Utah 2015: Mormon apostles & apostates, Biskupski & Becker, Planned Parenthood, prison move, gay marriage and more

Click here for a gallery of the best Tribune photos from 2015.

(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo)

Jackie Biskupski celebrates with her supporters after late ballot results came in during her election night gathering at Kimi's Chop House in Salt Lake City on Nov. 3. Biskupski ended up defeating two-term incumbent Ralph Becker and will become the city's first openly gay mayor in January.

Biskupski, Becker and Burbank

She made headlines and history, toppling a two-term incumbent en route to becoming, next week, Salt Lake City's first openly gay mayor. Jackie Biskupski, who 16 years ago became Utah's first openly gay state lawmaker, promised a more collaborative style in besting Mayor Ralph Becker, a fellow Democrat, in the officially nonpartisan showdown. She thumped Becker in the primary, capturing 46 percent of the vote to Becker's 31 percent. In the finale, she prevailed by a mere 3 percentage points after the incumbent — who saw the city through the Great Recession and helped shepherd a strong recovery — pushed hard until Election Day. Becker's re-election prospects actually took a hit months earlier, in June, when he ousted popular Police Chief Chris Burbank for mishandling sexual-harassment complaints within the department. Biskupski, in turn, criticized Becker for bumbling Burbank's departure. Come January, Salt Lake City's gay-friendly bona fides will be on display with the mayor's chair and two of seven City Council seats filled by openly gay leaders (Biskupski, along with council members Stan Penfold and newly elected Derek Kitchen of Kitchen v. Herbert fame). The three serve as a rainbow reminder that Utah's capital remains a deep-blue oasis in a rock-red state.

(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune)

The LDS Church named three new apostles Dale G. Renlund, Gary E. Stevenson and Ronald A. Rasband during the afternoon session of the 185th Semiannual LDS General Conference at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015.

New apostles, new apostates

Rare is the year that the state's predominant institution, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, doesn't make big news. In 2015, LDS Church policies and policymakers generated the headlines. Three senior apostles — L. Tom Perry, Boyd K. Packer and Richard G. Scott — died, leaving three vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve for the first time in more than a century. Ronald A. Rasband, Gary E. Stevenson and Dale G. Renlund were named at the October General Conference to take their places. On the policy front, Mormon officials threatened to sever the faith's longtime ties with the Boy Scouts of America after the youth organization dropped its ban on adult gay leaders. But they opted to stick with the Scouts, for now, adding that they may yet create their own program for LDS boys. Early in the year, Mormon authorities called on the Utah Legislature to adopt a statewide statute that protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals from housing and workplace discrimination while also safeguarding some religious liberties. Previous efforts to pass such a measure had stalled for years on Capitol Hill. But, with the LDS Church's blessing, a groundbreaking compromise bill breezed through both chambers and into state law. In October, apostle Dallin H. Oaks, the church's emerging point person on religious freedom, delivered a landmark speech outlining a middle path that balances the rights of religions and those of the LGBT community while condemning a Kentucky county clerk, who had been refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A month later, LDS leaders stunned the faithful, faithless and those from other denominations with a divisive new policy — leaked to podcaster John Dehlin, who had been excommunicated in February for apostasy — that labels gay Mormon couples "apostates" and generally forbids their children from baptism and other religious rites until they become adults.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Public officials and residents opposed to moving the prison to Tooele rally at the Grantsville City Park, while the Prison Relocation Commission holds its public meeting at the high school across the street on Thursday, May 28, 2015. In the end, the commission recommended a site in Salt Lake City west of the international airport. The Legislature and governor signed off as well.

Course corrections

Cities usually salivate over the prospect of landing a new $550 million project. But not when the prize is a prison. So 2015 saw the odd phenomenon of the four finalists — Eagle Mountain, Fairfield, Grantsville and Salt Lake City — desperately lobbying for their sites not to be picked. In the end, a relocation commission, buttressed by consultant reports, locked in on the capital's 500 acres west of the international airport. The Legislature and governor, eager to erect a modern correctional facility and redevelop the penitentiary's longtime Draper digs into a high-tech haven, signed off. Don't expect to see inmates doing hard time on those soft soils near the Great Salt Lake any time soon. Builders still must leap environmental hurdles and potential lawsuits. The goal is to have a state-of-the-art lockup in place in three years — at the earliest.

(Al Hartmann | Tribune file photo)

Gov. Gary Herbert, left, stands with Sen. Brian Shiozawa, House Speaker Greg Hughes and Rep. Jim Dunnigan in announcing an alternative plan to Medicaid expansion. That plan, called Utah Access Plus, failed in closed-door votes in the House and Senate.

Losing patience and patients

If at first (or second or third) you don't succeed, you must be the Legislature struggling to adopt an alternative to Medicaid expansion. Utah Cares (Rep. Jim Dunnigan's bare-bones approach, dubbed Utah Cares Less in some corners), Healthy Utah (Gov. Gary Herbert's more robust plan) and, this year, Utah Access Plus (compromise coverage from a "Gang of Six" state leaders) — all died. On this touchy topic, each legislative procedure runs into complications. New taxes on health care providers proved to be the poison pill for Access Plus as the proposal went down in closed-door House and Senate votes. The result: After years of politicking, tens of thousands of Utahns remain without medical coverage, and the prognosis for a legislative remedy any time soon appears as bleak as ever.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune)

The Utah Capitol was covered in pink Aug. 25, 2015, as Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah held a community rally that drew proponents of the family- planning organization.

An unplanned parenthood flap

The video went viral. Abortion foes went apoplectic. Abortion-rights proponents went on the defensive. Politicians of all stripes went to the microphones. The governor went to the policy well. And Planned Parenthood's state director went to court. Secretly recorded — and hotly disputed — video, shot by an anti-abortion group, showed national Planned Parenthood officials discussing pay for fetal tissue used for research. The release set off a firestorm of charges and countercharges, protests and counterprotests. In August, Gov. Gary Herbert, the day before the Utah Republican Convention, ordered all state agencies to stop steering federal money to Planned Parenthood. Six weeks later, the Utah association sued, labeling Herbert's directive unconstitutional. "We'll fight back against this unlawful attempt to restrict us," the group's CEO, Karrie Galloway, pledged. "Let me be clear: Planned Parenthood has done nothing wrong." By congressional decree, no government money goes toward abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or if the mother's life is in jeopardy. Instead, the federal cash funneled through the state pays for STD testing, education programs and pregnancy tests. Even so, a federal judge sided with Herbert in the funding flap. Planned Parenthood appealed and won at least a temporary reprieve.

(Lennie Mahler | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Utah GOP Chairman James Evans speaks to the media about poll results of SB54, a legislative compromise from the Count My Vote initiative, at the Utah Republican Party headquarters in Salt Lake City, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015.

Grand old politicking

Conventional wisdom would seem to say that any election bill approved by a Republican-dominated Legislature and signed by a GOP governor surely would have the blessing of the state's Republican Party. Not so. The party is suing to stop SB54. The measure, set to take hold next year, provides an alternate, signature-gathering path to primary ballots without going through the caucus-convention system. A federal judge upheld that provision, but decreed parties need not open their primaries to unaffiliated voters. State GOP Chairman James Evans is determined to keep signature gatherers off primary ballots, a move that could prompt state election officials to decertify the Republican Party and its candidates who go through the traditional convention process. This journey started with a reform drive called Count My Vote, but it has turned into Count the Lawsuits, and it may take a judge or a special legislative session to straighten out the mess.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune)

FLDS women quickly leave the scene of a flash flood as a TV cameraman begins filming, Wednesday Sept. 16, 2015. The deluge killed 13 people in Hildale.

Deadly deluge

One of the deadliest weather disasters in Utah history claimed 21 lives in southern Utah on Sept. 14. A flash flood in the polygamous enclave of Hildale swept away three mothers and 10 children. Farther north, seven perished during a slot-canyon deluge in Zion National Park. Flooding also killed a Hurricane man. The tragedy in the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz. — often called Short Creek — united friends and foes alike. Polygamists, former polygamists and government forces banded together to search (the body of a 6-year-old boy remains missing) and mourn as decades of distrust evaporated for a brief moment of shared sorrow.

(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune)

San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman walks to sentencing hearing in federal court in Salt Lake City on Friday, Dec. 18. He was given 10 days in jail.

Phil guilty

Phil Lyman, the commissioner with a cause, is now a politician with a criminal record. In the spring, a federal jury convicted the San Juan County leader — along with Monticello City Councilman Monte Wells — of misdemeanor charges for leading an illegal ATV protest ride through relic-rich Recapture Canyon. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge David Nuffer sentenced Lyman to 10 days in jail — Wells got five — and three years of probation. Nuffer predicted the punishment, which included fines and a $96,000 restitution tab, would anger both sides of Utah's increasingly heated campaign to claim 31 million federal acres. Pro-federal forces point to the 21 months Tim DeChristopher spent in federal prison for monkey-wrenching an oil and gas lease auction, while anti-feds see the whole Lyman prosecution as nothing more than Washington persecution. Either way, Utah power brokers are poised to fork over $14 million to make their case in court for control of lands now overseen by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service — with Lyman, who declined the Utah Association of Counties' honor of Commissioner of the Year, as the latest poster child.

(Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Derek Kitchen and Moudi Sbeity, the lead plaintiffs from the landmark Utah case that legalized same-sex marriage, got married in a large public ceremony in the Gallivan Center Plaza, Sunday, May 24, 2015. A month later, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in all 50 states.

Tying the final knot

For once, with an emerging social trend, Utah was no late arriver. When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, in a 5-4 ruling June 26, such unions already were taking place in the Beehive State and had been for more than eight months. In October 2014, the justices had let stand an appeals court ruling that upheld Judge Robert Shelby's historic December 2013 decision striking down Utah's ban on gay marriage. Now that all the legal barriers to same-sex marriage are gone, state officials are poring over Utah laws to ensure they are wedded to the nation's new matrimonial reality.

Image from police body-camera footage of a Salt Lake City officer's confrontation with James Dudley Barker in the Avenues. Barker was killed by the officer in a shooting deemed justified by the Salt Lake County district attorney's office.

Badges of courage, controversy

Utah police, like their badged buddies across the nation, drew their guns and scrutiny. In fact, the last homicide of 2014 and the first three of this year stemmed from clashes with cops. Nine people died at the hands of police this year, down from 14 in 2014. The year's most debated shooting, deemed justified, saw a Salt Lake City police officer shoot and kill a snow-shovel-wielding James Dudley Barker during a scuffle in the Avenues. The confrontation, much of it captured on the officer's body camera, sparked water-cooler conversations about the need for better de-escalation training for law enforcement and the inherent perils of policing. West Valley City shelled out $1.4 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit with the family of Danielle Willard, whom an undercover cop gunned down in November 2012. A mother rejected a $900,000 offer from Saratoga Springs after police shot and killed her allegedly sword-swinging son, Darrien Hunt, in September 2014. Salt Lake City police still face lawsuits in the 2014 shooting deaths of Dillon Taylor and a pet dog named Geist.

(Paul Fraughton | Tribune file photo)

Men stand in line at The Road Home shelter in downtown Salt Lake City. Political and civic forces have proposed locating smaller neighborhood shelters throughout the Salt Lake Valley to serve various subsets of the homeless population.

Homing in on a solution

Providers at the much-maligned yet much-needed homeless-services campus based near downtown Salt Lake City's Pioneer Park won't be seeking a new home. But they will be looking for more homes, scattered throughout the Salt Lake Valley. After months of study, outgoing Mayor Ralph Becker's commission on homelessness is calling for smaller neighborhood shelters targeted at specific segments of the homeless populace — families with children, veterans, victims of domestic abuse. Mayor-elect Jackie Biskupski is on board with the challenge. To pull it off, officials will need a handout: $20 million from the Legislature, along with $7 million in annual state funding.

(Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Becky Lockhart, the first and only female Utah House speaker, died suddenly in January of a rare brain disease. She was 46.

Big heels to fill

Utah lost three "first-and-only" female political leaders this year. Becky Lockhart, the state's first and only female House speaker, died in January of a rare brain disease at age 46. Deedee Corradini, Salt Lake City's first and only (until next month) female mayor, fell to cancer in March at age 70. And Olene Walker, the first and only woman to lead Utah as governor, died last month at age 85. Trailblazers all, these women — with their own personalities, proclivities and politics — left legacies that stretch across partisan chasms. Another ex-governor — two-term chief executive Norm Bangerter — died in April after a stroke at age 82. And Salt Lake County saw the departure of a political icon: Randy Horiuchi, the longtime charismatic, even comedic, commissioner-turned-councilman died in November at age 61, several years after suffering a stroke.

And many more …

Johnny Brickman Wall was sentenced for up to life in prison for killing his ex-wife, Uta von Schwedler, as was Megan Huntsman for killing six of her newborn babies. Meagan Grunwald, 18, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for driving the getaway vehicle in a police chase and gunfight that left one officer dead and another severely wounded. Ramon Estrada, a prison inmate weeks from parole, died when he didn't receive his scheduled dialysis. The Utah Legislature finally buckled down on motorists for not buckling up, making nonuse of seat belts a primary offense. GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz rose, taking the reins of the U.S House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (and briefly pursuing the speakership), as did first-term Rep. Mia Love, becoming the first black Republican woman in Congress, while Democratic Rep. Justin Miller fell, resigning his Utah House seat after pleading guilty to felony fraud for taking money from the campaign of his former boss Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams. In an even bigger political scandal, the prosecutions of former Utah Attorneys General John Swallow and Mark Shurtleff lurched on as intrigue built surrounding evidence amassed — and allegedly stashed — by the federal government. The Utah Transit Authority ran into some rough roads as voters rendered a split decision on the Proposition 1 transportation tax. Some counties backed it; others bucked it. Utah lawmakers dipped their toes into potential legalization of medical marijuana while a 4th District judge sank a law that limited public access to streams. The Animas River turned bright orange from a Colorado mine waste spill. Utah saw some significant departures as legendary Utah gymnastics coach Greg Marsden, BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall, Catholic Bishop John C. Wester and the Utah Shakespeare Festival's Adams Theatre all bowed out. But there was a noteworthy arrival: Barack Obama visited Utah for the first time as president.

noyce@sltrib.com