone push gained speed around here, I lauded its potential to get people thinking about what makes life more enjoyable, healthy and lengthy. I appreciated its smart, small-scale efforts to nudge people in the right direction, before they even know they've been nudged. I saw it more as forward-thinking than heavy-handed.

But some folks scoffed at my naive optimism, insisting that Blue Zones would be used as an excuse by local governments to crack down, ban and fine. Because? Blue Zones. Life would just seem longer, navigating all the new limits and ordinances.

I'm not ready to concede defeat, but my optimism is dented. And I think Blue Zone's ultimate success in actually making lives better will be inversely proportional to the amount of new governmental authority it spawns. So be careful, Blue Zones. Don't become the nanny zone.

CANNIBALIZATION UPDATE

So casino-owning high-roller Dan Kehl has combined his three Iowa gambling parlors in Riverside, Larchwood and Davenport into a single company, Elite Casino Resorts. The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission blessed the union on Thursday, the same day Kehl broke ground on a new $110 million joint planned along I-80 and I-74 on the outskirts of Davenport.

The new company employs 1,500 people and will rake in $225 million in revenue.

So this means the Riverside Casino and Golf Resort, the place that would have been brought low by a Cedar Rapids casino, is now just one subsidiary of a much larger casinoglomerate. Consequently, the 27 percent to 42 percent of Riverside revenue 'independent” market analysts said Cedar Rapids would cannibalize is now just a mere 11 to 16 percent of Elite Casino Resorts' revenue.

To put it another way, what Cedar Rapids would eat from Elite is far more petite. Sorry.

Not that it will change anything, glimmers of hope aside. It's just interesting to see how fate has smiled on Kehl's fortunes over the last 14 months, with a big assist from his friends on the Racing and Gaming Commission. The cartel takes care of its own.

No word on whether Elite will be getting into the water park business.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com