Traditionally, they have resisted the idea, going back a couple of decades.
Back then, the Utah Education Association even rallied enough support to overturn a voucher bill through a referendum vote in 2007.
But that was then.
The idea of merit pay for teachers could be a hot item in this legislative session. Whether teachers unions go along remains to be seen.
Traditionally, they have resisted the idea, going back a couple of decades. Back then, the Utah Education Association even rallied enough support to overturn a voucher bill through a referendum vote in 2007. But that was then.
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As the late Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen is often attributed saying, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
I don’t know if a little more than $6 billion a year is considered real money in Washington, but it is in Utah. That’s how much personal income tax the state collects from its residents every year (plus another $800 million in corporate income taxes). And that would be a heck of a lot to try to find somewhere else. But Utah lawmakers may soon be giving it a try. Do you think Utah’s Legislature should meet longer than the current 45 working days required by the state constitution?
I’ll wait a moment while you pick yourself off the floor. After you have recovered sufficiently, consider this one: Do you think Utah’s elected lawmakers should serve full-time, rather than be part-time lawmakers who also have full-time jobs elsewhere? Last year, Utah lawmakers considered 929 bills and passed 575 of them. When I tell people this, they generally say they can’t think of 575 ways state government needed to interact differently with its residents last year, let alone 929 of them. A long-retired former editor sent me a friend request the other day on Facebook. I couldn’t remember if we already were “friends,” so I accepted.
It didn’t take long to figure out it was an imposter trying to steal my money. This morning, I received two emails claiming to be from friends asking me to look at photos. Someone with an email address that begins “info6Yt81ih…” and continues for about a dozen more letters and numbers, wrote to tell me I need to update my payment method because my Netflix account “is on hold.” And someone else informed me that my account had been locked at, oddly, a credit union where I have no account. In October, voters in Slovakia were surprised to hear a recording on Facebook of an interview between a journalist and Michal Šimečka, one of the leading political party officials involved in an election less than two days away.
Wired.com reports that on the recording, which seemed to clearly feature the voices of the people involved, Šimečka discussed ways he intended to rig the election. Šimečka and the journalist said the interview never happened. It was faked audio made possible by artificial intelligence. If you think the idea of a driverless car is a product of the 21st century, you haven’t heard of Francis P. Houdina.
Actually, it’s likely even his mother hadn’t heard of that name, because he had made it up, a fact that eventually led to an altercation with the better-known escape artist Harry Houdini, but that’s beside the point. On July 27, 1925, Houdina staged an exhibition in Manhattan to demonstrate his wireless car. The New York Times said the car had a “loose housing around the shaft to the steering wheel,” and police advised him to postpone the stunt, but he forged ahead, anyway. The newspaper described how the wobbly car, with a remote driver in a car that followed it closely, forced a milk wagon and two trucks onto nearby curbs for safety. It smashed into the fender of a car filled with men who were grinding movie cameras, trying to film the event for posterity. It continued up the road, nearly colliding with a fire engine. Years ago, I watched a car disappear into the gloom of a winter inversion with a bumper sticker that said, “We are the people our parents warned us about."
It faded into the gray as I read it, but it has lingered in my mind ever since. Is that really who we have become? More to the point, is that who we want to be going into 2024? And, what the heck did the owner of that car mean by that, anyway? I don’t mean to sound a dour note on the verge of what typically is the most hopeful holiday of the year. Americans are optimistic people, and that is on full display every New Year’s Eve. Often there is a logical disconnect to our celebrations. We tend to harp on all the bad things that happened in the year that is passing, with a collective desire to throw it out and start anew. And yet, we pass beyond midnight united in the belief that the next year will be better, even though nothing has changed except the number on the calendar. And yet, that optimism is important. I gave my father a Bette Midler album for Christmas.
It’s worse than it sounds. The year was 1973. This was my 47-year-old Dad, a quality control engineer who was a leader of the Rotary Club, a product of the Depression and WWII, and who had raised serious concerns when I decided, earlier that year, to let my hair grow over my ears. I don’t think I had ever seen him load a record onto our family stereo console, unless my mother asked him to put on a classical or religious album. Winston Churchill said, “Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.”
True, but I can’t quite figure out what sort of business Utah lawmakers were up to nearly two years ago when they moved the deadline up for filing a declaration of candidacy for elected office. Beginning next month, that declaration period will be from Jan. 2 to Jan. 8. This is thanks to SB170, which passed the Legislature in 2022 with little opposition (the vote was 27-0 in the Senate and 59-11 in the House, not counting absences). When Sean Reyes announced last week he wasn’t running for re-election as Utah’s attorney general, he did more than just open the seat to fierce political competition. He reignited an old debate over whether the state should continue electing people to that office.
Get ready. If this gains any traction, and if you’re a registered voter, this one could be on a ballot near you someday soon. Something this big would require a change in the state constitution, which ultimately would require a public vote. |
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The author
Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities. Archives
November 2023
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