The self-serving Utah Legislature

It would be funny if it weren't so serious but the Utah Legislature is in the middle of yet another comedy routine where they pass a lot of laws, get a lot of publicity and scare the few people who can be bothered to pay attention.

The easiest target of them all is Sen. Chris Buttars. Don't confuse him with Butters on South Park, although that might not be too difficult because both are ridiculous and hilarious.

Butters has a few famous snafus. He called a bill he didn't like a "black baby" a "dark, ugly thing," which is incredibly insensitive even if it isn't meant to be racist. It is a pretty clear demonstration that he doesn't know much outside of his fairly small circle of reality.

He also claimed on the radio that the Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Board of Education) to integrate schools was "wrong to begin with." He mounted some lame defenses, including fibbing to a local TV station.

He also wanted the legislature to urge stores to use only "Merry Christmas" and not "Happy Holidays" or other terms around Christmas. While I am pro-Christmas, I am not in favor of the government telling stores what to say or promoting Christianity. I think Christianity can defend itself. His list goes on but I didn't want this to be about him, he just makes it extremely easy. I am not saying he is a bad person (although there is a fair amount of evidence that his actions cause harm to individuals which pushes me toward that conclusion) but I have no problem at all saying he doesn't have the vision or awareness to be making laws for Utah or even a school board. I am sure the folks in his ward think he is great and he probably knows a lot of funny jokes and has some charm.


I have also known a legislator who was also a vice president of a college which immediately strikes me as a conflict of interest since that body governs education. He was the obstacle to my college newspaper getting some crime reports from the college. The police are required by law to share information with the public to discourage corruption and encourage us to have a free and informed society. These are called "Sunshine" laws because they shed light on government (not just police) information.

After my newspaper made legal efforts to get more information from the campus police after he refused to tell us about threats to a teacher made on a voice mail. By keeping this "hush hush" he wanted to protect the teacher and not give publicity to the caller which he though the person craved. The threats were violent and heinous and frightening when he shared them with me as part of the course of the discussion but not for publication. Those aren't horrible goals but they might also have the effect of not having other teachers who received similar threats come forward or might alert somebody who knew the offender to bring his name to the police or to alert others (non-teachers) that a crazy person was around the college, was making threats and was potentially dangerous. It seems to me that that students and teachers' best interests were in knowing this was going on. But, this "good" fellow didn't want the information out at his college.

So, using his perhaps conflicted position as a lawmaker, he drafted a law to alter Utah's existing laws on government records access known as "gramma" laws. This rallied not only journalists but other lawmakers and it didn't pass but it illustrates my point.

My other personal experience involved an a landlord legislator that I thought was dishonest and mean, making what I and others viewed as pro-landlord, anti-renter laws. The whole thing adds to the popular notion that politicians are self-serving. This year they have tried to get year-round pay which I find completely obscene when many in their districts have no pay and no jobs.

Finally they spend a lot of time doing personal things for their voters like honoring them from the floor or in an easy example, (honoring a sports team). This is well intentioned but is it more important than doing what might serve the state?

The best solution for all of this that I have heard is to reduce the time the legislature meets to a few days. I am willing to give them a week but it already seems that most things that get done happen in the last few days or even the last 48 hours anyway. This will never happen because the folks who need to pass the laws would hurt their own interests and they will never do that but I suspect they would accomplish a lot if they only had five days to do it. Certainly the focus would definitely be on what is deemed most important.

Wow, this might be the most boring blog post in the history of blogs but I sure feel better.