This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

State School Board member and community activist Kim Burningham announced his pending retirement from all civic activities while accepting the "Making Democracy Work" award from the League of Women Voters of Salt Lake.

The event was the 20th anniversary of the State of the Community luncheon of the League of Women Voters of Salt Lake — one of those "feminazi" organizations that make Rush Limbaugh writhe.

Burningham, a former Republican legislator back in the bygone days when there were moderate Republican legislators, is chairman of Utahns for Ethical Government and fighting for government openness and ethics rules, as well as fairer and freer elections. That automatically makes him the bane of rightist legislators who look to Gayle Ruzicka for guidance. Burningham is the anti-Ruzicka.

Still, he told the league, at 76 he is slowing down and needs to retire — but with one caveat. He needs to tie up a few loose ends and see some pet issues resolved before riding off into the sunset.

Well, hold the sunset, because Burningham's not riding off anywhere just yet. His list of pre-retirement goals is very long, and very hard to meet:

• Outlawing omnibus bills — those bills that throw all sorts of issues into one bill so that necessary pieces of legislation will stall without approval of special-interest legislation that would never pass on its own merits. The Utah Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit against an education omnibus bill that included several bills that actually had failed when presented on their own.

• Legislative caucuses are open to the public.

• Campaign donations are limited.

• Legislators stop using campaign donations to buy leadership positions by contributing to other legislators — a recipe, says Burningham, for corruption.

• Lobbyists no longer serving as legislators, and vice versa.

• The ethics initiative pushed by Burningham and others is on the ballot and passes.

• The "ridiculous" system currently in place for selecting members of the State Board of Education is eliminated and replaced by a public primary. Under the current system, a governor-appointed committee selects three school board candidates from the list of all those who have filed for each district and sends those three to the governor. He then whittles it to two for the ballot. The system has been used to get popular school board members not favored by special interests off the ballot.

(Such a system was used to prevent popular incumbent Denis Morrill from appearing on the ballot in his re-election bid two years ago. It was attempted against Burningham, but some committee members were pressured into making him one of the three names sent to the governor. Gov. Gary Herbert then resisted heavy pressure and made Burningham one of his two choices for the ballot. Once given a choice, the voters easily re-elected him. The reason special interests wanted to keep the public from voting for Morrill and Burningham is that they opposed taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools, a position the vast majority of Utahns supported.)

• Funding for education in Utah gets out of last place.

• The caucus/convention system is amended or eliminated so that candidates for public office can be elected through a direct primary.

• The Legislature is no longer veto-proof — which means that a supermajority of right-wing extremists cannot ramrod special-interest legislation through the Legislature and then override any veto of the governor.

• The political parties in Utah are balanced, so there is approximately the same number of Democrats as Republicans in the Legislature.

So, in other words, Kim Burningham will never retire. —