This one has to do with radiation safety.
The State Department of Environmental Quality, in the interest of safety and quality assurance, has for years made its building available for the periodic Industrial Radiography and Radiation exam administered by the American Society for Nondestructive Testing.
The exam is to ensure that local radiography companies can certify their employees to use radioactive materials in a safe way. Those taking the exam to earn certification pay about $400 and the exam itself is scheduled months in advance.
One exam was scheduled for last Saturday and several industrial radiography companies planned to send employees to the DEQ, which also made an employee available to proctor the test.
Then, at the last minute, DEQ officials canceled the test because the building's power would have had to be turned on to cool it to ideal temperatures for certain types of exercises in the exam.
They determined that because one of the goals of the four-day workweek is to conserve energy, it would be against policy to open the building and turn on the electricity for the air conditioning on Saturday, which actually would have been a fifth day of use that week.
DEQ Deputy Director Bill Sinclair says officials are working with the companies that planned to participate in the test to reschedule, as long as it is between Monday and Thursday.
More unintended fallout: Gov. Huntsman's four-day workweek order not only affects state offices. In some cases, it affects federal offices, even though they haven't agreed to the deal.
Several folks who wanted to do business Friday with the Internal Revenue Service called and got a recorded message saying the office was open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Once they arrived, however, they discovered the IRS office was closed because it shares the building at 210 N. 1950 West with the State Tax Commission. And, of course, the whole building had to be closed to save energy.
Tithing? It's been well established through news stories the past few weeks that while gas prices are finally going down, Utah's prices at the pumps remain high and are well above the average price in other states.
But this example is too blatant to ignore. A reader notes that when she was returning home from a business trip to Wyoming last week, she filled up at the last Flying J in Wyoming before crossing the state line into Utah. The price was $3.83 per gallon.
Then she crossed into Utah and noticed the first Flying J she came to, just a few miles from where she filled up, was charging $4.13 per gallon, a 30-cent difference.
Bipartisan support: Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, the former Democratic leader in the State House of Representatives, was attending the FrontRunner South grand opening Tuesday and decided to walk the mile distance from the luncheon at Thanksgiving Point to the ceremony location.
Suddenly, House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, pulled up along side and offered Becker a ride, which he accepted.
Wonder if they talked about soccer during their quality time together.
prolly@sltrib.com
