For the triumph of common sense, for this town council and for the reporter who shared this story.

Our View: Three cheers for Tremonton council

Knowing when you made an error, taking quick action to correct the error, and taking steps to ensure the error does not occur again are traits of quality public servants.

The Tremonton City Council showed those traits and we'd like to congratulate council members for how they quickly resolved an embarrassing law -- passed two weeks ago -- that would have required those under 18 to get parents' consent before checking out books from the city library's "adult" fiction section.

It was clearly a goof. Had the law been enforced, and it never was, youngsters would have been stopped from checking out books by, say, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of "Lord of the Rings," or even Gerald Lund's LDS fiction "Work and the Glory" series.

Within hours after the vote, council members realized they had made a mistake. No one tried to obscure the issue or assign blame elsewhere. Tremonton's council stood up and took the blame.

Wouldn't that be a refreshing change for Washington D.C. or even our state Legislature?

On Tuesday the law was repealed so now kids with more "adult" tastes can check out Stephen King, John Grisham, or even Agatha Christie if they have a yen for mysteries.

It's also nice to see the council not only correcting a mistake, but wanting to learn from it.

The original adult fiction ban started as a suggestion on a piece of paper. No one's completely sure where that suggestion came from.

To fix that, the Tremonton council agreed that if a request is placed on an agenda, those who made the request must appear before the council and pitch their case. It's a good idea that will go a long way toward ensuring that infamous ordinances such as the Tremonton library ban aren't repeated.

Finally, we appreciate that the Tremonton officials can find humor in the unfortunate, short-term book-restriction law. Council member Lyle Holmgren provided an earthy analogy for the whole experience. He compared it to stepping on a cowpie.

"You know you've done something wrong the minute you did it, and it stinks, and it takes awhile to get the stink off," he said.

For now, at least, the stink has been completely deodorized in Tremonton's library.
http://www.standard.net/live/news/172292/

They should just ban Nora Robert's books