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Will this bill end the fight over who can be on a ballot?

1/30/2017

Is this how the kerfuffle over who gets a place on Republican ballots ends? After more than two years of lawsuits and arguments over a law that lets candidates get on the ballot by gathering signatures instead of submitting to a vote of convention delegates, does it all get solved with runoff elections?

Well, yes and no. The lawsuit the state GOP filed against the state may end if lawmakers pass a bill that allows for a runoff in the event four or more candidates are on a primary ballot and none of them gets more than 35 percent of the vote. (Under the old system, convention delegates would winnow lists of candidates to no more than two contenders.)

Should the bill become law, dropping the suit will be up to the party’s central committee. The bill solves one of the issues the state party has with a law that, in 2014, opened the party’s primaries to candidates who could bypass the convention by gathering enough signatures. With potentially hot races for U.S. Senate in 2018 and the governor’s

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Should Utah have a full-time Legislature?

1/27/2017

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To date, the Utah Legislature has seen requests for 1,500 new bills for the session that began Monday.

I have neighbors who ask me, with arched eyebrows, why we need any more laws at all. They just don’t see the need. Society seems to be conducting itself in an orderly fashion. Most of us have jobs, drive on decent roads and understand the basic rules. Why not elect a Legislature that is basically on call, kind of like a volunteer fire

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How to fund education and clear the air all at once

1/19/2017

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If Utah lawmakers are creative enough in the session that begins Monday, they might be able to tackle two vexing problems at once — education funding and air pollution.

The only downside is that you, the taxpayer, would have to pay a bit more of your hard-earned money to the state; but let’s face it, just about every reliable political barometer is pointing in that direction anyway, so why not make your money work as effectively as possible?

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With Trump a question mark, Utah goes silent on lands

1/17/2017

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Knowing how I geek-out at such things, a neighbor recently gave me a box of old papers and clippings from the distant Deseret News past. Amid the yellowing pile, my son picked up an intact sports section the other day, dated Oct. 18, 1947, with the intent of showing me photos of guys in old leather football helmets.

Instead, I focused on an op-ed on the “field and stream” page. It was by a Forest Service official who opposed the idea of turning federal lands over to

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Utah Foundation leader retiring, talks about Utah's future

1/13/2017

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If you want some fun by yourself on a rainy afternoon, try speculating as to what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan would say if he were alive today.

Perhaps his most enduring quote is that a person may be entitled to his or her own opinions, “but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

That sounds like a quaint notion today, when politicians deny doing or saying things they were

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Slaves are cheaper than ever, but 1 expert is optimistic

1/11/2017

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Somehow, Kevin Bales stays optimistic.

That’s not easy when your life’s work revolves around the modern plague of human slavery, a plague that constantly trickles like melting snow into the shadows of contemporary society, even in Utah.

A professor of contemporary slavery at Britain’s University of Nottingham, Bales is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on the subject. He has at times worked undercover to expose the trade,

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Salt Lake went about shelter selection all wrong

1/4/2017

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Virtually every meeting or interview I had last year with people involved in solving the Wasatch Front’s homeless problem came around to these questions:

How do you decide where to put new shelters, given that neighbors are bound to protest? How do you convince folks who have invested their lives, their families and their money into a house that the disaster zone the city allowed to fester for years around the Road Home Shelter on Rio Grande Street won’t simply be recreated in their

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Has the Antiquities Act kept people from looting?

1/3/2017

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If you read the New York Times nearly 114 years ago and then stepped aboard a time machine, you might wonder what ancient relics would be left to merit the formation of a Bears Ears National Monument in the closing days of 2016.

“The work of destroying the cliff dwellings in Southern Utah is now well nigh complete,” The paper said in a report on the “fast vanishing relics of prehistoric people,” published July 12, 1903.

The same piece quoted Dr. James B. Weller of Chicago University, who was, “shocked when recently visiting the Utah dwellings to observe the wholesale havoc that has been made there since he explored in that region eleven years ago.”

Then the paper made an assertion that likely seems even more alarming today than it was back then.

“From the Utah cliff dwellings seven tons of most

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Will this bill end the fight over who can be on a ballot?

Should Utah have a full-time Legislature?

How to fund education and clear the air all at once

With Trump a question mark, Utah goes silent on lands

Utah Foundation leader retiring, talks about Utah's future

Slaves are cheaper than ever, but 1 expert is optimistic

Salt Lake went about shelter selection all wrong

Has the Antiquities Act kept people from looting?

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