A second bill amending the one currently being challenged re-creates key parts of the original voucher plan. Lawmakers say they will use the amendment bill to start handing out private school vouchers even if a referendum shelves the original law.

"Short of a court-ordered injunction, vouchers are going to go forward," Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble said Thursday.

A group calling itself Utahns for Public Schools is trying to collect enough signatures to put Utah's new school voucher law on hold until the public votes whether to repeal it. The law would let parents of public school children put tax dollars toward private school tuition.

Pat Rusk, a spokeswoman for the referendum group, was stunned legislative leaders would push forward with a voucher program before letting the public vote on it.

"So even if we get 92,000 signatures from the people of this state, they would continue the program anyway?" marveled Rusk, former president of the state's largest teachers' union. "I guess my question is, which master are they serving?"

The referendum drive targets HB148, the original voucher bill. If 10 percent of the last election's voters sign a petition, the law will be put on hold until Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. sets an election to let the public vote on a repeal.

But a second bill amended the original and recreated all but three sections of HB148, including the one that would award "mitigation monies" to public schools. Voucher supporters say the program could move forward under that law regardless of the referendum outcome.

Legislative leaders and voucher supporters were gloating over the discovery Thursday.

"They thought they had this trump card they were going to play," Bramble said. "It appears they filed a referendum against the wrong piece of legislation."

Janet Jenson, an attorney representing the referendum group, said it wasn't possible to challenge the amendment bill because it hadn't been signed into law by the time the referendum deadline passed. Besides, she said, the amendment bill doesn't supersede the original, meaning repealing the original would kill them both.

"We're on really solid ground and if they want to challenge it they can," Jenson said.

Michael Cragun, election specialist for the Lieutenant Governor's Office, sided with Bramble and said the referendum "may be pointless." Ultimately, the matter may end up being sorted out by lawyers.

But omissions in the amendment bill might make it impossible to implement, said Carol Lear, Utah Office of Education director of school law and legislation.

Along with the section defining terms and guidelines referenced throughout, the second bill omits a section limiting state authority to regulate private schools. If legislators pressure the state Board of Education to implement the second bill, those regulations could follow.

"Boy, we would certainly consider that an open invitation to provide some really necessary limitations on participating schools," Lear said.

But the most significant omission in the second bill is the section awarding "mitigation monies" to school districts. That key provision, designed to limit financial harm to public schools, secured several swing votes key to the original bill's single-vote passage in the House.

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