As valuable as your business experiences and contacts will be to the bettering of Utah's economic future, there are some serious differences between the way things are done in the business world and the way they are - or, at least, ought to be - done in government.

For example, all that you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours stuff is right out.

It's just not acceptable, even if you are clever enough to get someone to scratch your back without ever actually having to scratch theirs in return.

That's why you are going to take some well-deserved, but probably short-lived, heat for taking so long to return a total of $40,000 in political contributions from the soon-to-be owner of Envirocare of Utah.

You can say, governor, and even believe that the $15,000 Steve Creamer gave your campaign before it was publicly known he was buying the Tooele County nuclear waste dump, and the $25,000 he gave to your political action committee just about the time that he went public with the plan, won't actually buy him any influence in your court.

But public officials simply cannot operate that way and retain their credibility, especially on such hot-button issues as hot nuclear waste.

Your chief of staff told The Salt Lake Tribune the other day that your own camp was troubled, even to the point of feeling “abused,” by the contributions from a person who is going to embody one of the state's most controversial issues. Major-domo Jason Chaffetz said he certainly hoped that Creamer didn't think that the contributions were going to help him get his way, or what might be his way, on a license to store more dangerous classes of waste.

But what else was anyone, whether it's Creamer or those who fear him, supposed to think?

You were right to return Creamer's donations. You were right to have your spokesman say that the donations were improper and that they weren't going to inappropriately influence state policy. That much looks good, sounds good and is probably even true.

But the fact that nobody actually moved to return the donations and disassociate your campaign and, now, your administration from that tainted money until after the question was raised by this newspaper is a real rookie mistake.

All of this is another reminder that the question of allowing Envirocare, or anyone else, to accept class B and C nuclear waste for storage in Utah is a nasty political issue that is likely to haunt you until you take the simple step of issuing the ban on such waste that state law empowers you to order.

Do it now, governor, and you might even be able to keep Steve Creamer's money the next time around.