But bruised egos were palpable during a meeting of the Education Interim Committee, where a majority of members and the co-chairmen are staunch voucher supporters. Frustration with the state school board's handling of Utah's voucher law led the committee to ponder how much legal independence the board should have. The committee decided to table the issue until after November's voucher referendum vote.

Pro-voucher legislators were frustrated with the school board's refusal, despite the attorney general's advice, to offer vouchers while waiting for courts to decide the fate of a dubious part of Utah code. The board's actions were vindicated by the Utah Supreme Court this month, but some legislators want to make sure the state school board never ignores the attorney general's advice again.

In a letter to committee co-chairman Sen. Howard Stephenson, state school board chairman Kim Burningham declined to send a representative to the meeting, saying politicizing the issue further was a bad idea.

The letter infuriated Stephenson and others, who bristled at Burningham's reference to the meeting as a "gathering."

"I find it distressing, as I read the letter from chairman of the board Burningham, that he refuses to sit down and reason together," said Rep. Brad Dee, R-Ogden. "When we have a board that has statutory obligations and relations with the Legislature refusing to attend 'a gathering,' [it] demeans the political process of interim committees."

Who employs the state school board's legal advisors was of little concern to legislators before the voucher rift. But now they're considering how to force the board to follow the attorney general's advice and may even take away its ability to hire its own attorneys.

Several lawmakers strove to keep private school tuition vouchers out of Wednesday's discussion - referring instead to "the current situation," "recent matters" or "the issue at hand." Others insisted the issue was merely addressing balance of power.

"This isn't a crisis," said Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George. "This is just elected bodies working out their relationship."

Members of the state school board and the Attorney General's Office want to get past the voucher rift. Bill Evans, the attorney general's education division chief, said his office has a reasonable relationship with the state school board, despite "tension" over vouchers.

"Our relationship with them is good," Evans said. "It's collegial and appropriate and we get along fine together."

He said the situation might have been thornier if the court ruling had not gone the board's way, which could have left it legally vulnerable for not following the attorney general's advice. But the Supreme Court's decision "would put to rest most of the controversy about whether they were acting improperly or not," Evans said, noting that the ruling would "seem to take a lot of wind out of the sails" of anyone accusing the board of disobeying the law.

Yet that's exactly what Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Lehi, seemed to suggest when he asked Evans if a party could be sued for disobeying the attorney general's advice "in the interim time before they were able to get their way before a sympathetic judge."

The implication that the Supreme Court's unanimous decision represents a "sympathetic judge" elicited titters from voucher opponents in the committee room, which drew Stephenson's ire.

"If you find a committee member's comments humorous, keep it to yourselves or I'll clear the room," he said.

Before the supreme court's decision, the committee had planned to consider the state school board's refusal to offer vouchers. But after the court validated that decision, the committee turned to the board's legal independence.

They spent the first half of Wednesday's meeting discussing the issue, leaving only 90 minutes to consider a teacher training pilot program and school quality indicators.