Dear Constituents—

I want you to know what I’m up to. You deserve an explanation of the decisions I make and the votes I cast as I do my best to represent you. This is a simple blog, just a quick, periodic record of significant legislative activity, the role I play, my decision making process, and the things I consider as I endeavor to serve your interests as my constituents.

The 2011 general session ended in early March. Since then we have had three special sessions, a veto override session in early May, and the usual six interim days. The Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee, of which I'm a member, has also met twice during the offseason. The second special session was blended with our July interim meetings. In our third special session we adopted redistricting plans. See the entries below. No special sessions happened for GRAMA revisions or for any immigration changes. Both may come up in the 2012 general session.

A word or two on our redistricting effort. The newly adopted map for the district I represent seem reasonable. Since Bountiful hasn't grown as fast as surrounding areas, our district needed to expand geographically.  On the new map, the north boundaries of district 19 stay virtually the same, but the south border moves down down to 3100 South/Indian Springs/Canyon Creek and on up North Canyon.  And we lose one Woods Cross precinct on the west. The borders no longer follow precinct boundaries exactly, so it's difficult to give you an exact idea, but the new map is now available online. I look forward to getting to know more than 7,000 new constituents. Here's a link to the map that was adopted late in the day, October 4th: House Map. On October 17th, we adopted the new Congressional map as described in the entry for that date below. Here's a link for that map as well: Congressional Map.

As always, if you have comments, please email me at jimnielson@utah.gov.

February 21, 2012—Day 29

House Transportation Standing Committee

Ist Sub. H.B. 327, Operation of Bicycles on Highways

This bill could be in trouble. After a lot of testimony for and against, Rep. Kiser proposed a substitute bill that gutted what the sponsor was trying to do. Then another member of the committee moved that we instead hold the bill and move to the next item on the agenda. That motion carried.

Before we got that far, I spoke against the substitute. To me it is about reducing the burden of government and common sense, and as you can imagine (if you know the principles I stand for), I’m there. I have a minor tweak I’d like to see, but it’s not a make-or-break issue. I shared my sentiments with the sponsor afterwards. We’ll see how this goes on the third go-round, which is now scheduled for Thursday.

Floor Time

We had a spectacular flag ceremony (complete with fife, drum, and muskets) in belated celebration of President’s Day this morning. It included a spectacular rendition of our National Anthem and a choral reading (from memory) of the Declaration of Independence by some precocious students from Paradigm High School. What a country!

We also heard from Congressman Jim Matheson later in our morning session. So Rob Bishop is the only Congressman that has not yet addressed the body this session.

H.B. 108, Internet Gambling

This bill generated quite a bit of debate but ultimately passed comfortably. I was happy to support it in order to make it absolutely clear that we will not allow gambling of any kind in Utah.

I don’t know how many of my colleagues noticed the irony, but just after the vote on gambling was concluded, one of my colleagues introduced a new superintendent of schools in one of the districts in Salt Lake County. He noted that she had previously been an administrator in Las Vegas.

1st Sub. H.B. 49, Firearms Revisions

Before we voted on this bill, Rep. Sandstrom passed an amendment that improved it considerably. It established clearly a reasonable person standard for evaluating whether “the firearm or other dangerous weapon was carried or possessed unlawfully or with criminal intent” and it also made it clear that nothing in this legislation would “prohibit a law enforcement officer from questioning an individual.”

I had had conversations with Bountiful’s Chief of Police about this bill. I felt the proposed amendment addressed his concerns quire well. I also asked the sponsor specifically during the floor debate what, if anything, this bill would require police officers to do differently from current practice. His statement was that officers would still be able to ask someone questions and assess whether they are a threat just as they can currently.

Some people suggested this was not a gun rights bill but rather that it was a disorderly conduct bill. Yes and no. Fundamentally, it is about reaffirming 2nd Amendment rights. Since it appeared to me that the concerns raised by our local police chief were adequately addressed through Rep. Sandstrom’s amendment, I made the decision to vote in favor of the bill. It passed 50 to 21.

3rd Sub. H.B. 245, Amendment to Definition of Smoking in Utah Indoor Clean Air Act

If you feel society should regulate smoking, even in private establishments where people can choose to frequent or not, then you might part ways with me on this one. I think this is an issue of private property rights. I don’t believe it is the proper role of government to regulate what people do in a private club or bar.

We had two attempts to substitute—each from different directions (one more restrictive, one less so). Both failed. After all that, I voted against the bill, but it passed 42 to 31. Interestingly, both parties were split fairly evenly on both sides of the vote.

H.B. 119, Study On Signing Petitions Online

The function of this bill is clear from the title. I favor making use of technology to allow people to be more involved in the political process and to improve accuracy in validating the signatures affixed to petitions. So I voted in favor of this bill. I didn’t have that much company, though. The bill failed on a vote of 32 for, 38 against.

February 17, 2012—Day 26

Today I received a copy of a letter on my desk from the State Superintendent of Schools. The letter made the case that the actions of our Public Education Appropriations Committee this past Wednesday were in violation of the open meetings law because many of the things we deliberated on were not noted specifically on the agenda. It called on legislative leadership to discard all of the the recommendations and input of our committee as they make decisions on final appropriations.

That would be the nuclear option.

We've already seen press reports on how that meeting was conducted. Sounds as if we will be hearing even more. This is the second meeting I've been in this session that has resulted in this type of complaint. If anything, I guess I'm guilty of assuming that the folks that are many terms my senior know what they are doing. I guess a healthy dose of skepticism about that notion is in order.

As in all walks of life, there is always a lesson to be learned.

House Revenue and Taxation Standing Committee

H.B. 385, Sales and Use Tax - Seller Notice Requirements

Yesterday I was lobbied vigorously by someone representing Wal-Mart. She wanted me to support this bill. Of course the folks at Overstock.com testified strongly against the bill this morning. They were not affected by it directly, but they opposed the bill on principle.

Here’s the deal: Remember use tax? There is a line on our state income tax form that asks us to calculate how much tax we owe on things we purchased online or by mail order (for which no sales tax was charged when we made the purchase) and remit what we would have paid in sales tax if we had purchased these items at a store here in Utah. This is called use tax. The state has never done anything to collect this tax. And it hasn’t done any kind of outreach to educate citizens about our responsibilities here. Total use tax receipts in recent years have been well below $1 million.

Now this bill would require anyone from outside the state selling products to Utah taxpayers to post a notice saying that use tax on the purchase may be due. This effort to educate people about the requirement should increase compliance, one would think. The problem is, our own attorneys believe the bill will likely lead to a court challenge. How can we make independent commercial entities from around the world subject to Utah law? And of course as Overstock.com pointed out, as more states put such notice requirements together, each slightly different, it will be an administrative burden that will constitute a barrier to entry for small start-ups if they want to pursue e-commerce in Utah. These are legitimate concerns in my view

But I focused on a different issue. To me it’s a tax increase. As I’ve said, we’ve never tried to collect this tax. If we start now, we’ll soon be raising more total revenue through our aggregate sales and use taxes. We will be broadening the tax base. In the hearing, I referred to it as a stealth tax increase. Given where we are right now economically, I would not begin to consider broadening the base unless we couple it with a reduction in tax rates so the overall amount of revenue stays the same. So I voted against sending it to the floor.

For the second time in committee, a motion to move this bill to the floor failed. This time convincingly: 5 in favor to 10 against.

H.B. 174, Sales and Use Tax Allocations for Water Resources Construction Fund

Earmarking a portion of future sales tax growth to go into a fund that provides and secures loans for water projects? No. I am opposed to subsidizing water projects through tax dollars. To me the best water policy is to build the full cost of water into water rates. When ratepayers pay the full cost in their water bills, they will experience the true cost of the resource they are using, and they will make decisions about how they use it accordingly. The free market is a strong thing and ought to have a chance to work here. (It was nice to hear environmental activists expressing their allegiance to the free market in committee testimony. Can I hold them to that?)

I voted to move this to the floor because the debate needs to continue. I will vote against it there, and I said as much before I voted.

H.B. 41, Property Taxation of Business Personal Property

In its final form, this bill simply increases the tax exemption for Business Personal Property from $3,500 to $15,000. As a business owner, I welcome that. Paying taxes every year on each shredder, computer, waste-paper basket, and so on, is onerous. I don’t know how much paperwork or auditing this bill will actually save, if enacted. I hope county auditors figure out a way to reduce that burden accordingly.

I supported the bill and we passed it out favorably by a large margin.

Floor Time

H.B. 115, Peer Assistance and Review Pilot Program

If this bill works as I believe it might, it could lead the way toward fundamental changes in the way we help teachers improve and how we evaluate their performance. Its sponsor is a thoughtful Democrat. It attracted a large number of Republican votes. It might not have had a chance if a Republican had brought it forward. I will watch the progress of this bill through the session with interest. If it becomes law, I look forward to seeing how it is implemented.

I was pleased to support this pilot program. The bill passed 51 to 18.

1st Sub. H.B. 81, City or Town Option Sales and Use Tax Amendments

I wrote about this when we saw it in committee January 30th. I didn’t like it then. Instead of extending the extra taxing authority for Riverdale and South Salt Lake forever, the substitute bill extends it to 2030. That sunset is way too far in the future for me to accept. The bill was run by the Republican Majority Leader. It passed comfortably in spite of just a few of us (13 to be precise) that voted no.

February 16, 2012—Day 25

House Transportation Standing Committee

H.B. 87, Billboard Revisions

This bill sets standards of fairness cities must meet in the way they treat outdoor advertisers. I am a consistent supporter of local control. When, however, cities and counties treat legitimate businesses in ways that are patently unfair, I believe the state has a duty to step in and lay out reasonable ground rules. So I supported this bill.

H.B. 327, Operation of Bicycles on Highways

This bill cuts bicyclists some slack and gives them a more equal footing with motorists in terms of how they use the roads. It’s a bicycle-friendly set of clarifications and accommodations I found it easy to support. One simple for-instance: current law doesn’t allow a vehicle to cross a double yellow line in order to give a bicycle sufficient room when passing. This bill allows vehicles to cross the double line, leaving the cyclist plenty of room, if they can do so safely. (If not, they need to wait behind the bicycle until they can pass safely.)

Floor Time

H.B. 290, Divorce Orientation Class

This bill went down hard. I felt I had the facts to rebut the arguments that would come in opposition, but I didn’t have the stories ready to counter the personal, emotional experience brought to bear in opposition by one of my colleagues. As I’ve observed before, facts don’t matter; emotions carry the day. The bill was defeated with only 14 in favor and 56 opposed.

The most important aspect of this bill—reinstating Utah’s 90-day waiting period—is the sole focus of another bill by Rep. Val Peterson we’ll be considering in a few days. The opponents of this family-centered reform have already shown their hand. When Rep. Peterson’s bill comes up, I will be ready.

H.J.R. 6, Joint Resolution on Severance Tax

I’m going to make another run at reforming the way we use our severance taxes. We need to be investing for the future. This constitutional amendment was put on the reading calendar in late January along with its companion bill H.B. 210 (defeated 36 to 39 on February 6th). I circled it February 3rd, and it’s been there ever since. Today I substituted a compromise bill and then circled H.J.R. 6 again. I want people to have the long weekend to study the proposed compromise. And I’m still counting votes.

H.B. 90, Public Meetings During Party Caucuses

This bill requires cities and school districts not to schedule meetings on the night of party caucuses. The argument on the floor was whether it was appropriate for the government to mandate such a thing with respect to political parties, which are ostensibly private organizations. To me it’s a matter of practicality. Does the government have an extraordinary interest in ensuring that public activities do not interfere with these pivotal events staged by our political parties? I say yes. I voted in favor of this bill, along with 37 others. Thirty-four voted no.

H.B. 116, Probate Code Amendments

Lowry Snow, the new Representative from Washington County that replaced Dave Clark, ran this uncontroversial legislation that passed without opposition. Not having been a member of the body during our late-night debates on immigration last year, he might not have recognized the full significance the following comment made during floor discussion to this bill:

Bill Wright (sponsor of last year’s H.B. 116, the controversial and comprehensive immigration/guest worker bill): “If I vote against this, I’m just doing it so I can say I voted against H.B. 116.”

(Bill pushed his NO button initially but changed it to a YES vote just before voting was complete.)

February 15, 2012—Day 24

A little trivia I learned in a recent discussion on the house floor: There is no chemical test to make sure the illegal synthetic drug, spice, has been cooked up properly. The only way to test it is by trying it out to see if it makes you high.

Think about it. One of the reasons this homespun drug is so dangerous is this: Continuous, rigorous, and consistent quality control is simply not possible. The result of a bad mix can be fatal, but if someone is testing the brew, he may have developed far more tolerance to the toxins than a new user. Plus, he’s likely too stoned to notice anything.

(Of course there’s no evidence that spice producers even care about quality control, but even if they did, it would be impossible to achieve.)

House Education Standing Committee

I was on the agenda to present H. B. 135, Focus on Front-line Teachers Program, which is my proposal for providing school districts financial incentives for putting more of their resources into classroom teachers (and less into administration). Rep. John Dougall had a very significant and controversial bill up before me, and he ended up taking the whole meeting. I’ll be up first at the next committee meeting.

Floor Time

1st Sub. S.B. 21, Department of Environmental Quality Boards Revisions

I received several emails encouraging me to oppose this bill and a couple afterwards asking why I had voted in favor. Here’s what I told them:

“I did my best to vote on principle. I appreciate the opportunity to explain.

“As I see it, things are [often] not exactly as they seem or as they are portrayed.

“First let me note that the bill has changed since it was first introduced. My sense is that some of the comments I received were based on the initial version of the bill not on the legislation on which we ultimately voted on the floor of the House.

“The core issue for me is this: I have greater trust in decisions being made by our elected officials and their immediate appointees than I do in independent boards or commissions. Which is more likely to be responsive and accountable to the public? I believe it is the one that will have to face voters periodically, either on a direct or indirect basis.

“I would ask you to consider it this way: which group is likely to be more accountable to the public (voters), those that are elected and their immediate appointees, or an unelected group of individuals? What I'm saying is that so-called independent boards tend not to be independent at all. To put it another way, if such boards take action that the public considers to be contrary to the public good, how do we vote them out of office?

“This bill focuses responsibility for DEQ policies more squarely on the shoulders of the Governor's cabinet member that heads DEQ than it was previously. I reject the notion that this bill weakens the ability of these boards to protect the interests of the public. On the contrary, I think it strengthens it. Note also that the Executive Director is a non-voting member of these boards. She may only vote to break a tie. This change was made in response to some of the early criticism of the bill. It had been incorporated by the time the bill made it to the House floor.”

Some of you may feel that I am going against the grain with this position. Based on the way this bill has been portrayed publicly, that may be so. But I always vote based on my best understanding of the legislation actually before us, comments received from all interested parties in advance of the vote and on input I get during debates and committee hearings, and on my understanding of the issue that emerges.

I do my best not to base my vote solely on the way things are portrayed publicly. Yes, I listen to public input, just as I listen to everything else. And as with all of the feedback I’ve mentioned above, I listen critically in order to sift through the bias of special interests and the spin that often gets added by well-intentioned participants in the public process. Do I always get it right? I’m sure I don’t. But by listening to as many points of view as possible, it’s possible, by a sort of triangulation, to get a pretty good fix on what’s really going on with the issue. And from there, I do my best to apply the principles I stand for.

H.B. 82, Architect's Licensing Revisions

This was one of my bills. It makes a minor change to the statute the governs licensing for my profession. The change will enable the State to join a nationwide effort to standardize continuing education requirement for architects. Developing a consistent requirement from state to state will make it easier for design professionals to maintain licenses in multiple states, thus reducing barriers for Utah architects if we want to practice regionally or nationally.

I have previously discussed this bill in my post for the day I presented it to the House Political Subdivisions Standing Committee (January 30). Today it passed the full House 66 to 1. Our Senator, Todd Weiler, has agreed to be the Senate sponsor.

H.B. 68, Powersport Vehicle Franchise Act Amendments

In that same post for January 30th, I explained my reasons for opposing this bill in committee. I voted against it on the floor as well, but it passed 40 to 30. I got quite a talking to from a couple of lobbyists both before and afterwards, but I still can’t find a proper role for government in this bill.

H.B. 233, Political Party Registration Amendments

I wrote about this bill on Groundhog Day when I presented it to the House Government Operations Standing Committee. It’s a matter of basic fairness. I presented it. There was no debate. It passed 66 to 4. Senator Jerry Stevenson has agreed to carry the bill for me as Senate sponsor.

H.B. 101, Tax Credits for Employing a Homeless Person

See another part of my Groundhog-Day post for the reasons I supported this bill. This was one of the rare occasions when Rep. Brian King (D-Salt Lake) and I voted on the same side of an issue. The bill passed 42 to 28.

H.B. 305, Construction Code Revisions

I made some structural engineers angry when I voted for this bill. The bill says that when a building owner is doing a complete reroof or similar repairs without affecting the structure of a building, local building officials cannot force them to make structural upgrades to the building at the same time. Without this relief from current law, people simply decide not to put on a new roof, and the building deteriorates.

During the floor debate, I sensed momentum building against the bill. So I got up and spoke in favor. I was later blasted for not caring about safety. I do care about safety. But I do not concur with the notion that we cannot compromise on safety. Saying we cannot compromise on safety means that there is no expense that would be too great, even if it only brought us a marginal increase in safety. I’ve heard people say we cannot compromise on our children’s education. Others say we cannot compromise on caring for the poor. Stack up enough urgent public concerns regarding which we cannot compromise, and we will have governments mandates that cost many times what we can afford.

(Plus there is this pesky concept in the U. S. Constitution about ex post facto laws. The way I see it, requiring an old building to comply with a new code [unless you are totally repurposing the building or making major structural changes] is a variety of ex post facto law.)

The bill ultimately passed the House by a vote of 48 to 23.

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

This meeting began at 5:00 p.m. and ended at 9:00 p.m. It was the last meeting of this committee and the very first time we had serious policy discussions and committee votes. At the end of the meeting, some committee members expressed serious reservations about the process. Much of what we were asked to consider we seemed to be seeing for the first time.

When this marathon meeting was over, the pervasive sense was that our deliberations were not going to have much of an impact on what was ultimately appropriated. It felt as if the committee chairs and staff had come to an agreement, and this final meeting was an effort to validate that. And of course whatever goes forward from the committee may or may not have much to do with what Executive Appropriations ultimately cobbles together for the overall budget. It will be informative to see how the rest of the process unfolds. I will be watching closely.

February 14, 2012—Day 23

Toward Earning a Living and Serving in the Legislature at the Same Time

I had a commitment to my business partners to attend a couple of meetings out of town, so unfortunately, I could not also be present on Capitol Hill today. This is the only time that will happen this session. Fortunately, I ended up with no committee meetings. My morning slot was open because it was the other cluster of appropriations subcommittee meetings’ turn. And both of my afternoon committee meetings were canceled. So all I missed was two hours of floor time.

In an effort to represent you on the floor today, anyway, I did a few things:

• I spoke first on a bill that we started debating at the end of floor time Monday so that my objections were on the record.
• I had concerns about another bill that was sure to come up today (and did), so I reviewed it with my good friends and fellow freshman legislators on either side of me.  One of them agreed to watch it closely.  It turns out that the bill (HB 75) was amended on the floor and improved somewhat.  I would likely still have voted against it, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered; it massed easily.  At least it wasn’t quite as bad in its final incarnation.
• In the event that any of my bills found their way to the top of the calendar, I asked the Majority Leader to circle them (or put them on hold).  One did come up, as I thought it would, so I should be able to uncircle it and (I hope) get it passed toward the beginning of floor time tomorrow.
• And I let the appropriate parties know I would have to be absent so that I would be noted as excused.

I hope you have had a wonderful Valentine’s Day.  As I write this, I am in an airplane heading home.  I look forward to being with loved ones for a small portion of this day. I also look forward to a busy and productive day representing you on Capitol Hill tomorrow.

(Oh, and as of today, we're more than halfway through our 45-day session!)

February 13, 2012—Day 22

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

One more quick review of the overall public education budget and a great deal of discussion of how to prioritize the millions and millions of dollars of funding requests we’ve received.  Rep. Ken Sumsion and I had met with the fiscal analyst for pubic education last Friday morning and worked on a proposal to consolidate line items into a simpler, more flexible funding formula.  We proposed to continue what we started last year and combine several additional program items into the Weighted Pupil Unit formula.  We also proposed giving the State School Board a sort of block grant and tasking them with making funding determinations for a number of initiatives for which the legislature has earmarked one-time money in the past.

Floor Time

H.B. 68, Powersport Vehicle Franchise Act Amendments

This bill adds the following provision to Utah’s franchise statute: When a franchisee (local dealer) loses or discontinues a franchise agreement, the franchisor must buy back the dealer’s inventory at cost, rather than leaving the dealer with a bunch of unsold product. (Since the former franchisee would no longer be an authorized dealer in this situation, the unsold inventory would no longer be backed by the manufacturer and would not carry an original purchase warrantee. It would thus be difficult to sell for any price, and it would make it impossible for the dealer to recoup even his wholesale costs for remaining inventory,)

I get that. But I have to ask why the state must insert itself into private contracts. We have a situation where private dealers choose to sign very one-sided contracts in order to gain a franchise. I’ve heard many people argue that without statutory provisions such as this national powersport vehicle manufacturers engage in anti-competitive behaviors. The logic is that we must use the state’s anti-trust tools to ensure they do not drive independent dealers out of business. 

In my business, we’re asked to sign one-sided contracts all the time. We always try to modify them. Occasionally we walk away. When we choose to sign a bid contract, we do so with our eyes wide open, and we do our best to work within its confines.

Anyway, I have fundamental reservations about continuing to insert the state into contracts in this manner. This bill came up near the end of floor time (after several proclamations and personal privileges). After the sponsor introduced it, I spoke against it. With time running short, the sponsor circled the bill for consideration another day.

House Government Operations Standing Committee

H.B. 219, Use of Public Buildings

I came back to the committee once again, having responded in a meaningful way in the latest version of this bill to every suggestion made by the League of Cities and Towns (ULCT) the last time this bill was before the committee.

The League still spoke out against the bill. I appealed to common sense. Can’t we find a way to let political parties save money and provide their own cleaning services when they use public facilities? 

Apparently not. The bill only got three votes and didn’t make it out of committee. I won’t try a third time, because it appears no change other than deep sixing the bill will satisfy the ULCT.

Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice Standing Committee

H. B. 277, Graffiti Paraphernalia

This one sailed through the committee unanimously.  I said the same thing this time that I did on the floor of the House:  This is one graffiti bill that should not lead to anyplace getting hacked.  I even got a chuckle from Senator Ben McAdams, whose day job is working for Salt Lake City (where the police department’s computers were hacked, apparently in response to a different graffiti bill). 

Our own senator Todd Weiler, the newest member of that august chamber, made the motion to pass my bill out favorably.

February 10, 2012—Day 19

This morning Rep. Sumsion and I got together with Ben Leishman, the fiscal analyst for our Public Education appropriations subcommittee, to begin developing a proposal for public education funding that builds on what we started last year and continues the move toward local control and less micromanagement of the State and local school boards by the legislature.

The goal: fewer line item earmarks and more flexibility for the school board to exercise its constitutional mandate to provide “general control and supervision” of our public schools. Along with that, we hope to encourage all of the groups that come parading to the legislature each year in search of earmark funding to instead approach the school board, who will have both the resources and the discretion to make those determinations (if we give these things to them, which several of us believe we should).

One interest group or vendor after another comes to us and says if the legislature doesn’t fund their initiative through a dedicated line item, something of critical importance to our children simply won’t happen. Again, I turn to the constitution, which says we (the legislature) are responsible for the “establishment and maintenance” of the school system. We make sure it is in operation. We fund it. And we do that on an ongoing basis. As noted above, the State School Board has responsibility for “general control and supervision.” In my view, decisions about specific programs to fund fall under the school board’s purview. If we let that legislative body do its job, allow it the resources to do so, and hold the board accountable as voters, I believe we’ll be better off.

We hope to be able to present a proposal to our appropriations subcommittee Monday morning.

Floor Time

H.B. 65, College and Career Counseling for High School Students

This bill sounds like a good idea.  How can you argue with its basic premise? But the problem is that it would create a line item earmark for a special program most school districts are already doing and all ought to be doing. It’s another case of the legislature playing school board. I am a firm believer in local control unless local elected bodies are taking actions that are blatantly improper. Our job is to provide the funding, not dictate exactly how the school board is to supervise and control the educational process. Rep. Butterfield spoke out eloquently along these lines in the floor debate, and enough of us agreed to defeat this bill by a vote of 42 against to 31 in favor.

February 9, 2012—Day 18

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

We continued to slog our way through the public education budget, receiving testimony from the Utah State Office of Education and from other interested parties.  We heard more than a dozen different requests for appropriations (increases or new programs).  I had a chance to present my Focus on Front-Line Teachers program (1st Substitute H. B. 135), which is similar to the bill I ran last year (which passed the House but died in the Senate three from the top of the Third Reading Calendar at midnight on the last day of the session).  This time it has funding attached.  I had maybe 90 seconds to present.

Floor Time

2nd Sub. S.B. 19, Voter Information Pamphlets

This bill, which I’ve blogged about previously, finally came together in a form the House sponsor was able to support. In fact, one of the Representatives asked the sponsor during floor debate whether he would now support it enthusiastically. And he did. With the changes, we have at least one foot firmly planted in the 21st century.

H.B. 277, Graffiti Paraphernalia

This is one of my bills. It updates the definition of graffiti to include the use of etching agents that use chemical action to create permanent damage on a surface. It’s a fairly new thing in some areas, and the bill was supported by law enforcement and juvenile justice organizations in order to get out in front of the issue before it becomes a problem.

I told the body that this graffiti bill would not likely create controversy, nor would it be likely to result in anyplace getting hacked. And I had previously offered Senator Mayne the chance to be the Senate sponsor so she can do a graffiti bill (since her much more controversial one didn’t make it).

The bill passed 68 to 0.

H.B. 266, Driver Education Amendments

This bill makes it a lot easier for someone 19 years old or older to get a driver license. We just take their word for it that they have had 40 hours of practice (including 10 at night), and we don’t require any waiting period between when they get their learner’s permit and when they can take the driving test. I thought the bill made it too easy. Representative Val Peterson made a motion to amend. His amendment added a 3-month waiting period. I had an amendment ready that set the bar higher yet (including a six month waiting period).

From the events that followed, I learned the following: When Val got the microphone first, I should have held off. People rejected my amendment as being too restrictive. Some of the feelings regarding my amendment got transferred to his, and his amendment failed also. So the sponsor should tell me thank you, because I beleive I contributed inadvertently to getting the bill through with no amendments. I would say if driving is something society has an interest in licensing, then the bill as passed is too lax. All but one other member of the body didn’t see it that way.

Coming right after getting a bill passed unanimously, this effort to amend was clearly not one of my finer moments on the floor. I do my best to learn from experiences like this.

House Revenue and Taxation Standing Committee

H.B. 298, Motor Vehicle Safety Inspection Amendments

This bill, by Representative Dougall, started as an effort to eliminate safety inspections entirely but ended up as a measure to reduce the frequency of inspections required. After purchase of a new car, it would need to be inspected after four years, eight years, ten years, then every year thereafter. The Department of Public Safety and UDOT were part of the negotiations and signed on somewhat reluctantly.

The reason for the proposal is that 33 states no longer require safety inspection–including all of our neighboring states. And no data show that Utah highways are safer because of our inspection programs.

A long list of people testified against the measure. Only two (including a gentleman representing the Sutherland Group) testified in favor. A Jiffy Lube owner testified to the job losses it would cause. He talked about the problems such a sudden change would make to their business model, which includes assumptions about market conditions and demand, upon which equipment purchases and fairly long-term leases are based.

In consideration of this fact, I asked this small-business man whether delaying the effective date by a year would be beneficial for their business planning. He said it would. When it became time, I was successful in adding an amendment to the bill extending the effective date by a year to July 1, 2013.

And the bill passed quite handily.

H.B. 200, Individual Income Tax Credit for Use Tax Liability

I was up next, and I wasn’t able to marshal one bit of support for this bill.  The idea was to offer some relief ($50 max) to taxpayers who, when completing income tax forms, are faced with a requirement that we declare the amount of use tax (tax on purchases from out of state on which no sales tax was paid) we owe.  In order to do so accurately, we must keep careful records. Since the information is self-reported, and since the state has never engaged in any audits or enforcement of use tax on personal income tax returns, we rely on the honesty of taxpayers to declare and pay the full amount of use tax owed.

So the consequence of keeping careful records and being honest is (as one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle put it) that we have the privilege of paying more taxes. To me that’s a pretty perverse incentive.  It seemed like a perverse incentive to the constituent that wrote me a letter complaining about the position it put him in. In the end, beyond assuaging the conscience of the vast majority of taxpayers that choose not to report and pay their use tax, this was a tax cut amounting to about half a million dollars overall. A tax cut for the honest.

My colleagues were not in the mood to cut taxes, even just a little. Other than my own vote, I didn’t get a single yea. Rep. Dougall was outside doing a media interview. I would have gotten his vote. (He confirmed that afterwards.) Maybe he would have been able to help sway the debate. Things can be unpredictable that way.

So that bill is dead for now.  Maybe some other year.

February 8, 2012—Day 17

Conservative Caucus

H.B. 140, Vehicle Checkpoint Amendments

My good friend David Butterfield wants to get rid of police checkpoints except in cases of fugitives, Amber alerts, and such. Dragnets in search of DUIs, expired vehicle registrations, and so forth, would no longer be allowed. Not too long ago a DUI picked up at a checkpoint was thrown out on constitutional grounds. There is that pesky unreasonable search and seizure provision in Amendment 4. And according to Rep. Butterfield, there is no evidence of lower DUI rates, for example, in jurisdictions that use roadblocks as compared to those that don’t.

David presented the idea during our Conservative Caucus meeting, looking for support. He had a rough time with it, apparently, in committee yesterday.

Article V Convention?

Representative Daw presented the bill he’s going to bring forward calling for an Article V Convention to amend the constitution. The purpose of the convention as set forth in his bill would be to propose the Federal Debt Limit Amendment, which would require the Federal government to get authorization from the states in order to increase the Federal Debt Limit. 

A convention to consider an amendment to the constitution is of huge concern to many thoughtful conservatives. Other conservatives feel we’ve run out of options, and it may be worth consideration. On the one hand I trust the legislatures of the 50 states more than the Congress, which potentially sits in Article V convention every day. On the other hand, the unknowns of how a convention would be structured, who the delegates would be, and what ground rules would emerge, are sobering. 

What are your thoughts on this subject?

Floor Time

Our bills were generally routine and uncontroversial during floor time today. We began with items on the Consent Calendar (ones that passed their committee unanimously and then were deemed by a second unanimous committee vote uncontroversial enough for expedited passage) and then went through most of the items on the Senate 3rd Reading Calendar. Most bills that have already been vetted by a Senate Committee, by two sets of votes in the Senate (they have to do everything twice!), and by a subsequent House Committee usually get pretty strong support.

"Leave of the Body to Open a Bill FIle"

The fascinating floor exchange of the day came after several Representatives asked leave of the body to open a bill file (since the deadline without saying “pretty please” had passed last week) on this subject or that. After several such request had been approved, Rep. Sandstrom asked for permission to open a bill file on the subject of E-Verify requirements for businesses. This request generated a lot of debate.  It became more of debate on the merits of the bill Rep. Sandstrom reluctantly outlined for the body than on the motion to allow a file to be opened.

The crazy part of this is that Rep. Sandstrom had a bill file open last week but then abandoned it. The scuttlebutt is that he was pressured to abandon it. "By whom?" you may ask. I have the same question, but I don't know the answer. Over the weekend, I understand Rep. Sandstrom had second thoughts about walking away from the issue this session; hence today’s request. The idea behind his bill seems innocent enough on the surface: change the penalties from a monetary fine to action against the business license of the company that violates the E-Verify law we currently have on the books. This change is necessary, according to Rep. Sandstrom, in order to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

But the people that got up to speak (from both sides of the aisle) would have none of that. A lot of Representatives and a lot of members of the public don’t want anything involving immigration to come up this session if they can avoid it. As we saw last year, debates on the subject generate mostly heat and very little light. The Representative’s request failed on a voice vote. Rep. Sandstrom called for division (a recorded, tabulated vote). The request still failed, 36 to 37. I voted in favor (on the losing side), because it makes sense to me to fix something in order to bring it into compliance with a Supreme Court ruling. But I understand the reluctance of the majority to bring it up at all.

February 7, 2012—Day 16

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

This morning we heard from art and science organizations that receive a direct legislative earmark to help fund their public school outreach programs.  Between them, these programs are asking for $1,000,000 in additional funding, or about a 20% increase.

Two concerns:

1. Why is the Legislature playing school board and dictating where this money is spent?  To me, making decisions about which specific programs to fund seems like “general control and supervision,” which is the role the Utah constitution assigns to the State School Board.  I’d rather provide a reasonable amount of unrestricted funding to the State School Board and ask them to do their job.
2. The consensus estimate is that as a state, we will have $280 million more in ongoing revenues for FY 2013 than we budgeted this year. Growth in education, paying down the overdraft on our bonding limit, and eliminating the structural deficit account for about two thirds of this additional money.  So that leaves about $100 million for ongoing funding increases or new programs.  Since this remaining $100 million in new money doesn’t even amount to one percent of our state budget, I don’t know how to justify a 20% increase for some individual programs, regardless of how deserving they may be.

We also had a good conversation about computer-adaptive testing.  Two things I understood from some questions I asked: 

1. The computer adaptive test questions have not yet been written.
2. The questions will be written to test competency in the specific standards.  They will not ask things that are unrelated to a student’s performance in comparison to those standards.

Superintendent Shumway said that there would be so many questions that it would be reasonable to release them for public review (since a student could not likely memorize them all, and if he or she did and could answer them correctly, then that would indicate mastery). I’ll work to make sure something happens along those lines so parents can satisfy themselves as to whether the test questions are appropriate.

Floor Time

H.B. 13, Offender Registry Review

This passed unanimously, but I thought about it long and hard.  Should there be a way for certain offenders to get off the offender registry?  My biggest concern was whether the bill dealt properly with offenses that had been plead down from much more serious charges.  The bill required that a judge take the original charges into consideration and that input from the victim’s family be taken into account as well.  Ultimately, this was about a second chance for a couple of young people that made a serious mistake that ended up categorizing one of them as a sex offender because of a technicality of the law.  They would have to satisfy everything the law requires in order to take advantage of the provisions of the law.  This is but one example, but you get the idea.

H.B. 70, Air Quality Task Force

A lot of people on both sides of the aisle stood up and declared their support for clean air and for this task force, an idea that has only a slim chance of getting any funding when budget decisions are made at the end of the session.  “Now breathe deeply,” the sponsor said in her concluding remarks, “and vote yes.”  It passed easily.

House Government Operations Standing Committee

H.B. 219, Use of Public Buildings

This committee wasn’t in the mood to let anything onto the floor this afternoon.  They approved a Resolution Recognizing the 100th Anniversary of the Girl Scouts in the United States, but they held the two bills that came next and they did the same to mine, which was last on the agenda.  My bill didn’t have a chance once one of the Representatives made a motion to adjourn (which effectively holds the bill under consideration for a future meeting).

The goal of this bill is to build on the requirement we already put into statute that school districts and cities, towns, and counties do everything within reason to make their facilities available for political parties to use for caucuses, conventions, and other party gatherings.  That’s already in statute.  To keep costs down, I’m proposing that these political subdivisions allow the parties to do their own cleanup, where possible, rather than having to pay school employees overtime.  In Davis County, for example, the costs for the county Republican party to use a school amounted to three or four thousand dollars, the lion’s share of which was for janitorial services.  If the party could use volunteers for most of the cleanup, they could save whatever expenses the school district avoided, thus reducing the money needed to run the party.  People tend to decry the amount of money in politics.  This could reduce the need for just a bit of that.

During committee debate, people raised legitimate concerns both about liability and about cleaning in certain instances that has to be done professionally.  So it’s on hold and I have already drafted suggested revisions that I will review with all concerned before we put it back on an agenda.

February 6, 2012–Day 15

What a day!  An extended debate continuing from last Friday, but my severance tax bill fell just short of having enough votes to pass.

H.B. 210, Severance Tax Amendments

First we circled H.J.R. 6, Joint Resolution on Severance Tax, in order to consider H.B. 210 first.  We uncircled that and had a lively debate.  The Democrats moved to circle again so we could wait for them to get an amendment ready that would add a tax increase to the bill.  That failed.  The going got rough, and it appeared we didn’t have the votes.  Rep. Butterfield then talked with me and moved to circle so we could regroup.  That motion failed, so we carried through to the end.  There were still several lights on when another Representative called for the question, which cuts off debate.  After quite a bit of back and forth, the vote stood at 36 for to 37 against with two not having voted.  I asked for a call of the house.  The two remaining legislators came in and voted no.  So it failed 36 to 39.

My first instinct was to say that’s it for this session, but I have been mulling things over, and there may be another way.  I have a lot of people I need to talk to.  Some votes I thought sure I would get turned against the bill.  I may simply not have explained it to enough people one on one before the debate.

So I have the list of the 39 that voted no.  I’m going to visit with them one on one and in small groups.  I’ll see what might need to change in order to get their support.  H.J.R. 6 is still on the board, so there is still the opportunity to consider it on its own if we can muster the votes.  In fact one of the comments from an influential member of the body was that we should do the resolution (constitutional amendment) and only that.  Put it to the voters without having the statutory framework in place first.  That’s not what the attorneys drafting the bill recommended, but it may be worth considering.

At any rate, I won’t uncircle H.J.R. 6 until I’m pretty confident we do have the votes we need.  And since it’s a proposed constitutional amendment, for that we need 50 votes.  That’s a tall order.

So stay tuned.

Debate on H.B. 210 took the whole morning floor time, other than the uncontroversial items on the consent calendar we did first.  I didn’t have committee meetings this afternoon, and my early morning committee meeting just dealt with two simple bills providing tax benefits to veterans and those that employ them.

A lot of great debate today.  It just didn’t go quite the way I had hoped.  I’m saddened that with our strong conservative majority we were unable to see our way clear to begin putting some of our severance taxes aside for future generations.

February 3, 2012–Day 12

Floor Time

H.B. 210, Severance Tax Amendments

For background on this bill, read my guest editorial in the Deseret News published January 6th at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700212818/Spending-our-childrens-inheritance.html. We picked up the bill near the end of floor time today.  I spent almost my full 10 minutes presenting the concept before Rep. Newbold introduced her substitute bill (as planned), which created a five-year phase-in period.  With her substitute, the fiscal impact for FY 2013 goes down to $19,280,000.  The following year, it is $38,460,000. The amount we save then increases by just over $19 million each year until the full $96 million in estimated severance tax receipts is invested for the future instead of added to the general fund to be spent in the current year. This more gradual phase in (over five years rather than two in the original bill) reduces the immediate impact on our current budget and helps us ease into this savings plan.

The minority leader, David Litvak moved to circle the bill, or put it on hold.  He wanted to see the fiscal note on the substitute bill.  Normally fiscal note preparation doesn’t even begin until a substitute is adopted on the floor or in committee.  I responded to the motion by noting that the extent of the fiscal note each year could be calculated quite easily by looking at the numbers shown in the substitute and subtracting them from $96 million, which is the estimate for severance tax receipts in FY 2013.  You can see what I mean if you look at the bill text, lines 52 through 58: http://le.utah.gov/~2012/bills/hbillint/hb0210s01.pdf. The sanctity of the process, he insisted, required that we delay. A Republican colleague echoed his reverence for the official fiscal note, and the motion to circle passed. 

Amazingly, just five minutes after the body agreed to circle the measure, a hard copy of the fiscal note on the substitute showed up.  See: http://le.utah.gov/lfa/fnotes/2012/hb0210s01.fn.pdf.  I delivered it personally to Rep. Litvak.  So with that taken care of, we should take up severance tax trust fund reform again on Monday morning.

House Transportation Standing Committee

H.B. 92, Boating Revisions

I presented a substitute version of H.B. 92 that removed the rules about where you could ride on the boat and kept the provisions about leaving the scene of a serious boating accident. (See my post about this same bill for February 1st .) The bill passed out of committee easily.

House Judiciary Standing Committee

H.B. 199, Elimination of Daylight Saving Time

I'm sorry to report we fell one vote short in committee and this measure failed once again to get it to the House floor. See the following account: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705398742/Daylight-Saving-elimination-bill-sees-early-sunset.html. This article reports what went on in committee pretty well, but it listed the wrong vote total: the actual vote was 6 to 5.

Even though this was a close vote, I don't plan to pursue it further.  It is clear that it does not have sufficient support for further consideration, at least not in the immediate future. 

Looking further ahead, I believe now that the Federal government had extended the start and end dates so far into the spring and fall (early March now until the first week of November), the negative effects of Daylight Savings Time will become more evident over time. 

Until the day (or year) comes when there is more public evidence of these unfortunate impacts, we will not have the political will to overcome our preference for the status quo.  That awareness may depend on a persistent and coordinated PR campaign by those most negatively impacted by DST.

And maybe if we are not willing to lead out on this as a state, a few more will have to join Arizona and Hawaii before we will be able to overcome our desire in Utah not to make waves, but rather to be like most of the other states around us.

When that day will come, I can’t predict, but I think the conditions are right for it to change one day.

February 2, 2012—Day 11

I understand the Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow earlier today. So that means, if I've got this straight, that we have five more weeks of legislative session yet to go from today!

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

So from all of our conversations on the public education budget, I have two questions,

1. Why should the legislature earmark money for special programs like the one that helps pay that the Opera visits schools?  We could just appropriate money in an unrestricted account and let the State School Board do its job.  Maybe they would decide it was needed for teacher salaries instead.  Maybe it would be OK to let them make that sort of decision, since the Utah Constitution says that “general control and supervision” of the public schools is their responsibility (not ours).  It seems that everyone on the Hill wants to play school board.
2. Just how much will implementation of the common core have cost, in total, when all is said and done. They’re asking for $6 million more right now. But I don’t think that really covers everything. And I can’t tell you how much they’ve already spent.  Just sayin’.

Floor Time

S.B. 39, Gubernatorial Authority over Higher Education Officials

I didn’t like this bill at all.  It allows the governor to appoint the Commissioner of Higher Education and the President of the Utah College of Applied Technology (UCAT). I’m not in favor of an imperial governorship.  Every time we put more policy-making power in the hands of the executive branch, we weaken the separation of powers.  Slowly but surely, the executive branch is gaining disproportionate authority with respect to the other two branches of State Government.  That’s not healthy.

I also don’t like this bill because I tend to think of the boards that currently select our higher education officials like boards of directors of private companies that are empowered to choose CEOs.  If they don’t have that power, these boards lose much of the purpose and authority.  Just as a vibrant company needs a dedicated, experienced, and involved governing board, our institutions of higher education need the very best academic and business minds available to steer their policies and pick their leaders.  Instead we will now have political appointments to these positions.

This bill passed narrowly in spite of several floor speeches opposing it (including mine).  Regrettably, our colleges and universities will be the poorer for the change.

S.B. 19, Voter Information Pamphlets

Should the state continue to mail copies to everyone, or are we ready to enter the 21st Century and do some of it electronically?  That’s the question this bill posed.  A vote against the bill was a vote to keep things as they are.  The floor sponsor admitted towards the end of the floor discussion that he hadn’t decided whether he was going to vote for this bill or not.  The bill went down to defeat, and he voted against his own bill!  I think the Senate sponsor will think twice before turning a bill over to that Representative again.  (I was in the minority that figured it might be OK to take a step into this century.)

House Government Operations Standing Committee

H.B. 233, Political Party Registration Amendments

This afternoon I presented H.B. 233 before the House Government Operations Standing Committee.  The committee voted unanimously to pass the bill out with a favorable recommendation.  The bill makes it a little easier for smaller political parties to stay registered as political parties.  Under current law, they have to garner a certain percentage of all voters in the most recent general election. This bill changes that to in either of the two most recent general elections. With this approach, they just have to be sure they meet the test every four years—presumably in the presidential election cycle.

To me this is a matter of fairness.  Having to go through the process of recertifying is unduly burdensome for small parties.  Having more than just the two major parties involved in the electoral process improves the quality of the discourse.

House Revenue and Taxation Standing Committee

H.B. 101, Tax Credits for Employing a Homeless Person

I like this idea. Good to see this kind of tax policy coming from a colleague on the other side of the aisle. If you hire a person transitioning out of homelessness for at least 20 hours per week, after six months of doing so you get a $1,000 tax credit. One of the Representatives suggested the amount was too generous. I wondered if it was enough. Letting businesses keep more of the money they earn and encouraging them to hire those that might otherwise not have employment opportunities sounds like a good thing to me.

The Utah Taxpayer’s Association spoke against the bill. I missed most of those comments because I was in the other committee presenting H.B. 233, but I think their concern is that we are adding another credit, making our modified flat tax ever so slightly less flat. Slowly the credits and deductions make their way back into the tax code!

Regardless of all that, the bill passed out with a favorable recommendation with only one representative voting no.

So far this session I have taken six bills to committee. All six have passed out favorably. I hope that trend will continue tomorrow afternoon when H.B. 199 (Daylight Savings Time) will be before the House Judiciary Standing Committee. Of course, that will be a challenge.

Also tomorrow, it looks like my Severance Tax bills will be debated on the floor. It will be a busy day!

Thanks to all of you that offer me continual support.

February 1, 2012—Day 10

Nothing controversial during floor time.  We passed the rest of the base budgets.  Each vote was unanimous.

After several other uncontroversial votes, we lost our computer systems about 10 minutes before we would have stopped anyway.  So we adjourned from the floor and had a couple extra minutes to prepare for committee meetings.

House Health and Human Services Standing Committee

H.B. 290, Divorce Orientation Class

This was day two in the committee.  The committee adopted three amendments that dealt with a couple of technical issues and a provision for divorce filers that might be at risk of domestic violence.  We had one more member of the public that wanted to comment.  Ultimately, the committee passed the bill to the floor with a favorable recommendation.  There were three dissenting votes, but it was still a win.  The yeas and nays cut across party lines.

After the committee hearing, several reporters interviewed me about the bill.  This is an important issue; I hope I did it justice on the air.

See yesterday’s post for more information about this bill.

House Transportation Standing Committee

H.B. 92, Boating Revisions

This bill adds to our laws a provision prohibiting boat operators from leaving the scene of a boating accident that causes serious injury or death.  The provisions are modeled almost exactly on laws for motor vehicle hit and run incidents. It was only a few months ago that a woman was killed on a Utah reservoir in a boating accident where this very thing happened.  When the operator left the scene the law didn’t provide much in terms of hit and run that could be used as the basis for a criminal charge. 

Tacked onto the same bill was a prohibition on riding on a boat anywhere other than a seating area designed and recommended by the boat manufacturer for passenger seating.  This bill would make it so you can’t ride on the bow and dangle your legs in the water.  Isn’t that common sense?  I asked whether we need to increase the reach of government to tell us one more simple thing we can’t do.  I was particularly concerned because we made it a Class C Misdemeanor, not just a civil offense like a moving violation.
 
The sponsor’s background is in law enforcement.  I asked whether we had a law about riding in the open bed of a pickup truck.  He reported that we don’t. That sealed it for me.

We voted to hold the bill in committee and move to the next item.  I’m working on an amendment to keep the part about hit and run but lose the restrictions on just where you can sit on a boat.

H.C.R. 7, Concurrent Resolution Designating Veterans Memorial Highway

This is a resolution that will add the voice of the legislature to an initiative to publicize the fact that I-15 is known as Veterans Memorial Highway.  Private funds will be used for a public awareness campaign.  It’s a way to provide greater recognition to our State’s veterans, to whom we owe so much.  We voted unanimously to pass it out with a favorable recommendation.

January 31, 2012—Day 9

We passed half of the base budget bills today.  Those are being sent to the Senate for action.  The other half originated in the Senate.  They’re on our reading calendar now; we’ll vote on them in the morning.  Essentially these budgets authorize the same spending levels as FY 2012.  Work over the next 5 weeks and two days will be to make changes from that baseline for the final budget.

H.B. 18, Kidnapping Offender Amendments

This bill allows a convicted kidnapping offender to petition the court for removal from the Sex Offender and Kidnap Offender registry.  The offender must have gone through any prescribed treatment and not have any more offenses.  The offender must have completed all registration requirements at all times. The offense of kidnapping would be removed from the list of offenses that would qualify someone for the sex offender registry.  However, it does not remove an offender from the list if the offense involves children or aggravating circumstances.

Representative Cox tried unsuccessfully to pass this same bill last year, but without a key requirement for all cases—judicial review.  He added that for some cases last year, but it wasn’t enough to carry the day.  This year he included universal judicial review as the trigger, and it passed, 72 to 0.  The point is that in limited first offenses, once an offender has completed his sentence and met all the terms stipulated by the court, including maintaining his name on the registry and fulfilling all probation and/or parole, a judge may determine that the offender may have his name removed from the registry and get on with the task of becoming a contributing member of society.

1st Sub. H.B. 24, Health Insurance For School Districts

We took up this bill again today, had a good debate, and sent it packing.  The bill failed by a vote of 25 to 49.  See my January 27th post for more on why I opposed this bill.

H.B. 290,  Divorce Orientation Class

I presented this bill today in the House Health and Human Services Standing Committee. Committee members wondered why this bill was assigned to them.  I had no answer other than that the Rules Committee can assign bills to whichever committee it chooses.

This was another bill that took more than an hour of presentation, testimony, public comment, questions, and committee discussion.  In the end, the committee chose to hold the bill for further discussion in their meeting tomorrow.  There may be a small amendment or two.
This bill changes the timing of the mandatory divorce orientation class so that it has a better chance at being effective.  As things stand today, quite often the class is not taken until just before a divorce is finalized.  My bill proposes to require that the class be completed before a person files for divorce.  It also eliminates a waiver provision that has in far too many cases eliminated the state’s 90-day cooling off period before a divorce is final.  Note that the provisions of this bill apply only to divorcing couples with one or more minor children.

There was opposition from divorce attorneys, but also strong support from several conservative and family-oriented organizations, including the Sutherland Group and United Families of Utah. I’ll have more to report on this bill in tomorrow’s post.

Blackhawk (Not)

By the way, the Utah National Guard gave me a polite no in response to my inquiry about having a constituent represent me on a flight. (See my January 26th Post for background.) They did say I could have a key member of the community accompany me, but I had to be there either way. So much for that idea.  And I’m sorry if I got anyone’s hopes up.

January 30, 2012—Day 8

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

We continued our ceaseless journey through the intricacies of public education funding.  At this point we haven’t made a single recommendation.  We’ve just listened to presentations and answered questions.  There appears to be a strong consensus that we will work to fund growth in the number of students and at the same time provide an overall per-student increase.  We’ll see how that works out.

Floor Time

Two hours on the floor, and we only dealt with a handful of bills.  Here are the two that generated the most discussion:

H.B. 51, Medical Specialty Practice Act Amendments

This bill requires that any legislation affecting a list of medical specialties licensed by the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing (DOPL) be submitted to the governing professional board for review.  Duh.  If we want a bill that affects one of these professions to have a shot at success, we’re going to run it past the governing board.  Why do we need a law to tell us to do that?  And why a law for a select group of professions and not all?  I didn’t like it.  I spoke against it for the reasons you can infer from my comments above.  There were others that made similar comments.  But it passed anyway, narrowly.

H.B. 48, Coalition of Energy Producing States

This bill clarified the number of members and composition of Utah’s task force that works with energy producing states to build a coalition and foster energy production.  The Democrats were not happy with the deletion of a requirement that guaranteed them one member of the four in Utah’s delegation.  They ran an amendment to put that back in.  In fairness to them, I voted with them in support of the amendment.  That failed.

We went on to debate this bill that makes minor modifications to the membership in a task force for almost an hour.  In the end it passed, 57 to 16.

House Transportation Standing Committee

H.B. 71, Vehicle Window Tint Amendments

We debated my friend David Butterfield’s bill to relax the State’s law governing window tinting.  He wants to allow them to be slightly darker.  Things weren’t looking good, so one of the committee members made a motion to move the next agenda item and we moved on.  I think David will do some more research and be back before the committee within a week or two.

H.B. 68, Powersport Vehicle Franchise Act Amendments

We have a law that inserts itself into franchise agreements between two private parties and overrides the terms of these contracts.  The bill before the committee takes that law one step further and sets the terms for repurchase of inventory when a franchise agreement is terminated.

I’m looking for a proper role of government here and I can’t find it in this bill.  I’m wondering if we have to protect private parties that sign agreements from the terms of those agreements. I said some of these thigns in the committee discussion, and I voted against the bill, but I was the only one.  We do something similar for auto dealers, I was told.  So we should do the same here.  I guess I figure you take each policy in turn and do what you can to make things better one bill at a time.

House Political Subdivisions Standing Committee

H.B 82, Architect's Licensing Revisions

This is a minor change I was running, as requested by the State Architect Licensing Board in order to allow us to set the quantity of continuing education units by rule rather than statute so we can line our requirements up with an emerging national standard that will make it more straightforward to hold licenses in multiple states.  There was a fair amount of discussion and a few that were concerned about taking the number out of the statute, but ultimately the bill passed out favorably with only one dissenting vote.

House Revenue and Taxation Standing Committee

H.B. 81, City or Town Option Sales and Use Tax Amendments

This bill allows two communities—Riverdale and South Salt Lake—to continue levying a 0.20% sales tax that is currently set to expire in 2016.  This was part of a hold-harmless agreement put in place just a few years ago to complete the deal that changed the way sales tax was distributed to communities.  Communities that relied heavily on retail ended up losing revenues in the deal. 

The 0.20% additional levy was to help make that up, but it was thought that revenue growth would make this extra taxing authority unnecessary by 2016.  With the economy flagging, revenue growth is less sure.  Of course in pursuing more retail development, both Riverdale and South Salt Lake have offered incentives that may have impacted their current tax receipts negatively in the hopes of reaping larger rewards down the road.

Taking all these things into consideration, I couldn’t support extending this extra taxing opportunity indefinitely beyond 2016.  At some point, I believe communities must make the difficult choices to live within their means rather than rely on addition tax levies.  So I voted no.  Six others joined me in opposition, but the bill squeaked by.  It should be an interesting floor debate.

January 27, 2012—Day 5

None of my committees met today, but we debated several bills on the floor.

H.B. 250, Tax Credit for Dependent with a Disability

The debate on the floor didn’t bring anything new to light that affected the position I took on this bill in committee.  See my post for the Revenue and Taxation Committee meeting on the first day of the session.  I voted with the majority in favor of the bill, 47 to 21.  It now moves to the Senate.

H.B. 24, Health Insurance for School Districts

This bill requires school districts to rebid health insurance for district employees every three years in order to save money. (It was amended on the floor to five years.) This is the case of the legislature playing super school board. I guess the legislature has the authority to dictate one-size-fits-all solutions to school districts, but I don’t think it’s wise to exercise it. School districts are governed by elected school boards that have policy-making responsibility for what goes on in those districts. I believe school boards should also have the authority to do their job. I believe the closer decision-making authority is to the people affected by those decisions, the better.

There were many comments along these lines during floor debate. The bill sponsor clearly knows how to count, so he circled the bill. He’ll see if he can make changes or build support in some manner and try again later when he thinks he’s got a better chance. As it stands, I oppose this bill.

S.B. 125, State Senate Boundary Amendments

This bill includes the minor redistricting changes to senate districts that goes along with the house and school board changes we passed Thursday.  It was adopted unanimously.

H.B. 201, Utah State Winter Sports

This bill passed the House unanimously.  If the Senate follows suit, skiing and snowboarding will now be Utah’s official winter sports.  Our new state winter sports will take their rightful place along side our state flower (Sego Lily), our state cooking utensil (Dutch Oven), and our state gun . . . Oh please!

1st Sub. H.B. 29, Insurance Amendments

As I was reading through the arcane insurance terms in this 116 page bill, I wondered if this was the famously misplaced manuscript from 1829 and that the reason it was lost was that is was impossible to understand. Fortunately, the sponsor, Rep. Jim Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville, knows this stuff like the back of his hand. One of the things I think most of us learn to do is to find people in the body we can trust who have experience in a wide variety of fields. When we get out of our depth in dealing with the esoteric aspects of different aspects of the law and a variety of professional disciplines, we turn for guidance to those that have experience and whose judgment we’ve learned we can trust. That’s what we all did-on both sides of the aisle.  This bill passed 70 to 0.

Valley View Spelling Bee

This afternoon I had the privilege of being the pronouncer for the Valley View Elementary school-wide spelling bee.  I’m not sure I’ve ever used the word hircine in a sentence before.

And the pronunciation guide insisted I say ‘was ǝ bee rather than wa ‘saw bee, the way I am used to saying wasabi.  From the reaction of the parents watching, it felt as if I had just cast a vote people didn’t agree with, so I had to explain myself!

The kids were amazing.  We ran out of words and had to go dig out an old list to finish off the last four.

One Week Down!

So the first week is in the books.  More excitement to come, I’m sure!

January 26, 2012—Day 4

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

We spent most of the day working on an in-depth analysis of the Public Education budget.  We reviewed the changes that were made last year and the things that may need fixing this year.  In contrast to our last session, this time our base budget matches what we appropriated last year.  The only thing missing is one-time money used to fill a few gaps.  Those items funded last year with one-time money are not funded in the draft base budget because they did not have any ongoing revenue identified. 

So, for example, the Beverly Taylor Sorenson Art in Education program, which received one-time money last year is not funded in the base budget.  I’m sure someone will try to get some kind of funding for this program into the final budget, though.  For myself, I would rather provide flexible money to the State school board and ask them to do their job, as elected officials, of deciding how to spend it.  I don’t like the legislature earmarking things for special programs and micromanaging our school system.

Floor Time

H.B. 50, Repeal Of Election Campaign Fund And Related Tax Return Designation

Today the House voted to eliminate the income tax return checkoff where taxpayers can direct a couple of dollars to the political party of their choice when filling out their returns.  Checking the box doesn’t increase a taxpayer’s tax liability, so it’s a general public subsidy of political parties.  About $120,000 in tax revenues go to our political parties each year through this program.  The argument is that if the government funds, the government also controls.  Better to have the government out of it completely and avoid any potential oversight of political parties, which are ostensibly private organizations.

As a practical matter, if we go down this road, I think the next step may well be to eliminate public support of primary elections, which could be construed as party rather than public functions.  I question whether all currently viable political parties could muster the funding to run primaries in a way that is sufficiently open and transparent enough to guarantee universal voting rights.  Ultimately, the path we begin with this bill may lead to less access to the democratic process for some parties.  While those parties most at risk may not be my own, I think our system of government would be the poorer for not having sufficient access and participation by a wide variety of parties and interests.

Essentially what I am saying is that our society has an interest in multiple viable political parties.  It seems to me that a reasonable amount of public funding directed to parties based on the aggregated instructions of citizens expressed on their tax returns has more upside than down.  To me fair dealing and a reasonable chance for a seat at the table for a broad array of options is more important than angling for partisan advantage.  I voted against the bill, along with four other Republicans and all of the Democrats.  Nevertheless, it passed easily.

Redistricting Clean Up

We approved minor clean up legislation related to redistricting as requested by county clerks across the state to line up borders of districts with municipal and county lines.  About 37 residents are added to District 19 in the process.  If this change is adopted, the north border of my district will match the north border of Bountiful precisely.  And the west border picks up the back and forth jogs along 500 West that include a large number of cars and some retail establishments but not a single resident.  Becky Edwards was just fine letting go of that.  I actually wanted it just this way, but previously there was an effort to keep deviations from district to district to 20 or fewer residents.  With these changes, we’re letting a little common sense back in. Here’s a link if you want to look at the changes we are talking about:  http://www.redistrictutah.com/bills-passed-maps/redistricting-technical-changes.

Besides the house map, we also approved similar changes to the state school board map.  And we should get the senate map tomorrow.

House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Standing Committee

H.B. 277, Graffiti Paraphernalia

This is one of the bills I’m sponsoring.  It brings our definition of graffiti up to date with the latest techniques taggers are using in other parts of the country.  Specifically, it adds the use of etching agents and things that chemically mar a surface to the definition of graffiti, where the law currently focuses on paint and markers and is silent on these newer things.  All of the juvenile justice and prosecutor groups endorsed the bill.  I presented for probably about a minute.  The committee had no questions.  They voted unanimously to send the bill to the floor with a positive recommendation.  Would that every bill was that easy.

House Transportation Standing Committee

One bill wanted to increase the speed limit in HOV lanes.  The Highway patrol brought up safety issues (for the trooper pulling someone over to the left against the Jersey barrier).  The committee voted to send the bill to Rules with a recommendation it be considered for interim study.

Another bill aimed to outlaw pedestrians on freeways, or at least on most freeways.  It listed the applicable places one by one.  So that would probably mean we’d have to change the statute every time UDOT built a new limited access road. And the public complained about the fact that in some instances there simply is not an alternate walking path available.  In those cases many felt there should be some provision to allow a person to walk along the shoulder.  Finally, there were questions about definitions.  What, for example, is a collector?  The bill sponsor said he was talking about the limited access collectors that run alongside the main freeway (as between the spaghetti bowl and 9th South in Salt Lake).  But collector also has a specific meaning among the hierarchy of major roadways that are not limited access expressways.  Such collectors, combined with arterials and neighborhood roads, create a grid of interconnected roadways and do not constitute freeways.  This bill had enough challenges that we voted to move to the next agenda item.

HB. 266, Driver Education Amendments

If you’re 18 and you don’t have a driver license, this bill makes a provision so you don’t have to take Driver’s Ed.  We amended the age to 19 so it wouldn’t include any high schoolers.  I was concerned that the bill requires a certain number of hours of experience, but the applicant just has to self-certify.  So I voted no, even though the rest of the committee approved.  Speaking with the sponsor, he’ll be fine if I offer an amendment requiring that those who accompanied the student driver during the 40 hours also sign a form (so we’re not relying on self-certification).

The public grants license in order to protect health, safety, and welfare.  If we allow someone just to say they met the experience requirement without any third-party validation, I don’t think we’re doing our due diligence.  The amendment is being drafted.

Blackhawk Down?

Finally, let me ask you about something that landed on my desk today.  It was an invitation from the Utah National Guard to join them on a Blackhawk helicopter flight.  Sounds pretty amazing.  But you see, one of the principles I do my best to live by is not to accept anything as a legislator that wouldn’t be offered to me as a private citizen.  That line of thinking with respect to this invitation gave me an idea:

Instead of accepting the invitation, what I’ll do is ask the Utah National Guard whether they would extend such an invitation to a citizen of my district.  If they are willing to do that, I’ll ask for volunteers (here, in email, and on my Facebook page).  If more than one is interested, I’ll draw names out of a hat.  Then I’ll ask that individual to go on the tour as my eyes and ears and report back to me what he or she learns.

How does that sound?  Give me your thoughts at jimnielson@le.utah.gov.  I’ll let you know whether the Guard agrees with this idea.

January 25, 2012—Day 3

Floor Time

H.B. 22, Centralized New Hire Registry Act Amendments

To make things interesting right from the get go, we started floor time by reconsidering a bill we voted down yesterday.  Yesterday it failed miserably, 50 to 18.  Today it passed 39 to 33.  So in some things you get do-overs.

I remember yesterday when this bill failed I came in late in the voting because I was talking with someone in the lobby.  I had decided before the bill came up that I would support it.  However the board was filled with red when I cast my yes vote.  Half of the yes votes were Democrats. There was nothing particularly objectionable in the bill, but somehow during the floor debate things got off on the wrong footing and the wrong impression was created.  So the bill went down hard.  One of the people that had opposed the bill yesterday had a change or heart; he is the one that brought the bill back for reconsideration.  Presented well, and with the right information, the bill succeeded.

Although I’m sure not everyone does, I find this stuff fascinating.

H.B. 35, Extension of Recycling Market Development Zone Tax Credits

I suspect the Democrat Minority Leader, David Litvak, knew he couldn’t stop this bill. In fact, he ended voting in favor of it, but he tried to amend the bill so that this program would only be reauthorized for five years rather than 10.  His amendment failed. The bill then passed after a healthy debate. This is an economic development program that supports metal recycling efforts by two or three dozen Utah companies. One of the largest participants is Nucor Steel in Box Elder County.  I voted for it because it is not a subsidy; it’s an incentive.  It has worked well for 20 years or more. It allows companies a small credit for capital improvements.  And it fosters good jobs.  I think it pays for itself through revenues generated though expanded employment.

House Revenue and Taxation Committee

My severance tax trust fund reform bills were up first.  They took the bulk of the meeting.

H.B. 210, Severance Tax Amendments and
H.J.R 6, Joint Resolution on Severance Tax

This is one you might want to listen to online.  The debate was fascinating.  There was public opposition by the UEA and Voices for Utah Children.  We also had good support by the Utah Taxpayers Association and from Ron Mortensen and his foundation for Tax Fairness.  There were many questions and a lot of back and forth.  The bills both passed along party lines and will be heard next in the House.  We may add an amendment there to consider phasing things in over a longer time.  The UEA representative that spoke used the term dramatic, as in we don’t need to do something quite this dramatic.  I think the extended committee discussion demonstrated that this is dramatic, decisive action.  I also believe it is warranted.  It was very gratifying to receive every Republican vote. Kudos to Representative Eric Hutchings, who gave an eloquent and compelling speech as part of his motion to move this to the floor with a favorable recommendation.  I think he just may have swung one or two of our fellow Republicans that may have been on the fence.

I imagine I came across as reasonably well composed in my presentation, but finally, when I went back to my seat after the final vote, I noticed that it took several minutes for my adrenaline to stop rushing.  You see, this is my highest priority bill this session.  As I said to the committee (and I don’t think this is an exaggeration) I believe if we pass severance tax trust fund reform, it will be the most important thing we do this session.

Now I haven’t said anything about the bill.  I’ve gone into that in other places.  As noted previously, I wrote a guest editorial on the subject in the Deseret News a couple of weeks ago.  That column lays out the proposed legislation about as simply as I know how to do it, so here’s a link if want to read it.

Town Hall Meeting

We competed with the Governor’s State of the State address this evening and still had a great crowd.  Representative Becky Edwards, Senator Todd Weiler, and I met with maybe 75 people in the Bountiful Library Auditorium.  We told them a little about what we’re up to.  They shared information and experiences with us and asked us questions.

I am grateful to the people of Bountiful for your involvement and for making it possible to serve.  It is an honor and a privilege.

Note for anyone that missed the Governor’s address (such as those that attended our town hall meeting).  The speech is printed in its entirety in the House Journal entry for today at http://le.utah.gov/~2012/journal/h0003.pdf.  Governor Herbert’s message begins on page 139.

January 24, 2012—Day 2

Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee

We had a brief discussion about the base budget and then pretty much devoted the rest of the committee meeting to a discussion about the interplay between funding for Utah College of Applied Technology institutions (Applied Technology Colleges or ATCs) and the impact on public school funding when students leave their school and enroll in ATC courses.

As things were until last year, public schools received full funding for students taking ATC courses off campus. At the same time, ATCs also received state funding through the Utah System of Higher Education to cover the cost of providing the concurrent enrollment coursework these students received free of charge. The sense of the legislature was that we were paying for the student as if he or she were still taking a course at the public school and then paying once again for instruction at an ATC.

So last year we changed it and deducted a pro-rated portion of the funding for the school when a student left to take an ATC course.  Some schools, then, decided to discourage or prevent students from taking courses at an ATC. The sense is with the new incentive they will focus on offering career and technical educational (CTE) courses on their own rather than send students to an ATC and lose funding. (There is an additional pot of money for CTE courses schools can access if they develop such programs in-house.)

Complicated enough?

Well we heard two proposals, one from the head of UCAT and one from the State Superintendent of Public Schools. Both involve spending more money.  Both would really prefer we just go back to where we were when we paid the full rate for each students even when they left campus and we still funded the ATC programs separately. Senator Stephenson advanced one more idea that at least deserves some consideration. What if we said that CTE add-on funding for school districts would only be available for programs that were not otherwise provided with sufficient capacity at a nearby Applied Technology Campus?

Clearly this is something we’ll spend more time on this session.

Floor Time

We spent a couple hours on the floor this morning and took action on our first group of bills.

H.B. 25, Patient Identity Validation

This bill allows healthcare providers to work together confidentially to build and maintain a system that will help them establish or confirm the identity of patients with more certainty. It will cost about $300,000. This bill generated vigorous debate on the floor, particularly on the subject of whether it was the proper role to government to be involved in this endeavor. Existing federal privacy laws make it impossible for the private sector to do this on its own, which I believe would be preferable (if it were feasible). As a practical matter, I voted for it (along with 51 out of 68 of my colleagues). There isn’t a way we could accomplish this needed reform without the government being involved.

House Transportation Standing Committee

In our Transporation Committee meeting this afternoon, we dealt with two minor bills, one about temporary driver licenses and one giving authority to the State Tax Commission to reduce or waive motor vehicle business regulation penalties within reason (much as they currently do with tax liabilities). Both bills passed out of committee by unanimous vote. Nothing controversial here!

Day 2 is in the books.

January 23, 2012—First Day of Session

Opening Ceremonies & State of the Judiciary

We had the usual prayer, pledge, and swearings in.  Add to that a phenomenal performance of the National Anthem and two other patriotic hymns by a Provo High School choir.  And then there was the announcement by Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham that she is stepping down as chief justice a the end of March.  She'll stay on the court. 

In her State of the Judiciary Address, Chief Justice Durham did tell about a conversation she had years ago with justices from the former Soviet Union.  She told them how our system works and asked about theirs.  They called their system telephone justice.  Their typical approach was to hear a case and them wait for a telephone call from a politician telling them how to rule.  She told us not to get any ideas.

After all the formalities, we got underway with our first round of committee meetings.

House Revenue and Taxation Committee

We reviewed some pretty interesting bills in committee this afternoon.  On some of them, I could have gone either way.

H.B. 31, Taxes and Fees on Emergency Medical Aircraft

This bill changes the fees imposed on helicopters used by a tax-exempt entity, or helicopters used for the emergency transportation of medical patients.  The bill reduces revenue by $9,800 annually.  Aircraft fees are charged in order to defray airport costs; however the medical aircraft targeted by this bill don't use airports and are not garaged there.  They typically stay at hospital helipads.  It seems reasonable not to charge a fee for services these aircraft don't use.  The committee voted unanimously to pass this bill on to the full house with a favorable recommendation.

H.B. 41, Property Taxation of Business Personal Property

This bill increases the property tax exemption for business personal property several fold to $25,000.  The idea is to reduce the burden for businesses that have less than that amount of personal property, such as computers, desks, and office equipment.  Enactment of this bill is anticipated to result in a $12 million shift in property tax revenues between taxpayers. Those taxpayers with business personal property will see a decrease in taxes paid while all paying property taxes on real property will see a small increase.  As a small business owner that watched an auditor come in and come over our books for three or four days just to verify that we had all of our personal property accounted for, I see the value of this bill.  There turned out to be a small problem with the definitions in the bill, so the committee put the bill on hold and moved on to the next agenda item.

H.B. 42, Permanent Community Impact Fund Board Grants

This bill makes arrangements for the Community Impact Board to forgive the debt one Utah community can't repay due to changes in the way the State distributes sales taxes.  A few years ago, this community entered into a bond for public purposes.  They were confident in their ability to borrow because of a long history of consistent tax revenues.

A few years ago, changes in state tax policy had the unintended consequence of reducing that revenue stream to just a fraction of what it had been.  This community has tightened its belt significantly, but it has no hope of ever repaying its loan under the new rules.

The state changed the rules after the game has been played.  I agree the state should make the community whole.  That involves forgiving the $1.1 million debt.  Otherwise, the state may be stuck picking up the pieces when the community goes bankrupt.  I voted with the majority to forward this bill to the floor with a favorable recommendation.

H.B. 35, Extension of Recycling Market Development Zone Tax Credits

This bill extends the recycling market development zone tax credits from January 1, 2012 to January 1, 2021.  According to the fiscal note, enactment of this bill could reduce revenue to the Education Fund by $2,100,000 annually beginning in FY 2013.  That's not a new reduction in overall revenues.  Although one time money has most recently been used to eliminate the impact on the education fund, the overall drop in revenues has been the same.

This bill provides incentives that help fund a portion of capital costs for companies involved in recycling steel.  These capital investments have a proven record of creating jobs.  It passes the test of being an incentive, not a subsidy.  I voted with the majority recommend the bill to the whole house.

H.B. 50, Repeal of Election Campaign Fund and Relate Tax Return Designation

This bill repeals a contribution to the Election Campaign Fund that may be designated on an income tax refund, and it repeals the Election Campaign Fund itself.  According to the fiscal note, enactment of this bill would repeal an existing transfer of approximately $120,000 per year from the General Fund to the Election Campaign Fund.  These funds are distributed to political parties.

Does it make sense for public funds to flow to political parties, which are private organizations.  On the one hand, one may argue that the public has an interest in functioning political parties.  If we take this step, will the next step be to stop using public money to fund primary elections?  That could be an extreme financial challenge to parties.

The other side of the coin is the argument that what the state funds the state controls.  Some of the movement to change our parties' nominating system is based on the notion that since state money is involved, the state has a right to require changes.  We certainly see evidence of money with strings attached from the way our Federal government treats states.

I thought hard about this one but ultimately ended up voting against the change.  You may not agree with me, but I believe much of the stability of our government is a result of strong political parties.  Think Italy and splinter parties if you want to understand what I mean.  I do not want to do anything that would diminish the stability that comes from solid political parties.

I ended up voting with the Democrats.  I think they are worried they won't be able to make up the money.  I think I was voting more on prinicple, but the majority sent the bill on to the full house with a favorable recommendation.  I suppose if you just look at this in terms of partisan advantage, it will be easier for Utah Republicans to replace the reduced funding than for Democrats.

H.B. 250, Tax Credit for Dependent with a Disability

This bill allows a tax credit for a dependent with a disability.  A claimant could deduct an additional 75% for each dependent with a disability.  According to the fiscal note, enactment of the bill could reduce revenue to the Education Fund by $765,000 in FY 2013 and by $781,000 in FY 2014.

This was one of the tax credits that was eliminated when we adopted our modified flat income tax in Utah.  The sponsor's argument is that since we haven't gotten rid of all of the tax credits and deductions, this is an important one we ought to put back in.

A member of the public argued that we were asking the state to take over what should be a personal responsibility.  I don't see it that way.  This is a non-refundable tax credit, which means the taxpayer can only offset taxes he or she would otherwise be paying.  The state isn't giving the taxpayer anything; rather it is refraining from taking as much as it otherwise would without the credit.  It's leaving more of the taxpayer's money in his/her pocket.  And we're talking about the pockets of someone with very limited ability to pay.  I believe fundamentally that we should not expect those with very limited means (such as those with large families) to pay as much in taxes as those with more resources.

Accordingly I, along with all present, voted to pass the bill along to the full House with a favorable recommendation.

We did not get to my bills, which were at the bottom of the agenda.  The meeting went more than a half hour long as it was.

And that was the first day of the 2012 General Session.