Can't we all just get along?

Utah’s Legislative Session Opens with Whimper

By Tracy Medley, 1-16-07

Utah’s 57th Legislature met Monday for the first time; prompting criticism from some (Human Rights Day be-darned. Utah’s lawmakers meet on the 3rd Monday of January, which always coincides with the day honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr.) and major yawns from others. According to The Salt Lake Tribune everyone played nice on opening day. Senate President John Valentine and House Speaker Greg Curtis both admonished their cohorts to be civil and “work as a team.”

“We need to hold the values that our constituents saw in us. We need to work as a team. We need to continue to be honest. We need to treat those who disagree with us with honesty and dignity,” Valentine said to his fellow senators. “We are all anchors for each other.” Anchors are an interesting metaphor when it comes to Utah politics and no, I don’t mean that in a good way. While it’s nice that the kids on the playground, err the men and women getting paid a decent wage to make decisions up there on the hill want everyone to get along; it’s hardly a good strategy or any sort of strategy at all when it comes to our state’s future.

Rep. Curtis went the “funny” route saying, “In the immortal words of the poet Mick Jagger, ‘You can’t always get what you want,’” Uhhh No, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get …a $15 million parking garage for you and all your friends. But, seriously folks, I’m here all week.

All good and bad humor aside, can all this nicey-nice last with a $1.6 billion surplus burning a hole in the legislature’s pocket? Most say not. According to The Tribune lawmakers are already heavily divided about what to do with the money and heavy division means some heady arguments in the future.

Valentine argued, much like Notorious B.I.G. that mo’ money equals mo problems. “We have learned that prosperity demands a tougher and more visionary decision-making process than poverty,” Valentine said. He should explain that to the Utahns who have to scrape together their loose change and sell their belongings just so their rent check doesn’t bounce.

House Minority Leader Ralph Becker expressed no illusions of legislative harmony with such issues as taxpayer-funded private school vouchers and immigration legislation on the table. “I have never seen us go through a session without heated exchanges, without conversations boiling over into arguments,” Becker told The Tribune.

Health care, pay raises for judges and teachers, private school vouchers, immigration, education technology, and much, much more will be volleyed about during this legislative session, so if the past is any predictor of the future; legislative nastiness is sure to creep up along the way.

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