Republicans skirmish over Mascaro's Medicaid bill
HB24 is sent to a panel where he thinks it will die
Friday, the House Rules Committee, in a split vote, sent Rep. Steve Mascaro's HB24 to a standing committee where, Mascaro believes, opposing legislators will either kill it or amend it in ways he doesn't approve of.
"I may try to lift the bill from the (House) floor and send it to the proper committee," Mascaro, R-West Jordan, said Friday afternoon.
HB24 proposes to increase the reimbursement rate for dentists who provide services to children on Medicaid.
Earlier in the week, the Rules Committee refused to let HB24 out for a hearing, with Rep. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, saying: "Every time we get tight with Medicaid we balance the problems on the backs of the providers. I don't want this bill out" for a public hearing.
A frustrated Mascaro said HB24 received unanimous support from two different interim committees. "And it was the No. 1 priority in spending out of the Human Services" budget committee a year ago.
Friday, the Rules Committee — a powerful body that decides which committee will hear a bill, or whether a bill will advance at all — sent Mascaro's HB24 to the House Business and Labor Committee.
But Mascaro wanted the Health and Human Services Committee to hear his bill.
"I'm sick of this crap" of committee shopping to kill a bill, Mascaro told Rep. Dave Ure, R-Kamas, in the Rules Committee.
Mascaro, a moderate Republican, has a history of battling conservatives and GOP leaders. Last year he walked out of a GOP caucus criticizing leaders after some Human Service funding was preliminarily cut out of the budget.
Mascaro and Hughes had a confrontation in the hallway outside of the Rules Committee, with Hughes saying others on the Rules Committee "wanted to bury" Mascaro's bill. Hughes said at least he got a hearing for HB24 in a committee, even if it was one not to Mascaro's liking.
Rules Committee member Rep. Jackie Biskupski, D-Salt Lake, told fellow committee members: "We all know why (HB24) is being moved" to a less-friendly committee — so it can be killed. "Let's give the sponsor (Mascaro) the respect of having it heard where it should be."
But the committee voted to send HB24 to the Business and Labor Committee with only three dissenting votes.
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com
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