Winners and losers
WINNERS:
- Grocery store customers, who'll see the state's share of the sales tax on food cut from 4.75 percent to 2.75 percent come Jan. 1, 2007
- Undocumented immigrants, who will be allowed to continue paying in-state tuition and drive legally.
- Businesses that hire undocumented immigrants, which would have had to verify Social Security numbers of all new hires, under a failed bill.
- Darwin's theory of evolution, which would have been taught in public schools as a disputed theory, under a failed bill.
- Legislators, who gave themselves a $10-per-day pay raise effective next January and killed a bill that would have repealed health insurance for future retired legislators.
- Students cramming for tests, whose right to pray in school was affirmed.
- Third-graders, whose parents don't want them held back from advancing to fourth grade, with defeat of a bill that would have held back poor readers.
- Immigrants' health, thanks to a $50,000 boost to the Multicultural Health Center's funding and expansion of its services to include translation.Story continues below
- Out-of-state students, with an increase to the number of tuition waivers for nonresidents.
- Active-duty military students, with a bill to allow them to pay in-state tuition rates no matter how long they've been on a tour of duty.
- The Salt Lake County Council, by allowing it to hire a private attorney instead of using the services of Democratic County Attorney David Yocom.
- Colleges and universities, which fended off attempts to cap their take of the education fund at 10 percent.
- Parents, who can now legally forbid teen drivers from being on the road at night or with friends in their car during the first six months their child has a license.
- Private companies and UDOT, who can now contract together to build toll roads.
- Medicaid recipients, for whom the Executive Appropriations Committee refused to fund dental ($3.9 million) and vision ($780,900) services.
- Public school students with medical conditions, with defeat of a bill calling for study of Utah's school nurse shortage, the worst in the country.
- Safety advocates, who failed again this year to get a primary seat belt bill passed.
- Teenage drinkers and adults who help them get alcohol, by tightening alcohol prohibitions.
- Bad teachers, whose chances of keeping their jobs decreased under an education reform bill.
- Perpetrators of hate crimes, who could now face tougher sentences for crimes that impact entire communities.
- Residents of western Salt Lake and Utah counties, who could become the first in the state to be living next to a toll road.
- Two-time DUI offenders, who may now have to purchase and use equipment to stop them from driving drunk.
- The Western rattlesnake, which failed to become the state reptile after its bill wasn't heard in the House.
- Federal grant applicants, due to failure to enact legislation to track women- and minority-owned businesses. Sponsors said that information could be used to lure lucrative federal grants to the state.
You can be the first to comment on this story.