Utah Senate President Stuart Adams says he had to hide his personal interest in a bill that changed the way state law addresses unlawful sexual activity involving children because, if lawmakers had known it was his idea, they would have felt obligated to vote for it.
Trying to make a virtue of opaqueness is an odd way of admitting that the leaders of the Utah Legislature have too much power and that our state’s process of making laws is seriously flawed.
Adams, a Republican from Layton, is catching serious political flak for having set other legislators on a path that ended up allowing an 18-year-old relative of his to avoid what could have been a lengthy prison sentence.
Democrats and other political activists are calling for Adams to resign. The Senate president says he will do no such thing. And such a move probably would be overly drastic.
But to claim, as Adams has, that “the process was perfect,” only makes the leader look arrogant and out of touch. It gives the people of Utah one more reason to think that their government is run for the personal benefit of those in or near power.
Before 2024, an 18-year-old convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old in Utah would be charged as an adult and could face a prison sentence of as much as 25 years to life and a requirement to register as a sex offender. But early that year, the Legislature passed SB213, a long bill containing many reforms of the state’s criminal justice system. Among them was a provision that allows an 18-year-old still in high school to be charged with the same crime as a 17-year-old.
The law was not retroactive. It did not, on its own, change what Adams’ 18-year-old relative was charged with. And, viewed in isolation, wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.
But defense attorneys and prosecutors in the case, who had been at loggerheads over a plea deal, used the new law as a basis for an agreement that allowed the defendant to avoid an adult-level sentence and receive much more lenient treatment: Credit for a week already served in jail and 420 days of home confinement, plus four years of probation, 120 hours of community service, a $1,500 fine and sex offender treatment.
It was a sentence that offended the mother of the victim, who let prosecutors — and, through them, the judge — know that she thought the punishment was far too soft considering the emotional damage done to her child.
“I felt like I was punched in the gut,” the victim’s mother told Tribune reporter Robert Gehrke.
The reason anyone else is talking about this is that The Salt Lake Tribune recently reported that that particular change in the law was not originally part of a 49-page bill of criminal justice reforms, a bill created after a lengthy review by experts, including the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, the Utah Sentencing Commission and other relevant stakeholders.
[Read: ‘Too many bills’: Gov. Cox calls on Utah Legislature to be more DOGE-like]
But, at the beginning of the session, that careful process suffered a spanner thrown into the works. The narrow provision affecting some 18-year-olds was added by the bill’s primary sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore — who is one of Adams’ top deputies. And the defense attorney for Adams’ relative helped draft the language. It was not one of those amendments added in the closing hours of a session. Legislators and other interested parties had an opportunity to object, and no one did.
But it is only now, more than a year after the bill became law, that we know the genesis of that provision was a conversation between Adams and Cullimore in which Adams expressed the feeling that the old law was too harsh — something Adams knew or cared about only because it affected his own family.
Adams didn’t throw his considerable weight around to openly push for the provision. But, in a culture where power is top-down, a well-placed word (“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”) can be all it takes.
Now some lawmakers, not all of them Democrats, complain that they weren’t told the whole story. Among them is Republican Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, who carried the bill on the House floor but now thinks that particular section ought to be repealed.
This is The Real Utah Way. Legislate in haste. Repent in plausible deniability.
Note to readers • Editorial board member Dave Patel has recused himself from this editorial.
Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
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