The Utah Legislature passed in the session's final hours a resolution that allows a landfill proposed for construction on school trust lands in Tooele County to accept commercial waste, on top of municipal waste for which it already was licensed.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 2, which floated through the legislative process in the final week, reportedly will result in a bundle of cash stuffed into the pockets of a few well-connected lobbyists known either for their lengthy friendships to lawmakers or their ability to raise a lot of dough for legislative races.

Curiously, the company benefiting from the legislation, Wasatch Regional Solid Waste Management Corp., had no registered lobbyists during the critical phases of the resolution's gestation period. In the last week, Mike Zuhl of R&R Advertising registered to lobby for the firm.

But it's another bill, seen as companion legislation to SCR2, that has some local government officials around the state wondering who their friends are.

House Bill 246 was defeated through aggressive lobbying by hired guns for another company that argued the bill would give Wasatch an unfair competitive advantage to its Metro landfill on the Goshute reservation.

That legislation would have boosted state regulatory fees imposed on city and county garbage dumps to make the per-tonnage cost of operating public landfills equal to that of private facilities, like Wasatch Regional.

The new fees would have made it difficult for landfills operated by smaller cities and rural counties to keep going, likely creating more business for private, profit-making facilities like Wasatch.

HB246 also would have imposed a new fee, to be paid at the transfer stations for incoming waste, on "unregulated" landfills.

That would include Metro, since it is not regulated by the state because it sits on sovereign Goshute land. Metro pays fees to the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so an additional state fee would impose an added financial burden to Metro and give a competitive advantage to Wasatch.

Everybody associated with the issue says that the option to build the Wasatch facility is being sold by its four owners to the Allied Waste Company, which will then build the landfill.

That sale will net Wasatch's four owners - Mel Brown, Kevin Garn, Dave Nicponski and Jodi Hoffman - a few million dollars.

Brown, a former speaker of the Utah House of Representatives, helped put the deal together with the school trust lands, for which he was a lobbyist. Garn, a former House majority leader, put up most of the money for the engineering studies and other preliminary work needed to qualify for the permit. Nicponski, a lobbyist for manufacturing giant, ATK, steers generous campaign contributions to selected politicians.

Hoffman may be the most interesting partner. She is part owner and legal counsel. She also is the attorney/lobbyist for the Utah League of Cities and Towns, whose members, in several cases, finally concluded the bill to increase public landfill fees - that would help her company, as well as Allied - would hurt cities and towns.

It also would hurt counties that operate landfills, like Salt Lake County, which contracts with Tetris for its lobbying needs. Tetris is also the registered lobbyist for Allied and Tetris' principal, former state Sen. Paul Rogers, lobbied heavily for HB246. So Salt Lake County's lobbyist was pushing a bill that would have given a competitive advantage to the Wasatch facility being purchased by Allied - and a disadvantage to Salt Lake County's landfill.

Another potential victim of the trust lands/Wasatch/Allied deal - which will help schools by directing some of the landfill's royalties to the school trust lands - is tiny East Carbon City in eastern Utah - a member, by the way, of the Utah League of Cities and Towns.

East Carbon City experienced a "gilded age" since the 1980s because of the giant landfill built there through the efforts of lobbyists Doug Foxley and Steve Creamer - a lucrative endeavor for them as well.

The landfill's profits were boosted by refuse sent there from Salt Lake County, largely through the efforts of Rogers and his connections to Salt Lake County leaders. Those efforts earned Rogers some royalty payments.

Eventually, the landfill was purchased by Allied. And now, reportedly, much of the business currently going to the eastern Utah landfill will be diverted to Allied's new facility in Tooele County.

That will cut drastically the tax and fee revenues to East Carbon City, which has a $6 million debt left on a bond it purchased a few years ago to make improvements to the city's infrastructure.

prolly@sltrib.com