Legislator foresees passage of reform bills
But a Republican state senator believes he will have strong support in the 2006 Legislature to pass a reform package "that will aid the public's view" of the 104 part-time lawmakers.
Sen. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, says, "I have considerable support from (Senate GOP) leadership" for three reform bills: Disclosure of legislative gifts from lobbyists valued at $10 or more; increasing legislative pay by $45 a day, combined with changing the Legislature's hotel per diem; and giving the independent Legislative Compensation Commission more authority in overseeing legislative compensation as a whole.
Bell would take away the $79 a day each legislator gets for a hotel stay, whether or not the lawmaker stays in a Salt Lake City hotel during the 45-day general session. Those who actually stay in a hotel would still get the $79 per diem, but many Wasatch Front legislators would see a compensation reduction because they're taking the daily hotel pay but staying at their homes. To make up for that loss, Bell, who says he'll have Rep. Brad Last, R-St. George, as a House co-sponsor, will increase the daily pay by $45.
"I see this as a package of bills moving through the Legislature at one time," says Bell, a business developer first elected to the Senate in 2002.
Democrats, a minority in both the House and Senate, will again push what has become for them an annual legislative reform plank.
As in past years, it includes limits on legislators spending their campaign war chests on non-campaign items, including giving themselves cash; turning over to an independent commission the power to redraw legislative district lines every decade; banning most gifts to elected officials; and increasing campaign disclosures.
But in part because the reforms come from the minority party — and are seen by many Republicans as campaign attacks — every year the Democrats' efforts have failed.
Besides Bell's reform package, Rep. Dave Hogue, R-Riverton, says he'll have a new bill aimed at disclosing special-interest spending on legislative and local races now hidden or difficult to identify.
Hogue, a moderate Republican who has been targeted the past several elections by members of his party's right, says several special interest groups "have pumped a lot of money into races to defeat me, and it has not been reported as part of (his District 52) election."
In 2004, two influential senators from his own party — Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper; and Sen. Al Mansell, R-Sandy — both opposed Hogue's re-election. Stephenson is president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, a group that often speaks for manufacturers, and Mansell is president of the National Realtor Association.
You can be the first to comment on this story.