This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated.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.

I couldn't help musing over the debate in the Utah Legislature over House Bill 160, the bill lawmakers passed last week that overturned Salt Lake City's ordinance requiring drive-thru restaurants and businesses to serve cyclists.

Mayor Ralph Becker and the City Council have made bicycle accommodations a priority in Utah's capital and adopted the ordinance last September — despite objections from some restaurant owners who warned that allowing cyclists in drive-thrus posed safety and liability issues.

But legislators, in usurping the city's authority over its own jurisdiction, argued it was heavy-handed government imposing its will on businesses.

"We [the government] shouldn't be telling businesses how they should go through and operate their businesses," said Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, HB160's Senate sponsor.

Really?

Tell that to restaurateurs who, because of a legislative mandate, spend thousands of dollars to build "Zion Curtains" to block the mixing of alcoholic drinks from the view of patrons. Or tell it to the business owners who don't want guns in their establishments but have no choice because the Legislature says they have to allow firearms.

Hair today, law tomorrow • The Legislature has an affinity for state symbols. In Utah, we go way beyond the usual state tree, flower, bird or emblem.

We have a state cooking pot (the Dutch oven), a state folk dance (the square dance), a state firearm (the Browning M1911 automatic pistol), a state star (the Dubhe, pronounced the same as doobie, a slang term for a marijuana joint), and two vegetables (the Spanish sweet onion and the sugar beet). Lawmakers even switched the state tree last year from the Colorado blue spruce to the quaking aspen. In 2001, the Utah Senate passed a resolution naming Jell-O as the state's favorite snack food.

In all, about two dozen state symbols are codified in Utah law.

This year, Sen. Aaron Osmond, R-South Jordan, on behalf of a fourth-grade class at South Jordan's Daybreak Elementary School, is pushing a resolution to make the golden retriever the state's official domestic animal.

Now, another group of students, this one from a government class at Layton High, has weighed in on Utah's state-symbol fetish and proposed its own honoree in a letter to Sen. Stuart Adams, R-Layton.

Utah needs a state hairdo, the students wrote. And, of course, it should be the beehive. After all, this is the Beehive State.

"We have done extensive research, and found that the beehive is the hairdo that best symbolizes our state," the tongue-in-cheek letter said. "We would like you [Adams] to introduce a bill naming the beehive as the official state hairdo."

On a serious side, the students noted they would like the Legislature to spend more time on issues such as teacher salaries or clean air, "but state symbols seem to be more important issues."

They even attached a proposed bill, with the proper amendments to the current law.

Gods, guns and caucuses • Sen. Alvin Jackson, R-Highland, can attribute his position partly to the state's caucus-convention system in which delegates, selected by small neighborhood groups, choose their party's nominees in a convention.

District delegates picked Jackson after the general election to replace Sen. John Valentine, who stepped down to become Utah Tax Commission chairman. So it's understandable that Jackson is a staunch defender of the caucus-convention system.

When Salt Lake City resident John Yoon wrote to Jackson to disagree with the senator's bill that would make school board elections partisan — meaning school board candidates would go through the caucus-convention process — Jackson's response so troubled Yoon that Yoon posted it on his Facebook page.

"The first Republic is highlighted in Exodus 18: 13-26," Jackson wrote. "These versus [sic] highlight what where [sic] the first neighborhood caucus meetings, as captains over tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands were selected by the people to solve problems at the local level. The process they used is the same as we use today in our caucus system."

The Bible verses he sites are about Moses being a representative of the people to God. It wasn't a republic; it was a theocracy.

Sort of like, some say, Utah.