This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
To its credit, the Utah Transportation Commission refused this week to skew the state's critical highway-building priorities in favor of a pet project pushed by Utah House Speaker Greg Curtis.
In deciding how to spend the $1 billion that the Utah Legislature appropriated this year for roads, the commission wisely declined to commit $100 million to build a roadway across the former Geneva Steel property in Utah County. Not that the Vineyard Connector between I-15 and Utah Lake is necessarily a bad idea. It will, when completed, serve as an alternative to I-15 congestion and as an alternate route when the interstate is eventually reconstructed.
It's just that fully funding a road when work on a federally mandated environmental impact statement hasn't even begun is incautious and unnecessary. Instead, the commission set aside $30 million to pay for the impact statement and land for the highway corridor, which will cut across an 1,800-acre parcel of real estate where Anderson Development plans to build a mixed-use project. Anderson had hoped to see the highway fully funded this year so definitive plans for its project could be completed and presented to local elected officials as a certainty.
Curtis was involved in the back-room effort to fast-track the roadway ahead of projects that already had been thoroughly evaluated by the Utah Department of Transportation and ranked by priority. What is troubling about Curtis' involvement is the fact that he is a partner in the law firm that represents Anderson Development.
Curtis has listed Anderson Development on his legislative conflict-of-interest form. But, in the just-trust-me world of the Utah Legislature, that doesn't mean lawmakers can't go right ahead and act in their own self-interest or that of a well-heeled client, public perception and good public policy be damned.
We are not prepared to pass judgment on the relative merits of all of the Transportation Commission's decisions regarding the $1 billion Critical Highway Needs Fund passed by the Legislature with virtually no public debate. But in the case of the Vineyard Connector, the commission essentially stood up to the bully-boy blandishments of the House speaker and a few of his cohorts and did the right thing.