By paul rolly

| Tribune Columnist

Former state Rep. Craig Frank is once again running for the seat he had to vacate last year after discovering he didn’t live in the district he was representing.

But while seeking to represent taxpayers in Utah County, Frank as late as Wednesday was listed on the county property tax delinquency list for not paying his 2011 property taxes on his Cedar Hills home.

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It said he owed $2,157.85, which was due last November.

Frank told me Friday he was surprised to be in arrears.

"It should have been paid with the escrow," he said. "I don’t know why it wasn’t."

He left me a message later Friday to let me know he had checked with the County Treasurer’s Office and he was all paid up. As of Saturday, his name was no longer on the delinquent list.

Better late than never.

Frank’s family recently moved from his Cedar Hills home back to his home in Pleasant Grove, where he lived when he represented District 57. He said maybe the tax notice went to the wrong address and he never got it.

Frank has had quite a time with his residences. He didn’t realize he had moved out of his district when he moved from Pleasant Grove to Cedar Hills in 2010. He has been trying to get back into the Legislature ever since.

When his successor, Holly Richardson, resigned to work on Dan Liljenquist’s U.S. Senate campaign, Frank put his name in to run for her seat, since his Cedar Hills home has been put back into the district thanks to a bill passed last session.

But because of redistricting, Cedar Hills will again be outside the district. So he recently moved back into his Pleasant Grove home, which is in the district, but he won’t have lived there long enough to satisfy residency requirements when he must file for the 2012 race in March.

So now, he says, he wants to serve in the House this session, then run against Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, for the state Senate in November. Valentine is the one who tried to help Frank with his dilemma last year.

If Frank does get back into the Legislature, it could do wonders for his wife’s charter school lobbying gig. As a legislator’s spouse, she has access to lawmakers in all the back rooms where they hang out at the Capitol. Without a spouse who is a legislator, she had to stay out in the hall with all the other lobbyists.

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Forgot to tell the boss » The tension keeps growing between Gov. Gary Herbert’s administration and the Martin Luther King Human Rights Commission.

First, Debra Charleston claimed she was fired as the Utah Department of Transportation’s civil rights manager because of her volunteer work on the commission luncheon featuring U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, a claim vehemently denied by UDOT officials who say she was fired for poor performance.

Now, Herbert is holding off on his routine reauthorization of the MLK commission after discovering that its chairman, Roderick Land, registered the commission as a 501C3 tax-exempt nonprofit for fundraising purposes.