Rabbits?

There have been some pretty incredible photos and stories of the Milford Flats fire but the story in the Deseret News about rabbits was one of the most bizarre.

State Forester Dick Buehler said, "We actually had rabbits that were catching fire and running across the road and spreading the fire".

Unbelievable.

You Close The Window First

You are working at your desk on a very important project with the window open on a nice sunny day, when suddenly a burst of wind starts blowing all the papers you have been using around the room. What do you do first? Frantically try and get the papers before they blow out the window? Or close the window?

You close the window first. With the wind gone, you can calmly and deliberately gather and organize the papers that have been blown off your desk.

Similarly, the first thing that we, as a nation, must do is secure our borders. We have to close the window first. Everything else can be tackled after that occurs. But without our borders being secured, we will continue to have more and more people pour across our borders while we deal with those that are here illegally. And we end up with the same situation we are in now.

We must secure our borders first. Then we can figure out what do with those that are here illegally.

What is going on with the Attorney General?

One has to wonder about the intentions of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff who recently terminated the status of Special Assistant Attorney General to Carol Lear and Jean Hill. His claim is that they were working at cross purposes to his office by offering conflicting advice to the Utah Board of Education and in doing so, fostered an adversarial relationship with his office.

In the termination letter he claimed that they were no longer allowed to give any advice to the Board of Education and that their conversations would not be protected by the attorney-client privileges.

Some have claimed, perhaps correctly, that the Utah Constitution allows only the AG to give legal advice to the state government (with a possible exception being the governor, who, in some circumstances, can seek his own counsel). All this may be true. However, it raises a number of questions that really need answering:

1. Carol Lear has worked in her position advising the Board of Education for over 20 years and Jean Hill for 8 years. The Attorney General graciously bestowed the status of "Special Assistant Attorney General" roughly a month ago, according to Jean Hill. Why was he not worried about Carol and Jean Hill advising the Board prior to that time? It isn't like they just started working for the board recently?

2. If he didn't know that they were acting as legal counsel for the board, why didn't he? Is he so out of touch with the legal needs of government bodies that he would not have wondered why they weren't asking his advice on legal matters? Or more likely, he did know about it and didn't worry about it until it became convenient.

3. Why did he choose, just one month ago, to give Carol and Jean this special status? Surely, during all of this voucher mess created by the Legistlature, he would have know that the Board would have needed legal assistance. The debate on the HB148/HB174 issue has been going on since the session concluded at the end of February. Perhaps he wanted them to be under his thumb so that he could tell them what to do and how to advise the Board?

It would be helpful if the Attorney General would bring clarity to these matters (wishful thinking here).

One also has to wonder about the legal advice that the AG gave the Board of Education regarding HB174. It is obvious that his basis for that decision was very shaky, since a unanimous Utah Supreme Court disagreed with his contention that HB174 could stand on its own.

Whine, Whine, Whine

Representative Frank, obviously unhappy with the Utah Supreme Court's decision regarding the HB148/HB174 mess, feels that the Utah Supreme Court enjoys legislating from the bench. One has to wonder if he even read the opinion. It seemed to me to be well thought out and brought clarity to the mess created by the Legislature.

I have noticed, in recent days, that various senators and representatives have attempted to defuse criticism of their actions, blaming the media, Utahns for Public Education, UEA, and others for creating the confusing state.

We should be absolutely clear. The Legislature has no one to blame but themselves for the mess they are in. They are the ones that created these two bills, that, at the time of passage, were clearly linked together. There is no other explanation for the radically different margins of votes in these two bills. One cannot believe that the HB148, the first voucher bill, would pass by only one vote, and then second, HB174, by more than 2/3, if those who were not in favor of vouchers had not been told that the second bill was absolutely dependent on the first. The only reason most of those representatives voted for HB174 was because they were amendments to HB148.

The Utah Supreme Court has brought clarity, finally. One of the roles of the judicial branch is to interpret the laws passed by the legislative branch. When the legislative branch creates confusion, it is left to the courts to bring clarity. If the legislative branch doesn't like how the courts interpreted their laws, they have every right to attempt to correct and change the law to make it more clear.

Until, then, Representative Frank, stop whining about the Utah Supreme Court doing your work for you.

It's a Mess

As suspected, the voucher issue continues to get more interesting. After the Utah Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, ordered the State School Board to implement HB174, the school board dug their heels in and refused to take orders from the Attorney General, and in the process raised questions about whether he was unbiased enough to represent them in court, no matter which direction they went.

And it will end up in court...unless....

After meeting with top state education officials, the Attorney General has asked Governor Hunstman to call a special session to "clear up the mess" between the two voucher bills. Well put.

Republican lawmakers are resisting however (you could spot that a mile away). They created the mess and now are backing away, essentially claiming it's not their mess now. The Deseret News quotes House Speaker Greg Curtis as saying that he... "doesn't see the need for a special session. It's a simple process. If you gather enough signatures, you call an election. That election is five-and-a-half months away. We are all comfortable with that. The law doesn't say if you have a referendum you call a special (legislative) session. It says you have a (citizen) vote. It cannot be any more straightforward." Of course, it doesn't say you can't call a special session either.

It still rankles me when I remember how Rep. Steve Urquhart chastized Democratic lawmakers for voting against HB174 when it contained all those things they wanted, but couldn't get into HB148. If more of them had been on top of things, we might not have had the mess we are currently in, since a less than 2/3 vote on HB174 would have made it eligible to be considered for referendum also.

But then maybe not, because the referendum law says the request to initiate the referendum process must be submitted no later than 5 days after the end of the session, but Governor Huntsman waited until after that period to sign HB174.

I still find it interesting that the Governor signed HB148 almost immediately after passage, but failed to do that with HB174.

Hang on for the ride...

What is going on in the state GOP?

A couple of thoughts about the recent Utah GOP problems regarding the firing of Jeff Hartley by Enid Greene:

• Why was the billing of $50,000 in commissions by Jeff Hartley a surprise to Enid Greene? According to Mr. Hartley, this was the result of an agreement he had with Joe Cannon, the former GOP chair. Assuming it is true, it would seem that agreement would be written down and Enid should have been able to read it. Or, if it wasn't written down, why didn't Joe Cannon communicate that information to her? If it wasn't written down and he didn't communicate it, then it seems like it was kind of under the table. And that's no good.
• Enid's reasons about doing it now rather than letting it go until the new party chair was elected this summer ring hollow. She said that she wanted to give them a clean slate to begin with. Right. It seems more about Enid wielding some power. She could have communicated any and all concerns to the new chair. The new chair, who ever they end up being, will hopefully be a mature responsible person and be able to handle things just fine and probably doesn't need Enid cleaning house for them.
• If Enid was so concerned about leaving a clean slate for the next chair why didn't she fire everyone on staff? That would really have left a clean slate!
• This doesn't do much for Enid's image (and she may not care). She comes across being mean and vindicative. As one Rep. Greg Hughes said, "Enid threw a grenade into the party headquarters as she walked out the door."
• Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

To the Parents of Math Investigations Students-- Wait until High School

I have news for all you parents with kids in elementary and middle school--just wait until your kids get to high school. Virtually unmentioned in all the uproar about Investigations is the use of "Connected Math" in the high schools. I don't know how many use it, but Lone Peak High School uses this curriculum for at least one of their Pre-Calculus math classes and at least one of their Calculus math classes. This curriculum seems very similar to the Investigations method. The kids are supposed to figure out fairly sophisticated higher math concepts by discovery and trial and error using ridiculous story problems (in my opinion).

To top it all off, some of the classes don't use a book, and those that do have a book use one that has zero explanation for any of the concepts. That's zip, nada, zilch, nothing. So if the teacher doesn't take time to explain, or doesn't explain the concepts adquequately, you are sunk. And they'll fall farther and farther behind. My son's class didn't use a book, so I went to Deseret Industries and found a few texts that we could use, that had explanations, practice problems, etc. Things got so bad that I couldn't even figure out what the concept was they were trying to teach (and the teacher wouldn't tell them), so there was no way I could even supplement at home.

I don't know if other high schools in the district use this curriculum, so I don't know how Lone Peak compares with other in that regard. But I do know that Lone Peak's passing rate for the AP Calculus A/B test was 55%, 10% lower than the next lower school in the district, and 21% lower than the district average, and the passing rate for the AP Calculus B/C test was 56%, 24% lower than the next lowest school and 21% lower than the district average. By comparison, Pleasant Grove's passing rate was 96% and 91% respectively. Anyone know what any of the other high schools use? If not, you probably want to find out!