This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Relations between Gov. Gary Herbert and Utah House leaders have been tense at times, their squabbles spilling into the public arena.

When House Speaker Greg Hughes said earlier he would not bring Herbert's Healthy Utah plan up for debate, even though it had passed the Senate, the governor was ticked.

Then, when Herbert expressed some doubt about moving the Utah State Prison from Draper — a pet project of Hughes, who represents that area — the speaker suggested the governor was leveraging that issue to boost Healthy Utah.

With that kind of uneasiness, it doesn't help when a top official for one side disses the other and inadvertently sends that criticism into the digital universe.

One of those oops moments happened recently to Justin Harding, the governor's chief of staff.

Paul Mero, former head of the conservative Sutherland Institute, sent a respectful email to all the House members last week, urging them to support Healthy Utah. Mero rattled off several arguments why conservatives such as himself and most House members should get behind Herbert's plan.

Harding blind-copied the email and sent this reply back to Mero:

"I concur, the lack of penetration within the [House GOP] caucus regarding Healthy Utah 2.0 is both alarming as well as unsettling. In some respects, I feel that leadership has deliberately obfuscated, withholding information from their membership, causing them to jump at shadows. I feel that if the body knew what was contained in our plan, they would embrace it. However, the House has not created a forum where that information can get out. Instead, they've doubled down."

Unfortunately, Harding's note didn't go to just Mero. He accidentally hit "reply all." Consequently, all the House members, including the leaders he scolded, received his rant.

Harding told me that, as soon as he realized the goof, he sent another email to all the members apologizing. He also sent personal apologies to Hughes and the other House leaders, even following up with written notes.

"Sometimes, you get caught up in the emotion of these issues and say some things," he said, noting that the relations have been mended.

Tongue twister • A lobbying organization representing lobbyists has hired a lobbyist to lobby the Utah Legislature to pass a bill removing the requirement that lobbyists identify themselves as lobbyists while lobbying the Legislature.

Did you get all that?

The group is the Capitol Hill Association. Lobbyists formed it several years ago to represent their common interests. The association does not like the requirement, adopted by the Legislature last year, that when lobbying at the Utah Capitol, lobbyists must wear badges that say "LOBBYIST," along with their name.

The group tapped lobbyist John T. Nielsen to woo legislators into supporting SB207, sponsored by Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo. The measure would erase the identification requirement and allow lobbyists to mingle with lawmakers just like regular folk do.

Bramble says he is pushing the bill to eliminate the badge because he was the one responsible for getting that rule in there in the first place.

The Provo lawmaker had a bill last year outlining responsibilities for lobbyists and, jokingly, put the badge mandate in a substitute measure. He took it out in a second substitute, but somehow it got reinserted with a floor amendment.

"Now, you have a situation where people testifying before committees on behalf of government agencies or nonprofits or themselves [who] don't have to wear badges, but contract lobbyists do," Bramble said. "I just want to level the playing field."

Guns on campus • Utah Valley University professor Jim Harris was in a restroom in the Science Building on Monday when a student told him he had just seen a holstered gun left in a toilet stall.

Harris checked. Sure enough, a small revolver was resting on the toilet paper dispenser. The prof took the gun to an administrative assistant in the building, and she called campus police, who picked it up.

No real harm done, apparently, but certainly a cause for concern.