Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff got a raise, but the scuttlebutt around the Capitol was the pay increase for that position was meant to attract a quality candidate against Shurtleff, who angered some lawmakers by opposing the marriage amendment last fall.

Meanwhile, some House leaders allegedly tried to diminish the amount state Financial Institutions Commissioner Ed Leary would receive because they felt he was not supportive enough of the bankers' attempts to tax credit unions.

Cause and effect: The Legislature passed a bill protecting medical device manufacturers from product liability lawsuits if the devices had been used before and cleaned, as is normal practice.

The bill was championed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Fred Lampropoulos, whose Merit Medical manufactures medical devices. Critics say it will hike health-care costs because hospitals fearful of lawsuits will use devices only once, but boost profits for Lampropoulos and other manufacturers who will now sell more of their products.

The bill's sponsor was Sen. Chis Buttars, R-West Jordan, who received last year a $5,000 campaign contribution from Lampropoulos' gubernatorial campaign fund, another $5,000 from Progress Utah, Lampropoulos' PAC, and another $500 from Merit Medical.

Save the bureaucrats: A worker at the Salt Lake County Government Center set off a fire alarm Friday morning and, although it was a false alarm, nearly all the people inside the complex were evacuated.

The only ones left inside the building were the children in the day-care center.

No slam dunk: After failing since 2003 to sell his Salt Lake City mansion, former Utah Jazz star Karl Malone is putting the property up for auction, according to an item in The Wall Street Journal last week.

The May 19 auction is being handled by J.P. King Auction Co., according to the Journal, which quoted real-estate agent James Marchant as saying the original $6.1 million asking price for the eight-bedroom, 11-bath, 17,230 square-foot mansion was pared last year to a mere $5.75 million.

Can you swim? A Snowbasin ski resort billboard at the bottom of Victory Road in northern Salt Lake City declares "Europe: 3,000 miles. Snowbasin: In Your Own Backyard."

Note to Snowbasin's advertising staff: Unless you know of some secret ski resort in the British Virgin Islands, Europe's slopes are more than 5,000 miles from Salt Lake City.

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Paul Rolly welcomes e-mail at prolly@sltrib.com.