This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The frugal Utah Legislature has privatized future state employee pensions, done away with their retirement benefits and plans to close several state liquor stores and lay off 150 workers.
But when it comes to preserving their own taxpayer-funded lifetime health insurance, it's a whole different budget issue.
Lawmakers reportedly were aghast this past legislative session when Rep. John Dougall, R-Highland, altered his HB331 in the Government Operations Standing Committee to put an end to the 100 percent state-funded health benefit lawmakers and their spouses get for life after they reach retirement age and had served in the Legislature for at least 10 years.
Some committee members may have swallowed their tongues when Dougall's substituted bill would have required that anyone in the Legislature after Jan. 1, 2013, would lose the privilege. Only those lawmakers who retired before then would be grandfathered in.
In an era when lawmakers have told providers of state programs that everyone must sacrifice in a time of austerity, nobody wanted to vote against imposing their own sacrifice in a public meeting.
The bill passed committee unanimously. Then it passed the House on a 63-0 vote.
Then it died in the Senate Rules Committee after a number of House members let their Senate colleagues know they wanted it dead, but only voted for it in public to insure their own political hides.
Sen. Dan Liljenquist, R-Bountiful, was the Senate sponsor, but could not budge the bill from Rules, even after a proposed amendment that would have kept the benefit for all sitting legislators and only imposed the cut-off for newly elected representatives of the people.
The Legislative Fiscal Analyst estimated the benefit package will cost the state $24 million for the lifetime coverage of all current and retired legislators and their spouses, based on average life expectancies.
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An experienced veteran • Gov. Gary Herbert has called a special session for Friday to undo what he and the Legislature recently did to government transparency laws in Utah.
And he has appointed a task force to come up with recommendations on how to balance the public's right to know with privacy rights.
The task force's chairman should know all about the political consequences of jamming a controversial bill through the legislature without public input. Salt Lake Chamber President Lane Beattie was named by Herbert to chair the working group that will consider changes to Utah's open records law. But in 1995, Beattie had the image of being anything but transparent.
He was the president of the Utah Senate and introduced an amendment to do away with Utah's minimum-mandatory sentencing for child sex abusers. The unintended consequences of the minimum-mandatory law, he said, had been that pedophiles paid expensive lawyers to plead their cases down to lower offenses and avoided prison altogether.
The amendment popped up on the last night of the session and jammed through both houses within about an hour. It was over and done with before anyone even knew what happened.
The reaction was brutal. Beattie got death threats and even had to leave the state for a while.
"I learned a valuable lesson," Beattie says now. "I did the right thing in the wrong way."
Beattie said launching the amendment on the last night and ramming it through the Legislature in minutes created the perception that there was something shady going on.
Then-Gov. Mike Leavitt called the Legislature into special session to delay the bill's implementation for a year. He assigned a 27-member commission of experts and legislators to study the issue. At the time, Beattie said his amendment was his way of putting the issue "on the table for discussion." Sound familiar?
So who better to fix a mistake than one who learned big-time from it?
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Impeccable timing • Gov. Herbert, who so far has managed to anger all sides of the government-records-accessibility issue, has done it again.
He called the special session for Friday, which will mess up three legislative fundraisers planned in Washington County this weekend.
Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, has his traditional fundraising barbecue Friday night. Sen. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, has his fundraiser croquet match Saturday and Rep. Brad Last, R-St. George, has a charitable golf tournament planned for Saturday.
In addition, about 20 lobbyists planned their annual dinner Thursday night and their own golf tournament with legislators on Saturday.
Some wonder why Herbert just can't have the special session during a regularly scheduled interim committee day when legislators will be at the Capitol anyway. The extra special session will cost taxpayers about $30,000.