LETTING THE STATES' POPULAR VOTE DECIDE

What follows are excerpts from the Inside Opinion blog by Press Democrat editorial writers Paul Gullixson and Jim Sweeney. The blog is featured on WatchSonomaCounty.com.

George W. Bush is one of four presidents who lost the popular vote. The others were John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison.

Is that reason enough to change election laws?

A bill on Gov. Jerry Brown's desk would award California's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote -- but only if enough other states adopt the same practice to ensure that the election is decided by the popular vote. The bill passed on a largely party-line vote, with Democrats in favor and Republican opposed. In recent years, some Republicans have pushed a plan that would award California's electoral votes proportionally.

Supporters of each plan argue that presidential candidates would be forced to contest California, rather than rely on it solely as a ready source of campaign cash. Neither side is especially credible. California has been safely in the "D" column since 1992 (reversing a half-century of Republican dominance of the presidential vote). Why give that up? The GOP, meanwhile, sticks to a winner-take-all system for its presidential primaries, and we're supposed to believe that a proportional system is better for the general election?

That said, I don't see anything sacred about the present winner-take-all approach for the presidential election. Among the options, I'd probably lean to following the popular vote as we do for all other offices. But four presidents out of 44 who didn't win the popular vote isn't exactly a constitutional crisis.

What do you think?

-- Jim Sweeney

There was a time I wasn't sure if this project would really get built. But work has finally begun on the foundation of the new Sutter Medical Center next to the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts.

Not including the highway expansion, this is the biggest construction project since the building of Warm Springs Dam 28 years ago. And it couldn't have come at a better time. The $284 million project is expected to create 1,500 jobs and infuse millions into the Sonoma County economy.

Recently, Jim Sweeney and I were given a tour of the site led by Sutter Chief Administrative Officer Mike Purvis and Tom Minard, Sutter's senior project manager.

Here were some interesting facts we came away with:

* Despite the heavy rains this year, the project is, so far, under budget and about a week ahead of schedule. A progress report is posted daily inside a massive 9,000-square-foot trailer on the site. There, construction crews, designers and engineers work together in an office-like setting to make assignments, troubleshoot problems and track progress with the help of complex 3-D computer models that show in detail how every pipe and corner will fit together long before they're built. This project involves more 3-D modeling than any Sutter hospital to date, said Minard. Because of that, "we are really shooting for zero changes in the field," he said.

* There are believed to be only three LEED-certified acute care hospitals in California. With any luck, this will be the fourth. This is a fancy way of saying hospital officials are designing it in hopes it will be certified as "green" by building industry officials in terms energy efficiency, etc. Sutter is hoping for a "silver" certification. As of now, there's only one other acute hospital in the Bay Area that has achieved that level. That's the new Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco.

Work also began this week on widening the main entrance off Mark West Springs Road from three lanes to five. A traffic signal will be added at that intersection as well.

The public will see the steel going up sometime around March of next year, and the complex is on pace to be completed by October 2014.

* The public can follow the progress via a live "construction cam" set up at the website for the new Sutter center. (Go to www.suttersantarosa.org/newhospital) The website also has a time-lapse function that allows viewers to quickly see how the work has progressed from day one. For anyone interested in watching construction sites, it's must-see TV.

-- Paul Gullixson

As we noted in several editorials prior to the 2010 election, Sonoma County hasn't had a contested race for sheriff in 20 years. Not since George Bush -- the elder -- was president, "Cheers" topped the TV ratings and Supervisor Efren Carrillo was 9 years old.

Steve Freitas, who took office in January, is the third consecutive sheriff to be hand-picked by his predecessor and appear alone on the ballot. Yet, with contested elections a fading memory and more than three years of his first term still ahead of him, Freitas is advertising a $100-a-person fundraiser via his Facebook page.

What's up with that?

-- Jim Sweeney

It looks as if Sonoma County may have been jilted by a two-timing developer who ran off to the "honeymoon capital of the world."

As Staff Writer Robert Digitale reported Wednesday, the much-anticipated plans for a $10 million, 68,000-square-foot public market at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds are dead. The Boise, Idaho-based developer, Mark Rivers, who fairgrounds officials hadn't heard from in months, confirmed as much in a brief statement, saying, "the financing environment and political climate just weren't conducive" to developing the MarketHall project.

What did he mean by a non-conducive environment? It's not clear. He didn't respond to Digitale's request for clarification.

As it turns out, his heart apparently was elsewhere anyway. While Sonoma County was waiting on Rivers to deliver on his promises, he was on the other side of the nation courting Niagara Falls, N.Y., with a somewhat similar proposal.

Rivers, a native of western New York, has received tenative approval from Niagara Falls to develop a European-style outdoor market downtown that would be open during the holiday season from the end of November to January. The Holiday Market project as been in the works since at least February.

Not everyone is happy with the plans. In a column from the Niagara Reporter, a weekly newspaper, Rivers is described as "an elegant huckster with a glib tongue." The March 15 column by Frank Parlato Jr., a Niagara Falls developer/businessman turned publisher, contends that "Rivers is a man who favors private/public partnerships, especially when the public comes up with all the money."

I don't know whether Rivers was straight with fairgrounds officials or not. But maybe being left at the altar wasn't such a bad thing for Sonoma County.

-- Paul Gullixson