Late to the party » Utahns who breathe should applaud Rep. Patrice Arent’s bill that would create an Air Quality Task Force of legislators. We only wish the effort had begun 20 years ago. Air pollution trapped in northern Utah valleys during winter temperature inversions has been a major public health issue for at least that long. It is a measure of the Legislature’s refusal to deal with the issue that a task force is only now getting a push that may have a chance at passage. The bill would create a group of 13 legislators who would examine air quality issues and suggest solutions next fall. The Legislature then could deal with bills a year from now. In the meantime, Gov. Gary Herbert has promised a voluntary air pollution reduction effort and state environmental regulators will trot out a plan to deal with pollution from fine particles in the next couple of months. Better late than never.

Photos

• 
• 

	Join the Discussion
	Post a Comment

Now they tell us » Legislators spent a year drawing new district boundaries for the state’s legislative offices and congressional seats. They created an interactive website that allowed Utahns to construct and propose their own reapportionment maps. They held multiple public hearings across the state. Yet after all that, the Legislature announced this month that some state legislative districts have to be adjusted because census tract boundaries sometimes do not coincide with city boundaries. The required adjustments will be minor, but they could have been avoided if the software on the redistricting website had included city boundaries from the beginning.

Doing the right thing » The tag line for the Deseret Industries advertisements is "Give stuff a second chance." Last Tuesday, a volunteer worker at a D.I. in Provo had a chance to do something selfish or something generous, and chose to be generous. Steffan Bronson, a volunteer at the store, was sorting through recent donations when he came across a shoe and, in the shoe, a wad of cash, described as amounting to several thousand dollars. Bronson told reporters that he considered, at least for a moment, how much benefit he would gain from keeping the money. Then he reconsidered, an action he credited to his Mormon upbringing, and had the money turned over to the police. "I definitely felt it was the right thing, if not the easiest thing, to bring it all to management," he said. Indeed it was. And, in addition to his own moral compass, maybe we should credit the fact that Bronson came across the potential windfall, and made his choice, while working in a place devoted to helping others. Context matters.