Utah GOP faces 2 issues — one minor, one not

First, the more minor issue.

Call it a simple oversight. Call it arrogance of power. Call it political spin. Either way, GOP legislative bosses fouled up when they "released" this week a preliminary year-end fiscal analysis not through any official state action but through the Senate Republicans' own partisan Web site.

Usually, GOP budget bosses place such information on the agenda of the June meeting of the Executive Appropriations Committee. The Legislature's own budget staffers then give a public report in that meeting.

But this June legislative budgeters just gave a memo to Executive Appropriation Committee members. The memo was not discussed in the Tuesday afternoon meeting.

And late Tuesday night, Senate budget Chairman Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, posted a blog on the partisan GOP senators' site talking about the memo, saying not to worry that preliminary numbers show the state could be $70 million the black, or up to $100 million in the red, depending on the final balancing out between tax take and state spending. A better number will come in August, Hillyard wrote.

How would legislative Republicans feel if (Lord forbid!) legislative Democrats got that memo first and put it on a their legislative or political party Web site?

I can assure you that the minority Democrats would never get such a memo first again. And Republicans would like such actions not at all. Add to this the fact that the state Republican Party is formulating an expensive PR campaign telling Utahns just how Republicans have managed this state — maybe having a well-respected lawmaker like Hillyard break the news of a possible $100 million budget shortfall may ease the political pain of that information.

But when Republicans do such a thing it is considered no big deal — an oversight, or just one way to make the information available immediately by putting it on the Web.

Republicans have been in the majority in the Legislature since the late 1970s. You have such power for 30 years and it seems normal to announce important state budget surpluses/deficits on your own partisan Web site, I suppose.

• Now to the more serious issue of GOP power.

This past week, The Salt Lake Tribune revealed that a person acting as a "go-between" for state GOP treasurer candidates Richard Ellis and Mark Walker in an e-mail confirmed what Ellis charges: that Walker offered Ellis a job and a considerable raise if Ellis would not challenge Walker in the treasurer's race this year.

Walker is a two-term GOP state House member from Sandy and a former midlevel manager at Zions Bank whose job (before he resigned in March to run for office full time) was trying to sign up local governments to invest their public funds through the bank.

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