District 45-an old face returns?

Mark Walker is the current legislator serving in District 45 is Salt Lake County. He was appointed in 2004 to finish the term of Morgan Philpot, who left Utah to attend law school in another state. Recently he has been seen haunting the halls of the Capitol and in deep conversation with conservative Republican legislators. Coincidentally, there is an election campaign beginning to elect Mark Walker the State Treasurer. That would leave an open seat in District 45. Perhaps Rep. Walker was just keeping the seat warm for Philpot until his return to Utah? Interesting thought.

Salt Lake City put on Terror List

Salt Lake City was put on a list of cities that are considered to be at a high risk for a terrorist attack according to a list released the Department of Homeland Security. This makes grant money for counterterrorism available to Salt Lake City, along with the other 60 cities on the list. This may help the city protect high profile structures.

Me Thinks They Doth Protest Too Much

HB 264 is seeking to ban traffic ticket quotas by local and state law enforcement agencies. The Utah Chiefs of Police Association and many of the agencies are adamantly against this bill. They all claim that no such quota system exists, so there isn't a need for this bill. Yet, there is evidence that they do exist and officers are reluctant to publicly say that a quota system does exist.

Rep. Carl Wimmer, however, refuted the denials:

"I worked for a police department and had to write three tickets every day. That was a quota, and they exist."

In addition, a number of agencies have admitted that they factor the number of tickets issued by an officer into their performance evaluation. While maybe not strictly a quota, sounds too close to one to me -- if you don't write a sufficient number (What is a sufficent number? An average number per day? Per week? Per month?) then they get marked down on their evaluation.

Val Shupe, South Ogden police chief, seems to misunderstand the legislation:

"When you tell someone to go enforce the law at 40th and Washington, you are telling them to go down there and issue citations," Shupe said. "This law would prevent me from doing that."

But that isn't true. There is nothing that says you can't write tickets. Or that says you can't write as many as you need to. You just can't have a quota. If you don't have a quota system and you're not thinking about having citation quotas, this bill shouldn't be a big concern for you.

Representative Steve Sandstrom is Surprised

After blogging about Representative Steve Sandstrom's role in the voucher vote (see here, and here), he is naively surprised that someone is going to run against him in the next election.
Steve Baugh has announced that he will run against Sandstrom in the fall election.

Sandstrom is a freshman legislator who reneged on a promise to voters during his campaign and during the 2007 legislative session to vote against vouchers (which passed by one vote). And now he is surprised someone is running against him. Steve Baugh is a former superintendent for the Alpine School District and now a professor at BYU.

What was also interesting in the article was the people that were saying they were switching to be Democrats after being Republicans all their lives. I keep hearing about winds of change in Utah county as people get more and more frustrated with their elected representatives.

Did Vouchers Fail Because of Lack of Funding?

The Utah Amicus reports an interesting note from the recent voucher war. You may remember during the recent voucher war Greg Hughes (and others) complaining about how they couldn't compete against all the money being poured in to the battle by the NEA and others.

Turns out he was wrong. Latest figures show that Utahns for Public Schools (the anti voucher folks) spent about $2,000,000 LESS than Parents for Choice in Education (the pro voucher folks).

Despite all the extra money, PCE still couldn't convince Utah voters that vouchers was a good idea.

The Good Guys!

During the 2007 legislative session, I blogged about Representative Steve Sandstrom's role in the 38-37 vote for vouchers. He had told a constituent that he was voting against vouchers and then suddenly switched on the day of the vote, telling this same constituent that he had no choice but to vote for vouchers because Parents for Choice in Education would heavily target him in the next election if he didn't.

The Salt Lake Tribune, talking about the "good guys in the legislature" now gives additional, but not unexpected, information about Sandstrom's switch:

"...several "good guys" in the Republican leadership - Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, Valentine and Bramble - threatened freshman Rep. Steve Sandstrom of Orem with loss of any substantive role in the Legislature unless he supported vouchers. So "good guy" Sandstrom reneged on his promise to voters of his district to oppose vouchers. "

Probably not the best way to get re-elected. And adds to the many stories I hear about the arm twisting of Bramble and others.

Senator Stephenson and the Wizard of Oz

This is almost too funny. In defending a proposal to make the state school board elections partisan, Senator Howard Stephenson believes that by increasing the number of board members to 29 and aligning them with the district boundaries for the Utah Senate, constituents would actually know the state school board member who represents them:

"Ninety-five percent of the population could not name their state school board member if their life depended on it. That's a problem," he said. "Why even have an election? Why not just have them appointed by the Wizard of Oz?" (See The Deseret Morning News)

What's funny about this is that last year I saw a survey where constituents of Senator Stephenson (and other senators in northern Utah county) were asked to identify their state senator. Among the answers:

• Senator Hatch
• Senator Bennett
• Senator Scott Matheson (this was the most interesting)
• Senator Jim Matheson

along with a variety of other answers that I don't recall at the moment. There were a couple that correctly identified their state senator, but not many.

I would love to go to a busy street corner or store and conduct such a survey to see how many actually know their state senator and representative. My guess? Probably 95% would not be able to correctly identify their senator and representative.

I guess we should just let our senators be appointed by the Wizard of Oz also.