Sadly, because it’s one of the smartest ideas to come around in a while, a referendum on a 1 percent sales tax to support cultural venues won’t take place this November and the various organizations enhancing Central Iowa’s quality of life will have to wait a little longer to get a needed cash infusion.

Even so, the Greater Des Moines Partnership was wise to delay a vote on its Project Destiny sales tax initiative until some time in 2007. Rushing to the polls likely would have been disastrous as the ripples of the public scandals, like the one surrounding the high executive salaries paid at the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium, spread ever wider.

The task for promoters of the tax is manyfold. They will not only have to flesh out specifics of how the estimated $80 million generated by the tax will be distributed and sell the proposal on its merits to voters in Polk, Dallas and Warren counties; they’ll also have to position government officials as responsible custodians of that money.

That’s some seriously heavy lifting in a climate where the more polarized the debate and scandalous the situation, the greater its amplification. The lack of oversight that allowed CIETC executive salaries to skyrocket has captured the public’s outrage in a way that efforts to put checks and balances in place never will. Sadly, we’re more interested in the ravages of the illness than in the efficacy of the cure.

As we’ve pointed out before in this space, restoring public trust is monumentally difficult. For that to happen, public officials untouched by the scandal must move boldly and spontaneously to separate themselves from those who were. In the case of the Des Moines City Council, members Archie Brooks and Tom Vlassis have admitted culpability. Mayor Frank Cownie and the rest of the council may be prohibited by Iowa law from kicking them off the council, but there’s nothing that stops them from turning up the pressure on the two to step down.

The CIETC scandal has already held up a major initiative that would move Central Iowa forward in countless ways. What else must be sacrificed?