Me bad: Like kids caught deep in the cookie jar, members of the Jordan School Board sheepishly put the cookie back last week. But they kept some big crumbs in their pockets. Bowing to public pressure, the board rescinded its July decision to allow board members to accept $17,456 in lieu of free health insurance. Members also abandoned an automatic cost-of-living adjustment based on the consumer price index and tied to their $12,000 salaries. Those are steps in the right direction. Now they should consider trimming that $9,000, 400 percent salary increase they voted themselves.

Closing the barn door: It's too late for Stephen Anderson, the state Corrections officer who was shot and killed by Utah prison inmate Curtis Allgier as Anderson was escorting Allgier on a visit to University Hospital for a medical test. Still, the Corrections Department did the right thing in changing its policy so that, from now on, at least two guards will accompany all inmates when they leave the prison for any reason.

Wrong direction: Utah didn't have the greatest increase in the number of drunken-driving fatalities in the nation from 2005 to 2006. That dubious distinction was shared by Arizona, Kansas and Texas. But Utah, Kansas and Iowa had the largest percentage increases, and that is the wrong direction for this statistic to be headed. Thirty-three people died in drunken-driving-related traffic accidents in Utah in 2005 and 54 in 2006, a 63 percent jump. Worse, 2006's total has already been eclipsed in 2007. We need to ask why and what we can do about it.