Several years ago, Salt Lake County was pushing a bill at the Legislature to allow its county and municipal fire departments to offer emergency ambulance service rather than having to contract with privately owned Gold Cross Ambulance. The county already sent EMTs to every emergency, so it sought the right to remedy that costly duplication of services by putting its own EMTs and ambulance drivers together.

However, Dan Eastman, then a state senator, told some legislative colleagues he had heard from LDS Church Apostle Russell M. Ballard, who discouraged any legislation that would hurt Gold Cross' business. The firm's owner, Gene Moffatt, was serving as an LDS mission president at the time, and Ballard felt it was unfair to go after the firm while Moffatt was away. So the watered-down bill that passed added new constraints that made it less attractive for local governments to bid against Gold Cross.

In Salt Lake County, two municipalities have done so anyway: West Valley City now operates its own ambulance service and Salt Lake City accepted the bid of Gold Cross competitor Southwest Ambulance Service. Still, Gold Cross maintains its monopoly in the rest of the county and in many locales around the state.

Now Southwest plans to bolt when its county contract expires because the Legislature has placed shackles on the business that impede its ability to make a profit. State law now requires that the ambulance provider for emergency services in a defined area be the sole provider for nonemergency transports -- from nursing homes to hospitals, hospitals to hospitals, clinics to hospitals, etc.

That, says Boo Heffner, head of Southwest's parent company, is unprecedented. He says Utah is the only state that prohibits competitive bidding for inter-facility transport, the profitable side of the business.

The inter-facility transport controversy is not what triggered ecclesiastical intervention to protect Gold Cross from government competition. But it's another case where legislators seem to be overly protective of Gold Cross' monopoly, and their motivation appears to be cold hard cash.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the defeat of a bill last winter that would have allowed ambulance services to compete for inter-facility contracts. I found it ironic that a conservative Legislature, supposedly free-market friendly, had approved a state-sanctioned monopoly.

Here is the rest of the story: Lobbyists for Southwest thought they had an agreement with the city of Sandy -- an influential player at the Legislature -- that the city would not oppose the bill. The legislation would have permitted competitive bidding if Southwest went along with an amendment giving local entities the option of controlling their own 911 operations, including non-emergency, inter-facility transport.

But when the amended bill came to a vote, Sandy balked. Other last-minute text messages from local officials prompted several legislators to swing behind Sandy and the bill was dead.

Here's the kicker: The latest campaign finance reports reveal that Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan received a $6,500 contribution from Gold Cross Ambulance, which, since 2006, has showered more than $200,000 on Utah elected officials -- mostly legislators -- and political parties and political action committees.