While Utah lawmakers congratulated themselves for chiseling government spending in this tight budget year, they didn't shy away from whittling property rights either.

"This was not a good session for personal-property rights," House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, said Monday. "We probably always ought to err on the side of caution of the individual property-rights owner. It's a very important issue that needs to be measured twice and cut once."

Nevertheless, several bills -- if the governor goes along -- will chip away at those rights.

SB78, sponsored by Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Eagle Mountain, would require all business owners to allow guns in their parking lots if they are kept within a car.

Clark backed the bill.

"Where do you balance that out with personal-property rights of the gun owner who is now on their property?" he asked. "It's a delicate balance of who gets to keep [the rights] and who gets less of them."

Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, sees this firearms bill as a victory for property owners.

"Guns are a personal property, and I think we protected that right," he said. "There's a trade-off there, I guess. You can't have everybody happy."

Even the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, according to chamber President Lane Beattie, was torn between supporting employees' rights to carry guns in their cars and business owners' concerns of having weapons on their premises against their will.

Another successful measure, SB68, would broaden the rights of mining companies to prospect and explore not only on their own properties but also --if they acquire the mineral rights -- beneath the surface of someone else's.

Howard Mitchell, who is the executor of his brother's 500-acre estate next to Kennecott's Bingham Canyon mine, worries the bill would allow the mine to dig on his land without compensation.

"The state is giving the advantage to the mining people," the West Jordan resident said. "The state is inserting itself between the landowner and the federal government."

But Sen. Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse, argues his bill balances property rights.

"You have two separate interests: The mining company, [which] has been in existence for over 100 years in the state, and their neighbors," Killpack said. "Kennecott understands it needs to be a good neighbor, but, on the same token, as time has moved along, you can't disregard their property rights."

In another case, landowners lost protection because a bill sank.

Rep. Ben Ferry, R-Corinne, unsuccessfully attempted to restrict public access to streams on private property that historically have been off-limits. His measure followed a Utah Supreme Court ruling that declared all streambeds publicly accessible.

"The ruling opened up access to places where nobody has ever been before without permission," Ferry said. "What [the ruling] did was violate all historical private-property rights. There are very few people who don't think the Supreme Court went too far."

But hundreds of anglers fired off e-mails and trekked to the Capitol to fight for access. Their voice, Ferry said, drowned out those of private-property owners with streams running through their land.

"The sleeping giant has awoken, and there's going to be unintended consequences," Ferry warned. "Personal-property rights were seriously infringed on in that ruling."

But Brent Bateman, lead attorney in the Office of the Property Rights Ombudsman, says a few bills did help property owners.

Several measures dealing with impact fees helped landowners, as did SB83, shielding property owners from the threat of condemnation, and SB41, making the process for placing power poles more public.

"Overall, I wouldn't call it a huge session for property rights," he said. "There weren't a lot of great steps forward in property rights, but there were some positives."

smcfarland@sltrib.com