For far too long, our state has been viewed as a backwater hole where religious fundamentalism and the problems associated with it rule the day. As a native Utahn, I know that this is not the case, and I don’t know how many times I have heard visitors confide in me that they changed their views of our beautiful state and its people after visiting.

Indeed, the state saw this issue as well, and has poured millions of dollars into tourism advertising to encourage people to give Utah a try. Progress, I feel, was being made to show people that Utah is a wonderful place to play. As perception grew, so to would people wishing to stay – from there they set up businesses and create jobs. In short, the state knew that changing the perception of Utah was vital to its economic growth.

And then a rouge group of state workers compile the names of some 1,300 people who they believe to be in this country illegally.

Arizona’s immigration law has gone a long way in harming its reputation, but, at the very least, it was done in the open, in public, by lawmakers that will be held accountable to the citizens come November. This, however, was done by bureaucrats who abused their power and violated the public’s trust. To compound the horrendous PR nightmare, the Governor seems unable to say that the list is, in and of itself, a bad thing – only that it was wrong for workers to use records that way.

Immigration is an inherently thorny issue because, unlike most crimes, the only major complaint victims have is that perpetrators are trying to improve their lives. Yes, it is called illegal immigration, but the very nature of the crime stems from the American ideal of trying to work hard to improve your life and the life of your family. Furthermore, solutions that are even remotely humane require an exceptional amount of resources and time. Finally, most people realize our despicable past when it comes to race and minorities and will do all they can to make sure we stick to the ideals that all men (not just citizens) are created equal.

The ramifications of this list will be both immediate and long lasting.  Not only does it take one of those 13,000 people to sue the state for a possible defamation lawsuit to open up Pandora’s box, but this process only drags out the pain and perception our state will receive from the world. Because of the actions of a handful of individuals, Utah could be perceived as a state where vigilante justice rules and where lists of individuals are compiled in a manor similar to McCarthy style witch hunts.

The irony, of course, is that the individuals who put the now infamous list together honestly felt that they were improving our state.

Sure enough, we are now hearing of examples of such harassment. But first, a little back story.

Less than a week ago the Deseret News reported that State Republican Party chairman Dave Hansen will “probably” start a campaign to convince some GOP signees to remove their name from the Utahens for Ethical Government petition but that they “won’t harass anyone; (they’ll) ask them to consider taking their name off.”

Indeed, the next day, a federal judge (presumably seeing how such a law could be abused) issued a court order to keep the names of signers off the public record for at least ten days. This, however, does not appear to be enough.

While listening to the Nightside Project on KSL, a caller stated that they were being harassed by an individual to remove their name from the UEG petition. Now I am not accusing the Utah Republican Party of initiating the process of harassment, but who is to say if an individual member, perhaps one who works for the county clerk, acted on their own accord to harass this signer?

Of course this is all pure conjecture, but the Utah GOP certainly has the most vocal in their opposition to the peoples initiative (though some Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns as well). They are the ones who work in the majority of the clerks offices, and they are the ones who passed this law in the first place.

I am not opposed to allowing people to remove their signature, but this is proof that lawmakers are not interested in letting the process work properly. What I predicted would go wrong has, and it did not even take a week to prove it.

As many of you may know, Utah could have received another congressional district during the last round of redistricting if the census bureau would have counted, amongst other things, missionaries. In preparation for a court victory that never came, the legislature drew up four legislative maps that would give Salt Lake County its own district and the remaining three districts would consist of a hybrid of urban and rural districts. But, because we never got that fourth district, the legislature used the current map today where every district has an urban and rural component.

Now the Republicans logic behind this is representatives will…well, I don’t exactly know what the logic is; it certainly is not in the best interest of the people.

While on the campaign trail for Fair Boundaries, I would often point out that Representative Matheson is charged with voting for what is in the best interest of his constituents in Salt Lake City and Saint George…at the same time. Now love him or hate him, the simple fact of the matter is that the needs of these two areas are very different, and on any particular vote, he is probably going to let someone down within his distirct.

But Speaker Clark does not care about out actually representing the people of Utah, no he cares about ensuring that Republicans gain and stay in power, and this rehashed plan certainly does that. By coming out this early he has already sent the message that he has made up his mind about how districts should look – unfair, undemocratic, and unbelievable.

Bravo Speaker Clark. You are influencing the process before it even begins and you are doing it so brazenly that it is disgusting.  Furthermore, you get extra points for waiting less than a week after Fair Boundaries failed to prove why it needed to succeed – this system is broken and power brokers like you are more than happy to make sure it stays the way it is.

Shame on you Speaker Clark.

Now, sadly, SB 275 has already passed, so this “bill to watch” is a bit of a moot point. I write only to draw your attention to this matter and to the dirty tactics Senator Stephenson is willing to stoop to when he feels threatened. Furthermore, I would like to point out that my good friend, Carl Wimmer, sponsored the bill in the House…so this bill is a double whammy. Finally, there was a part of me that felt that, as Director of Operations for Fair Boundaries, I could, theoretically threaten our organization by writing about this bill before it went through the system. Well, now, the only thing standing between a truly unfair law and justice is an unlikely veto from the governor.

What is the problem, you may ask? Well SB 275 makes it easier for people to remove their signature from a petition after signing if and when they gain more information and no longer wish to support the cause…and if the bill stopped there, I would support it completely – but the bill takes it one step further.

You see, petitioners can remove their signatures even after petitions have been submitted to clerks many weeks after the submission.

Aye, and there is the rub. You see, when you submit petitions, your name becomes public and people opposed to a particular petition now have a few extra weeks to put specific pressure on specific list of people in an attempt to have names removed from the list of supporters; meanwhile groups supporting the petition do not have the opportunity to collect signatures – opponents have a marked advantage in making sure that petitions are not successful. The debate should take place during the campaign, and neither side should be given an advantage in the court of public opinion.

Think about it. Is it fair to the 95,000 people who signed a petition thinking they were improving their democracy only to be told it failed because one person changed their mind after the campaign was over? To put it more broadly, is it fair to the winning team to allow the looser to keep playing for an extra five minutes after a game is officially over?

It should also be noted that these rules would take effect the moment the governor signs the bill…meaning that the petitions currently circulating would be subject to this rule – the legislature is changing the rules mid-game because they can, much like a petulant five year old that is not getting its way.

A final thought. Supporters of this bill claim that this bill was fair because signers may not know what the petition says, so it adds a level of fairness to signing a petition.  This is, perhaps, the most offensive argument possible. It says two things 1) groups, such as Fair Boundaries, are somehow concealing what we want they do – I would dare argue that these groups are far more open about the ramifications of our proposed legislation as opposed to, say, this bill. 2) Arguments such as this imply that your opinion is only valid if you know the issue inside and out.  By this logic, there should be tests to see if you are competent to vote in the first place. Perhaps we should have literacy or civics tests at the polls and tell people that their vote does not count if they fail any number of tests.

Talk to any legislator and ask them if they read the 1,000+ bills that move through the legislature over the 45 day session and ask them if they vote only on the ones they know well.

Shame on you Senator Stephenson for directly attacking our democracy and flaunting how much you hate the will of the people. Furthermore, Representative Wimmer, once again, proves that he does not care about the Constitution, only about maintaining power.

Finally, please contact Governor Herbert and tell him that the playing field needs to be level – this bill is despicable.

Click here to contact Governor Herbert.

Click here to contact Senator Stephenson.

To be blunt, this is a scary Joint Resolution. The resolution, if it were to pass and be approved by the people, would change our state constitution to create an ethics commission that would independently review any complaints made against legislators to see if the complaint merits “further consideration.”

On the surface, this sounds like a good first step towards ethics reform and, indeed, if this were a bill rather than a joint resolution, I would be in favor of the bill. But we need to remember a few things about constitutional amendments: 1) they are much more difficult to pass, and 2) they are much more difficult to change if things are not going well.

So legislators could say that they passed a good ethics bill and then not have to say anything when the truth comes about about why the bill is bad. Furthermore, it is rare for the Speaker of the House to propose a bill – I feel that he was specifically chosen because of his power to push legislation through the chamber, not so much because he believes in the legislation.

Why is it bad you say? Well the bill does nothing to actually prosecute ethics violations, and it allows the legislature to define what a violation is. In other words, the legislature could pass extremely lax definitions of ethics violations and then not do anything to their fellow members if and when the commission actually rules that a violation took place.

This is a purely political bill that will give uninformed voters feel goods while making the problem go from bad to worse. It will do little to actually fix the problem, but will look good on a campaign flier.

Click here to tell Representative Clark to take a constitutional.

Want proof? Look at Representative Carol Spackman-Moss’ ( D – Salt Lake – District 37) sound ethics bill,  HB 247 – Lobbyist Restriction Modifications.

Currently, a former legislator could lobby on behalf of a bill if they are engaging in lobbying that is on behalf of themselves or a business they are associated with (unless that business is associated with lobbying or government affairs).  Spackman-Moss’ bill would remove this loophole and demand that legislators wait one year after leaving the legislature before becoming a lobbyist…period.

This bill, and the “cooling off” period it is advocating, is just one of many Democratic ethics bills that are going nowhere because a Republican did not sponsor it. I have to wonder where this bill would if it was proposed by some random legislator in the heart of Utah – alas, I will never know.

This is a great example of a bill that will go nowhere because of the name associated to the bill.

Click here to contact Representative Spackman-Moss.

But it can also be abused…

You see, less honest campaigns can “forget” to file donations long after the financial reports are due – and long after the media has written its usual “this is how much money and where it came from” story it should do when financials are due – so long as they file an amendment. This can be at its worst when the campaign is over and a candidate finally remembers to report that they got $10,000 from a questionable lobby. Though this action is perfectly legal, they are not following the spirit of law.

This is where Representative Sheryl Allen’s (R – Bountiful, District 19) HB 56 comes in. The bill still allows for revisions if an honest mistake is made, but the amendment process is much more time consuming and requires an explanation for why the omission took place.

Now, this is the first of many ethics bills that I will be reporting on, and I am sure that this one will not be popular on the hill. I can’t wait to hear the arguments because I can tell you know that they will be about how it is important to keep the amendment process and that this impedes that. I would say that if they make every effort to be honest, they have nothing to worry about – the people that will object to this do so because they don’t want the public to see where their money is coming from.

Click here to contact Representative Allen

Fair Boundaries » Petition drive group taps Curtis Haring, leader of the Young Democrats of Utah.

By Cathy McKitrick

The group pushing an initiative to create an independent advisory commission for redrawing boundaries for Utah’s congressional and state legislative districts has hired an executive director.

Since organizing in April, Fair Boundaries has functioned on volunteer power. But initiative organizers believed it was time to take the statewide effort to the next level by hiring Curtis Haring to oversee the day-to-day work.

“Fair Boundaries has grown beyond what a group of volunteers could achieve in their spare time,” Coalition Director Trent Alvord said in a release, noting they’d sought a full-time staffer to make sure the initiative lands on November’s ballot.

Haring, 25, is vice-president of the Young Democrats of Utah and previously worked on Ralph Becker’s successful campaign for Salt Lake City mayor and Jean Welch Hill’s failed bid for state attorney general.

The job pays $2,500 a month, Haring said, plus anything extra from donations. By April 15, the group must gather 95,000 voter signatures from 26 of Utah’s 29 Senate districts to put the question to voters next fall.

“I believed in the cause long before I signed on,” said the Rose Park native. “I’m a citizen first and want to make sure the system is fair.”

###

My personal favorite is that someone in the comments section said that I was being paid to play solitaire – everyone knows I prefer free cell.

That…was not the case.

Liberal blogger Jeff Bell informed the internet of this poll and invited people to go and vote how they felt – not surprisingly his readers are not fans of the states appalling gerrymandered districts and voted accordingly. Soon the poll was overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of a commission (the last I saw it was leading by 85%), soon after it disappeared from Clark’s site.

But this post is not about a magical mystery poll – it is about the utter lack of criticism, demonstrated by Clark’s actions, that Republican leadership have in their position as representatives of the citizens of the state of Utah. This mindset that ignores the will of the people is a classic sign of a bloated and ineffective government that serves more as an oligarchy than a republic.

This pattern of behavior is nothing new: Vouchers, cuts in current health care funding for children and the elderly, questionable business practices with people indicted for fraud, bribery of opponents in elections, the rejection of an ethics commission, an utter disdain for the earth, a total rejection of public education – from preschool to college, and Byzantine laws regarding legal actives all point to a legislature that is out of touch with the people they are charged to represent.

So, does it come as a surprise that power-brokers want to do all they can to prevent the people from wrestling power away from them in favor of a more representative government? After all – the last time we challenged law makers in a head to head battle, the people overwhelmingly rejected decision makers. The battle regarding redistricting is another example of how the Utah Legislature loathes and despises the people they represent.

And so Speaker Clark is showing us the tactic House and Senate Republican leaders are going to employ in regards to this issue – deny there is a problem and reject the will of the people in favor of maintaining power.

I challenge Speaker Clark to post the results of his poll on his website, and I further challenge Speaker Clark to engage in an open and honest debate with representatives of the Fair Boundaries project. Furthermore I challenge Speaker Clark to allow this initiative to go to the people of Utah so that they may decide who represents them – if you are correct and that the Legislature is truly fit to choose its voters, then you should have no problem convincing the people of this fair state of this fact.