Lawmaker Getting Close Look at How the Law Works

Michigan Rep. Dennis Dutko hasn’t been in his office since May 24, but twice a day the state lawmaker checks in with his Capitol staff by telephone. And residents of his suburban Detroit district understand the problem. The eight-term Democrat is an inmate at the Ingham County Jail in Warren, where he is serving a one-year sentence for his third drunken driving conviction. “Because he doesn’t have a vote, to tell you that he does have an impact on the House would be to distort the situation,” said Paul Mendelsohn, Dutko’s aide. Dutko, 45, has been removed as chairman of two House committees, although he’s not required to resign, since he was convicted on a misdemeanor. Still, the Michigan chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a group of Dutko’s constituents have initiated a recall drive, which, according to Michael Raveane, editor of the Warren Weekly, has drawn little interest. “It’s something that people have been reading about, but it’s not something they are upset about,” Raveane said.

--Allen H. Neuharth, founder of USA Today, is unlikely to find the skies friendly the next time he boards an airliner. In a column last week, the recently retired chairman of Gannett Co. Inc. wrote: “Many of the young, attractive, enthusiastic female flight attendants--then called stewardesses--have been replaced by aging women who are tired of their jobs or by flighty young men who have trouble balancing a cup of coffee.” He said that if he were running an airline, he would insist on old-fashioned statistics--namely, shapely “sky girls” should be under age 25, 5 feet, 4 inches tall or less, and weigh less than 115 pounds. Neuharth has triggered a firestorm not only from the Assn. of Flight Attendants but also from more than 175 of the paper’s 425 newsroom employees, who signed a letter, published in the paper, that said they were “offended, outraged and embarrassed” by the column.

--Irish flutist James Galway won’t soon forget his recent trip to Lucerne, Switzerland. Galway’s five gold-plated, diamond-studded flutes were put on a baggage cart at the train station and then quickly disappeared. “We turned away for a minute and the cart was gone,” said his wife, Jeanne, who also is a concert flutist. “The flutes were specially made and are numbered . . . . They’re each worth 30,000 pounds ($49,200), and we will be offering a reward.”