I believed them, as I suspect most voters did.

But now I am beginning to doubt.

Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, has introduced legislation that would prohibit cities in Utah from instituting domestic partnership registries, as Salt Lake City did this month.

This new domestic partnership registry really does three things:

1. Allows two adults who depend on each other financially to have access to visit each other in the hospital, only in Salt Lake City.

2. Allows two adults who depend on each other financially to get a discount at city recreational facilities (public pools, etc.), again, only in Salt Lake City.

3. Allows businesses that choose to offer their employees domestic partnership benefits a more efficient way to determine who qualifies and who doesn't.

Buttars' bill lacks the conservative values he professes and has mean-spirited intentions.

Salt Lake City, acting as a local government, made a local decision. Now, Buttars is trying to say local government should only have the right to make local decisions if those decisions agree with his views. That is hardly a conservative approach.

Although Buttars cites Becker's "hidden agenda," this measure was clearly delineated in Becker's campaign literature and Web site, and nothing was "hidden" about his agenda, which the citizens of Salt Lake City embraced overwhelmingly in November. Local citizens made local decisions, and now Buttars, who isn't a resident of the community, is trying to revoke the will of the citizens to determine their own future.

Additionally, this measure is good for business, a true conservative principle. This allows the free market to determine domestic partnership benefits with more ease. It is a true conservative principle to empower businesses to operate with more ease and allow the free market to run with little interference of government. Buttars should, as a conservative, embrace the ability for businesses to operate with more ease.

But what bothers me most is not that a self-proclaimed conservative is acting in such a non-conservative manner - but rather that he's being so mean-spirited.

It is mean-spirited to say that loving, committed couples who rely on each other financially should be denied access to see one another during an emergency or illness at a hospital. It is mean-spirited to deny a few dollars savings on a "family pass" to a public facility to a couple who rely on each other in every way as a committed couple; who pay taxes and contribute to their community.

There is nothing wrong with local communities being able to make local decisions. Buttars needs to recognize that Salt Lake City is trying to do its best by all of its residents. Utahns, by nature, want to do the right thing by their neighbors. Protecting all our neighbors' right to see each other in the hospital during tragic events, or letting our neighbors get a "family" or "group" discount to a city-owned facility, are the sort of fairness measures the majority of Utahns support.

A domestic partnership registry is the sort of local decision that Salt Lake City's leaders are appropriately charged with determining for themselves, without a West Jordan state senator dictating to them.

I call on the State Senate to reject Buttars' bill. It is neither conservative nor neighborly - and Utah is both.

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* MIKE KELLERMEYER served on the West Jordan City Council from 2003 until Jan. 31, 2007.