Changing Utah’s approach to the federal No Child Left Behind law is the main reason for the session. But Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is considering requests to include more than a dozen items, including a new drug offender treatment program and building a veterans’ nursing home in Ogden, two items that bogged down in budget negotiations earlier this month.

House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, says the April 20 special session may need to start a day earlier to ensure lawmakers can wade through all the legislation.

"I want people to feel like they have a chance to speak to an issue and debate it and not [feel] the pressure of dealing with 12 items in four hours and limiting debate," Curtis said.

The potential list of bills, confirmed Wednesday by legislative leadership and the Governor’s Office, includes a wide range of issues, from fixing a glitch in a popular tourism promotion bill to helping the small town of Cedar Hills annex part of its golf course away from an adjacent city.

But Huntsman Chief of Staff Jason Chaffetz says the list of bills likely will be winnowed down because the governor doesn’t want to turn the one-day meeting into a free-for-all.

"It’s the governor’s inclination to keep the agenda short and to the point," Chaffetz said. "The No. 1 issue is No Child Left Behind and we must have adequate time to discuss that issue. . . . Items that need lengthy debate should be left to the regular general session."

While no final decisions have been made yet, funding for a new veteran’s nursing home and money for a watered-down version of the Drug Offender Reform Act (DORA) could be too sticky to settle quickly.

One of the biggest budget battles of a relatively tame legislative session centered around DORA and the nursing home. The Senate favored the drug treatment program; the House pushed for the veterans home. Both sides decided to withdraw when a compromise could not be reached on March 2, the final installment of the 45-day session.

Since then, a group of senators and representatives have worked on a plan to revive the issues.

DORA would be scaled back from a widespread drug addiction assessment and treatment program to a focused pilot program, involving 250 paroled felons in Salt Lake County over three years. Instead of costing more than $6 million a year, with the cost rising in future years, the pilot program would have a price tag of about $1.4 million.

Proponents of the new veterans nursing home originally requested about $4.5 million that would be combined with federal dollars to build the new 120-bed Ogden facility.

The proposed compromise would allow for a $4.5 million bond in the next two years, only after the federal government provides its share of the construction and operating costs.

Senate President John Valentine says there is "a lot" of support in the House and Senate for both proposals.

Another potentially controversial bill is the Transportation Investment Act. Democratic senators successfully filibustered the bill during the last hours of the session because they were upset that it would siphon a percentage of sales tax, equating to hundreds of million of dollars, away from other programs into roads. Huntsman had similar concerns.

Missing from the agenda so far is a funding mechanism for the $82 million expansion of the Salt Palace Convention Center. Officials from Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City are negotiating changing the method to pay that tab and want it to be discussed, but lawmakers and the governor haven’t included it on their short list.

Then again, there is always the chance there will be no special session at all.

Chaffetz says if ongoing education-reform negotiations between Utah and the federal government yield "significant progress," the impetus for the session could be canceled.

tburr@sltrib.com

mcanham@sltrib.com

Potential issues for the Legislature’s special session

* Bucking some mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind education reform law.

* Launching a drug treatment pilot program.

* Authorizing and funding a new Veterans nursing home.

* Fixing a glitch to restore tourism promotion funding.

* Authorizing fire service consolidation.

* Creating a new transportation investment fund.

* Authorizing reading requirements for student advancement.

* Supporting county expansion of jails for state use.

* Allowing alternatives to the basic skills competency tests for students.

* Providing civil legal aid for domestic violence victims.

* Allowing Envirocare to expand on land adjacent to its existing radioactive waste landfill.

* Limiting health care organizations’ actions to collect on nonpayment.

* Raising the maximum tax rate for Salt Lake County fire and paramedic services.

* Giving cities certain powers of annexation.