Thursday Morning Weber County Forum News Roundup

Sage editorial advice for Senator Christensen; harsh lessons in Utah civics for one eighth-grader; and local cops "dress up" like combat troops and pretend to be actual "tough-guys"

We've rounded up a few interesting local news stories this morning, just to give our ever-restless WCF readers a little something to chew on this morning. Here they are, reeled out in no particular order of importance, if only to set your idle tongues all awaggin':

1) Strong editorial in this morning's Standard-Examiner, urging State Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, erstwile winner of the 2013 Elmer Fudd lookalike contest, to exercise some restraint and to "chill" on his "solemn" vow "to make sure a bill vetoed by the governor — that allows to carry a concealed, unloaded gun without a permit — is passed early in next year’s legislative session":

• Our View: Christensen’s gun charge

The Standard advises "Christensen, and others who support an HB76-type bill to "avoid the attitude of 'this-bill-is-just-fine-as-it-is,'” "take the long break before next year’s legislative session," "really talk to the public about their proposal," and "provide sensible arguments as to why Utah gun laws are so insufficient that an HB76-type remedy is needed;" and wethinks the Standard is exactly right about this.

And why do we question the wisdom of a bill which would allow all Utah "adults" to pack their 2d Amendment heavy artillery concealed?  The unassilable fact that some Utah "adults" just "might" be a "mite" more "adult"  than some other "adult" Utahns  will effortlessly provide our "nutshell" rationale, we'll suppose:

Yep. That just about sums it all up, que no?

Fatcat OSD Bureaucrat #1

2) Harsh lessons in Utah civics were learned by a Mount Ogden Junior High eighth-grader this week, or so the Standard reports, as a concerned and enterprising Ogden school-kid had the audacity to tangle with an intransigent Ogden School District Supervisor Brad Smith (Official motto: dumbing down Utah schoolkids 20 librarians at a time) over Smith's gutting of the OSD library system.  What's clear is that Smith's mind is already made up, despite Emery Young's veritable laundry list of good ideas.  And Smith's solution to OSD's funding problem?  Send a pack of fat-cat school administrators on a junket  to the University of Virginia, to bone up on further leading-edge "school turnaround" strategies, we suppose:

• After walkout fizzles, Ogden student activist meets with super over librarian issue

A Weber County Forum Tip O' the Hat to the young Emery Young, however. It's quite encouraging, wethink, to observe a fresh new generation of steely-eyed Ogden City political activists rising up.

3) Mind boggling puff-piece in the Standard, featuring a small array of pictures showing local cops dressed up like combat troops and touting "the first weeklong training session of the fledgling Tactical Operations Group, which is planned to be an annual event":

• New Weber police unit practices door kicking in mockups

“We want to inoculate these guys to everything that could happen as realistically as possible,” says Weber Morgan Narcotics Strike Force and TOG administrator Troy Burnett, thus prompting this sodden blogmeister query:

"Are these fellers devoting any time at all, as part of their 'simulated' door-kicking warrant service practice, toward 'innoculating' themselves in the direction of developing the 'highly-practical' preliminary skill of finding the right friggin' 'simulated address' in the first-place?"

Somehow, we suspect not...

Just a thought...

Breaking: Utah Governor Vetoes Bill to Allow Carrying Concealed Gun Without Permit

Herbert’s rejection of the so-called constitutional carry measure sets up clumsy override fight

Informative news from the Salt Lake Tribune, as Lee Davidson reports that Governor Gary Herbert, at his first practical opportunity since adjournment of the 2013 Utah General Legislative session, has predictably applied his gubernatorial power to wield his mighty veto pen, tentatively blotting out at least one highly controversial piece of 2013 legislation in one fell stroke: 

• Utah governor’s veto of bill to ditch gun permits sets up override battle

In that connection, the Governor accompanied yesterday's veto with this brief and helpful explanatory statement, which we've gleaned from Herbert's Facebook page:

Today I vetoed H.B. 76. I cherish the Second Amendment and the right of self defense which it protects. I also support Utah's current set of laws and regulations governing firearms. Utah's permitting system has been in place for decades, and in its current form for more than 15 years. In that time, it has become a national model. 
As a gun owner and concealed firearm permit holder, I understand the value of the permit, both to firearm owners and to the public at large. As a State, we must exercise extreme care that we not impose undue burdens on the right to bear arms, but I have yet to receive any credible evidence that Utah's current permit process constitutes a hardship.

Toast?

So yes; just as we predicted here at Weber County Forum just about this time last week, Rep. John G. Mathis's HB 76 is toast, for the time being at least, as a result of Herbert's executive intervention.  So long as our uppity, gun-loving state legislature doesn't suffer the inconvenient fate of getting dragged back to the now-abandoned Utah House and Senate legislative chambers for a post-session veto override vote, Herbert's veto will stand.

That latter legislative option is by no means inevitable of course, due to a variety of tricky obstacles which Mr. Davidson's story further sets forth:

Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, said legislative leaders will wait until after April 3 —the deadline for Herbert to sign bills — to see how many other bills could face attempts at a veto override. Then they will poll members about how many want an override session.
"I know HB76 passed both houses with a two-thirds vote," Niederhauser said. "But I really don’t know how hard or how soft that vote is. We won’t know until we do our polling."
House Speaker Becky Lockhart, R-Provo, said House members would be "thoughtful and methodical and evaluate whether or not they want to go into override. It’s a pretty serious thing."
While [Senate sponsor Allen] Christensen said he and others will push for a veto override, he does not know how strong of an appetite lawmakers have for that.
"When it comes to pushing back that strongly, there are a lot of those votes that were not emphatic. They were ‘yes’ votes for the bill — but will they hold up? I would certainly like to see the override happen, and I will be pushing for it. I would hesitate to try to guess at the results of an override session," Christensen said. [Links added].

So at this juncture, the future of this bill can be fairly characterized as stuck in limbo, we suppose, with Utah's legislative leadership evidencing something of a disarray, wondering on the one hand whether they can muster either the legislative political will and/or votes to both call the legislature back into session to again duplicate the intra-session 2/3 House and Senate majorities which would be necessary to shove HB 76 back down Herbert's throat.  Meanwhile, Governor Herbert, on the other hand, remains highly visible on Capitol Hil and keeps repeating the refrain "It ain't broke; so don't fix it" over and over again, every time some Utah news reporter sticks a microphone or notepad in his grill.

Needless to say, we'll be following developments regarding this bill with the an Eye of an Eagle, whilst the internecine bickering concerning the ultimate fate of  HB76 continues to play out.

And please don't neglect to throw in your own savvy 2¢, Gentle Readers, in our WCF comments section below.

Update 3/23/13 11:30 a.m.:

2013 Utah Legislative Session Wrap-up: Herbert Says It’s Likely He’ll Use Veto Pen

Reader-interaction Bonus Question: Governor Herbert is likely to veto one of the 524 bills that were passed in the State Legislature this year; so what about the 523 others?

In the interest of jump-starting another Weber County Forum discussion, now that the 2013 Utah legislative general session has drawn to a close, and as Utah "legislator critters" now find themselves wending their ways back to their own home towns and remote Utah farmsteads, we'll shine the spotlight on this morning's Standard-Examiner front page story,  reporting that Governor Gary Herbert now embarks upon another Utah legislative session tradition, i.e., deciding which "legislatively passed" bills to which he'll affix his signature, and which ones he'll give the ax.  Read up, folks:

• Herbert says it’s likely he’ll use veto pen

"One candidate for a veto this year is HB 76, which would amend the state law on concealed carry weapons. The governor has staunchly maintained he thinks the state’s firearms laws are adequate and has hinted at a veto, but has never definitely said yes or no on the matter," S-E reporter Antone Clark duly reports.

This legislation, would of course render Utah's highly-popular concealed weapons permits superfluous, if not obsolete, and spell the death knell for Utah's booming Concealed Weapons Permit Training industry. Besides, creating a situation where every man jack with an itchy trigger finger could legally carry a weapon without a permit, whether concealed or not concealed, is an statutory outcome that even the most rabid Utah gun nuts would properly tremble to contemplate, wethinks.

Inasmuch as Governor Herbert says he's not changed his "if it ain't broke don't fix it"  position on the state’s existing gun laws, our bet that HB76 will wind up in Herbert's trash-can soon after the bill arriives on his desk, even though he's hedged a mite by saying (reassuringly, we suppose,) that it is [best] to be "thoughtful and methodical in the review process." It's thus to be the gubernatorial "kiss of death" for GOP Rep. John G. Mathis's HB76, wethinks.

OK, folks; now that we've taken our turn "at bat" and dealt with the surely doomed HB76, what about the other bills that are headed for signature on the governor's desk?  "Utah lawmakers passed 524 bills in the 45-day [2013] legislative session," according to the Standard-Examiner; so what about the other 523?

In that connection we've compiled a list, gleaned from the pages of our Northern Utah media over the past few days since the gavel came down ending Utah General Legislative Session 2013. We'll accordingly invite you to plow through these recently prominent 2013 legislative stories, and make your own predictions.

• 2013 Utah Legislature Post-Session News Summary 

So which bills among this admittedly abbreviated list do you predict that Governor Herbert with strike with his trusty veto pen?  Better yet, which of these (or any other 2013 bill that you may come up with) would you "give the ax" if you stood in the shoes of Governor Herbert?

Time for a little reader-interactive weekend fun, we do believe. So don't let the cat get your tongues.