This morning's Standard-Examiner reports on the State Legislature's solution to the HB-466 problem: The Utah Legislature has taken the coward's way out. Rather than pass a bill to fully cure the "unintended consequences" of last year's HB-466, a law which now leaves 150 or so Weber County citizens with the prospect of being politically disenfranchised, and living under the thumb of corporate dictatorship for the next two to four years, both chambers instead passed the watered down version, which basically "shuts the barn door after the animals have escaped."
Despite Senator Allen Christensen's eloquent plea (audio transcript 5:23), on the State Senate floor to amend HB-146 to include retroactivity provisions, his Senate colleagues turned him down flat for the second time in a row, passed HB-146 by a 25-0 vote, and then promptly trotted the bill back over to the assembled House, where it passed 67-0. As the 2008 legislative session draws to a close, the citizens of soon-to-be-incorporated "Powderville" are now left to fend for themselves; and meanwhile, the entire State Legislature, the very body which created the whole mess in the first place, will be no doubt patting itself on the back and congratulating itself for another "job" well done.
We'll incorporate a few selected quotes from today's Jeff DeMoss story:
Residents of Eden who have been involuntarily drawn into the Powder Mountain plans descended on the state Capitol Tuesday to express their concerns with the process.That's obviously okay with the State Legislature. Once again, the Legislature has turned its back on the "little people."
“A few large landowners will be able to tax us and enter into financial arrangements for which we will bear the liability in the long run,” said Darla Van Zeben, one of the organizers of a movement against the development.
And we just loved this comment from Representative Brown, whose hopelessly flawed HB-466 caused the whole problem in the first place: “The issue is the law is what it is,” Brown said. “Whether it’s good or bad or flawed, we can’t change laws in the middle of the stream. For everyone who benefits, someone gets hurt.” Remarkable statement from a sitting Utah State Representative, we think. What's important we guess, at least from Rep. Brown's standpoint: At least those developers who took advantage of the legislature's admitted error won't be the ones who get hurt. And of course this whole travesty doesn't actually impair the fundamental civil rights of Representative Brown's own constituents themselves. We also wonder what exactly people Like Rep. Brown believe they should be expected to do, as their primary legislative obligation, if not to correct the effect of bad laws -- especially bad laws that are of their own making?
We believe Senator Christensen hit the nail precisely on the head with this:
“Some people in this body don’t have the political will to back up and admit there was a wrong, and we should right it,” said Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, who apologized for voting in favor of HB 466 last year.And what say our gentle readers about all this?
“I had no idea it was wrong at the time,” he said. “I think it flew past all of us.”
5 comments:
I am disappointed in the lack of retro-activity in the bill. They should have simply repealed HB466 retro to the time they passed it.
It's hard for the gummint to admit they are TOTAL jerks.
But what they did is much better than leaving things the way they were.
We can only hope that Powderville will not come to pass, due to the credit crisis.
Also, if the Weber County Commission simply votes the present petition down and asks for it to be re-filed, it would fall under the new law. It would seem that would have little legal complication. Hopefully the county commission will stand up to this abomination.
Let's always remember that politics is a matter of partial victories. I am often disappointed in Republicans, but I can't say the Democrats distinguished themselves in this process at all.
While I agree that the leaders of the legislature chose not to step up and correct the flawed provisions of HB466 and include the retro provisions, it is important that we will have a bill signed that ends the negative impacts of HB466.
This is a good example of how the citizens should watch for and read all legislation. You cannot rely on the legislators or the state legislative attorneys to protect our interests. If you are aware of flaws in a proposed bill, contact your representatives without delay.
zeke:
About citizens watching for and reading all proposed legislation. Zeke, while that is under ideal circumstances, a good idea, I don't think it's a practical one. In a normal legislative session, that involves thousands of pages of prospective legislation, much of it composed in legalese. Hell, I'd be happy if we could just get our legislators to read the bills they are voting on, but we can't seem to do even that. As one noted last session, when someone complained that a bill was being rushed through without the members understanding what it was they were voting on, "we vote all the time here on bills we don't understand."
We have, really, most voters, to rely on our legislators to understand the bills they are voting on, and what they will do. It's their job. The other thing we should be able to rely on is the press. It's their job too to look at legislation, to find potential problems and bring them to public attention. Sadly, way more often than not, the press does not do that job very well, and they... and we... find out about the disasters like the Developers Dream Act only after they become laws and the consequences of the legislators being asleep at the switch become all too apparent.
My view is, a more vigorous, vigilant press would go a long way... not all the way, but a long way... toward forcing legislators to actually do the job we elect them to do. Which job includes understanding what the bills they vote on contain and what the likely outcomes of passing them will be. [I know, I know, that's a massive job involving huge amounts of work, and legislating is only a part time job paying very little. But there it is, that's the job. And if you don't want to do it for the pay offered, don't run for the office.]
Curm, it might also help if we had something like honest non self serving leadership controlling the proposed legislation, obviosly the slipping HB466 into the proccess so late was intentional and produced exactly the prefered outcome. That bill never should have survived the committee.
Bill:
Oh, agreed. But it's just that sort of thing that a vigilant press ought to catch. Ought, in fact, to go hunting for.
There are other reforms that might be made, like eliminating filing bills by title only, with the contents stuffed in at the last minute so that the non-sponsors have no reasonable time to figure out what's in it and what the bill's consequences might be.
To be fair, it's not just the Utah legislature that operates this way. In Congress, bills, particularly appropriations bills coming out of conference committees are sometimes made available to members only hours or a day or two before they are to be voted on. These bills can run to 600 pages or so without half trying.
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