Stop calling minor political scandals “worse than Watergate.”

It doesn’t matter what the scandal is, it likely isn’t worse than Watergate.

Hyperbole is a well-used arrow in the rhetorical quiver of most politicians and the commentariat. Exaggeration to make a point has its place in political discourse. But to constantly describe something minor as something horrendous does two things, it makes the person who is constantly claiming the sky is falling look foolish and ignorant, and it minimizes the horror of something that should never be minimized.

Watergate was a horror and we forget that at our peril. President Ford didn’t call it our “long national nightmare” for nothing.

But forget that we have. Every time we put the suffix –gate on the end of some minor kerfuffle, we minimize Watergate. And calling some scandal worse than Watergate grossly misstates the severity of the scandal and Watergate.

Both liberals and conservatives do it, politicians and the political punditry.

President Reagan probably conspired to evade a law restricting funding Nicaraguan rebels. That was bad, but it wasn’t even close to being worse than Watergate.

None of President Clinton’s many scandals were “worse than Watergate” even though he was impeached. Lying under oath in a deposition about having sex with a woman who wasn’t his wife hardly rises to the level of Watergate.

Nothing President Obama has been accused of lately is all that serious. Even it if turns out he had a hand in directing the IRS to give extra scrutiny to Tea Party groups, it’s bad, but it’s still not “worse than Watergate.”

An argument could be made that President Bush committed sins that were “worse than Watergate,” after all, he invaded a country on false premises and sanctioned the torture of prisoners. Unlike Watergate, thousands of people were unnecessarily killed and tortured under his regime. But unlike Watergate, Bush’s horrors were done with the full knowledge and sanction of the Congress and the American people.

Nixon committed his crimes in secret and if not for his bungling burglars and a courageous newspaper the nation might never have learned of Nixon’s crimes and the level of contempt he had for the Constitution and the rule of law.

In case you’ve forgotten or are too young to have lived through it and didn’t get adequate instruction about it in school, here’s a brief synopsis.

The term Watergate encompasses two things: The June, 1972 break-in and attempted bugging of Democratic National Party headquarters’ office in the Watergate office complex in Washington D.C., and the resultant attempt to cover up Whitehouse complicity in the break-in through deceit and interfering with the FBI investigation; and the coverup also was intended to keep secret a whole host of felonious activity that started at the beginning of Nixon’s first term of which the Watergate bugging attempt was a part.

Most of the country didn’t believe the stories the Washington Post published about Nixon’s criminal complicity. Despite reams of evidence and stories in the Post connecting the Whitehouse to the break-in, Nixon was overwhelmingly re-elected. Nixon ended up hoisting himself on his own petard by taping all the conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon’s own words revealed during Congressional hearings in 1973 and 1974 convinced the country he was a crook and he was driven from office in shame.

If not for Ford’s immediate pardon, Nixon would have gone to jail for his crimes, joining at least 40 other members of his administration who spent time in prison for their actions before and after Watergate.

Among the charges that led to their incarcerations were burglary, extortion, bribery, wiretapping, fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury.

Nixon believed he was above the law and used the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to intimidate and destroy his political enemies. In the end, the law won. But it was close. It’s possible that if not for a little tape left on a door lock, the nation might never have found out what a tyrant their president was.

So to equate minor scandals with Nixon’s massive abuse of power and the criminal cabal he led from the Whitehouse is dangerous for our nation.

We owe it to subsequent generations who didn’t live through Watergate to know how to judge what real abuse of power is and to be ever vigilant for it.

Otherwise, if it happens again, they might simply dismiss it as just more cacophonous political grandstanding by blowhards simply exaggerating to make a point.

Stop saying “worse than Watergate” until it’s proven through multiple convictions and impeachment that it really was.

Is there something fundamentally broken in the relationship between the Tucson City Council and the city’s top staff?

Last week the council found out that the $5 million in raises it approved for all city staff a few days earlier won’t actually cost $5 million but will instead cost $8 million.

A few council members accused top city officials of being purposefully obtuse in documents submitted to the council for consideration before the vote in that those documents only alluded to the effect of the raise on the city’s general fund, which pays for most city services, such as parks and public safety.

The $3 million balance of the cost will come from the city’s enterprise fund departments in which specific fees pay for the departments’ operations, such as water rate fees in the water department. Council members insisted they weren’t told of this extra cost.

This isn’t the first time the council has been miffed at city staff for pulling a fast one, as they see it, but it is the second time since a rash of such incidents caused Mayor Jonathan Rothschild to work with the City Manager Richard Miranda on a number of reforms to improve council-staff communications.

That it happened again is perhaps a sign that there must be something endemically wrong in the relationship between the policy makers and the policy administrators.

Cruddy council-staff relations came to a head in 2011 and 2012. In fall of 2011, the council brought the chaotic reign of City Manager Mike Letcher to a merciful close by firing him and hiring Miranda as interim manager. But shortly after giving Miranda the job permanently in 2012, the council and Miranda’s staff had an awful spring and summer

It started with Councilman Paul Cunningham’s boozy solicitations of a couple of female staffers during a TREO junket to San Diego, which came about the same time the council learned through an audit by the newly formed audit commission that city taxpayers had for years been paying for funding deficits of about $1 million annually in the city’s golf enterprise, which was supposed to be paying for itself.

The council, led by Councilwoman Regina Romero, asserted that city taxpayers were subsidizing golf but city staff disagreed. The council’s version won the day, of course, and the row launched a series of reforms over the next year for golf operations.

Then in early July the council found out that the Federal Transportation Authority had told the city in March it needed to buy another streetcar to meet its regulatory provisions. The staff sat on the information while it tried to work out whether the purchase was really necessary but then sprang the information on the council a few days before a deadline from the streetcar manufacturer to get it built in time for the then-intended launch date. The council was forced to OK the $3.6 million purchase even though there was no funding to pay for it and it would add to the amount of money the city would need to borrow to complete the streetcar project.

A week after that, the council found out that city staff had quietly funneled about $1 million of leftover grant money into the restoration of the Steinfeld warehouse even though it had specifically said when it sold the warehouse to an arts organization for $1 that it didn’t want city money used for the rehab project.

After all of this, council and staff agreed to find ways to improve communications and, prompted mostly by the Cunningham affair, directed the city attorney to draft a code of conduct for council members. Rankin told the council at a December retreat that he was still working on the code but that he had expanded it to encompass a set of working rules governing not only council behavior, but city staff as well.

At that retreat, Councilwoman Karin Uhlich said as delicately as she could that she has a hard time trusting city staff, but that relations seemed to be improving under Miranda.

But staff will tell you that trust goes both ways and miscommunication is not a one-way street. City managers have bemoaned for years the influence and power of council members’ chief aides. The aides call staff and harangue them about their bosses’ pet projects, or to try to get their wards bumped up on the street repair list and so on. Some aides are respected among the staff but some are loathed for their forceful and prickly natures.

Part of the rules Rankin is drafting will spell out how council members and their staffs are supposed to talk to city staff and provide some kind of council-sanctioned penalty for abuse. How the council will police itself is a mystery. Rankin said at the retreat he’ll have the draft code ready for review “this summer.”

One of the things Rothschild wanted to do after his election was improve the city’s and the council’s reputation. One of the ways to do that was to eliminate the constant drumbeat of scandal beleaguering the town the past few years and to put an end to council and staff finger pointing and misunderstandings.

But new behavior code or no, the onus is on Miranda. If he doesn’t want to be the next in a long line of fired or forced-to-resign city managers (there have been 11 city managers, including interims, since 1990) he has to make sure his staff isn’t responsible for making the council look foolish and ignorant like they did last week.

In 2007, a span of the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145.

The bridge collapse was an example of what happens when tax-averse Americans let critical transportation infrastructure decay for want of a few extra bucks a year per person in gas taxes.

Just a few months after the collapse, the Minnesota Legislature passed a 5.5-cent increase to the state’s 22.5 cents per gallon gas tax. But despite widespread support, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who had eyes on the Presidency in 2008, vetoed it. The Legislature overrode the veto.

Is that what it takes these days – people have to die – to get a critical tax increase for infrastructure that’s vital to the economy and public safety?

Perhaps not. Since 2008, nine states have had the good sense to raise their gas taxes to improve their roads; the latest being Maryland, which raised its tax up to 20 cents a gallon last month. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that another 17 states are either in the process of passing gas tax increases or considering it.

Alas, Arizona isn’t one of them.

In fact, Arizona’s legislative leaders are so backwards, they’re siphoning off some gas tax revenue to augment the funding of the Department of Public Safety rather than giving it to cities and counties to pay for roads maintenance like they’re supposed to.

The recent recession hammered government budgets and every local government made difficult funding choices, including sacrificing some annual roads maintenance to balance the books. The result is a deferred maintenance deficit for the Tucson region exceeding $1 billion.

The roads stink, to put it politely.

The Republican-led Legislature’s resistance (or hatred, perhaps) to tax increases of any kind is forcing local governments to raise their taxes to pay for roads.

Except state law bars counties and cities from raising their own gas taxes, so they’re taxing property instead.

Tucson voters just OK’d (albeit barely) an increase in property taxes to raise $100 million over five years to get started fixing the city’s roads. What happens after five years and how to pay for the remaining $500 million to $800 million-city roads maintenance deficit is still up in the air.

Last week, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry released his proposed budget for next fiscal year (which starts June 1) and it includes an increase to the primary property tax rate. Huckelberry wants to use $5 million of the increase for roads.

That’s literally a drop in the county’s crumbing roads bucket, which is currently estimated to cost about $270 million to fix. And Huckelberry knows it, but he said doing a little is still better than doing nothing.

But taxing property is an awful way to pay for roads maintenance, mainly because it’s horribly inefficient and inequitable.

Unincorporated county residents drive on city roads and contribute to their wear and tear yet they aren’t paying for any of the city repairs. But city drivers have to pay for part of unincorporated county road repairs through the county-wide property tax.

What’s worse, tourists and truckers who don’t live here are getting off scot-free.

The county and city are still getting a share of the state gas tax but it’s just barely enough to pay for maintenance of good roads to keep them from becoming bad roads. Any further reduction by the Legislature will simply add to the roads maintenance deficit.

The only solution is for everyone who drives on Arizona’s roads to pay for their upkeep and improvement through a reasonable gas tax. Yet Arizona hasn’t raised its gas tax, currently 19 cents a gallon, in 22 years. In that time, Arizona’s population has increased by 2.5 million. If the state gas tax had been indexed for inflation, it would be about 32 cents a gallon.

That means state residents are only getting about two-thirds of the purchasing power for their tax that they were in 1991.

An efficient and well-maintained road infrastructure is critical to the vitality of our economy. To let it decay and crumble because of a foolish anti-tax obsession is not only economically debilitating, it’s also dangerous.

Will it take a bridge collapse and a bunch of dead motorists to convince our legislators, and many of the Arizonans who voted for them, that not all taxes are evil and that some are even good for the economy?

Raise the state gas tax. Fix the roads.