Big changes are coming in how the Utah Legislature will meet this interim – from now until the end of the year.
Most Utahns could care less about when lawmakers meet at Capitol Hill and around the state.
But for those whose lives interact with the 104 part-time legislators, the changes will dictate parts of their work-a-day activities.
The new schedule means that the regular interim study committees – which used to meet every month – will not meet in July or October, with budget subcommittees taking their Wednesday time slots.
As usual, the regular interim day will be the third Wednesday of each month, May through November, with some exceptions.
All legislators will be expected to attend assigned committee meetings on those days, and noon caucuses of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate will also meet. (Usually open caucuses for House Republicans and Democrats, and Senate Democrats. Closed caucuses for Senate Republicans.)
The Legislative Management Committee adopted these changes Tuesday:
- For the first time, legislative budget subcommittees will have regular meeting days, either on the Tuesday before the normal Wednesday interim days, or on the Wednesdays themselves.
- The Executive Appropriations Committee usually meets every month on the Tuesday before interim Wednesday, but they will not meet in June or September to accommodate budget subcommittees.
- Lawmakers used to take off one summer month, usually July or August. Not so this year, they will meet every month.
That means additional workdays for legislators who will travel this summer to one or more of the standard summer conventions of NCSL, ALEC or other nationwide legislative associations.
You can see the interim meeting schedule here.
And these are not the only meetings this interim.
Tuesday, the LMC approved special extra meetings for several committees with heavy workloads.
And the LMC took under advisement requests from other committee chairmen for additional meetings, also.
Also, lawmakers as a group are traveling to Cedar City and surrounding areas April 19 and 20 for what has become an annual visit to different parts of the state to learn about their problems and concerns.
In short, part-time legislators will be doing some “heavy lifting” over the next seven months – as some weighty matters are in the interim schedules.
Here is a partial list of the study items for this interim.
Several more study assignments were made by motion in Tuesday’s LMC meeting.
The overall list includes studies of:
- Reworking the state’s tax structure, with an eye toward re-imposing the sales tax on food and reforming the personal income tax – two items House and Senate GOP leaders asked for in the just-finished 2017 general session, but which their Republican colleagues were not ready to vote for.
- Single sales tax rate on internet sales.
- Legalizing marijuana for medical use, and how that would be regulated.
- Lowering the DUI blood alcohol level from .08 percent to .05 percent – which passed the session but which GOP Gov. Gary Herbert wants further justification.
- Health care reform and mental illness.
- Utah’s opioid addiction problems.
- Jury nullification, the controversial idea that a jury can set aside a guilty verdict or sentence if they feel the law is unjust or unjustly being applied.
- Public land management.
- Removal of local public officials, mainly for health reasons.
- Partisan makeup on boards and commissions (HB11), which Herbert vetoed over concerns by minority Democrats that their voices would be muted.
Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, told UtahPolicy.com that while it may appear that the new schedules will require more meetings for lawmakers – and thus more pay to legislators who get paychecks on a per-meeting basis – overall the new interim schedule could mean savings for the legislative branch of government.
That’s because, under the old meeting schedules, various budget subcommittees had at least two authorized meetings each interim.
And depending on when and where the chairs decided to meet, there could be extra travel expenses for members and staff.
Now, most of those budget committees will meet in the Capitol (unless otherwise approved by the LMC), and so many budget meetings will be coordinated with normal interim study committees and travel and overnight accommodation costs reduced.
The main reason for the added budget subcommittees, said Niederhauser and House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, will be to give legislators more time to “dive deeply” into the state agency budgets that lawmakers set each general session.
Better-educated legislators will be able to make reasonable decisions on cutting from, or adding to, state programs.
And hopefully, less time can be taken during the relatively short 45-day general session on budget hearings and decisions.
This past session saw a record number of bills introduced and passed – and time constraints are seriously affecting lawmakers’ abilities to give due consideration and study to making new laws.
Utah is unique among the 50 states in that every legislator sits on a budget subcommittee. Other states have some super budget committee that makes the spending decisions – and passes budget bills on to their whole House and Senate, which accepts them mostly unchanged.
GOP leaders don’t want to change the Legislature’s all-inclusive member-approved budget process but do want to provide out-of-session time for each legislator to “dig down” into their agency’s budgets.
