A fun-in-the-sun legislative junket at taxpayers' expense? "If it was (a junket), they sure . . . wouldn't be going to St. George in July," says Rep. Met Johnson, R-New Harmony.
Johnson, who helped organize the trip, and other rural lawmakers have found themselves on the defensive after some have criticized the Legislature's two-day excursion to St. George and Cedar City as a waste of taxpayers' money.It could cost the Legislature upward of $25,000 to hold two days of committee hearings and town meetings in St. George and Cedar City, Johnson said. Lawmakers will meet Tuesday in St. George and Wednesday in Cedar City but will be paid their $120-per day salary for only one of the two days, Johnson said.
Should all legislators attend, expenses would total $22,880 - including their $85 daily salary, a $35 daily meal allowance and $100 for two nights' lodging. Lawmakers who drive will also be compensated for mileage at a rate of 27 cents a mile.
"It will cost 1/25th of one-millionth of our state budget," he said. "Is that wrong? Hell, no. The Legislature should go to the people and not the people to the Legislature."
If all goes well this time around, Johnson says, next year lawmakers could meet in Moab, Price, Logan or perhaps the Uintah Basin. "Until you come here and see and taste and smell rural issues, you can't understand them."
No one can remember the last time the Legislature as a whole met in southwestern Utah, if ever, and local residents, businesspeople and community leaders were openly ecstatic about having the lawmakers in their back yards.
The Daily Spectrum has covered the upcoming meetings with unbridled boosterism and banner headlines and on Sunday published an editorial titled "Attention, Legislature! We have issues, too."
In that editorial, the paper challenged urban lawmakers to "erase the Payson-Dixon line" that has divided the Wasatch Front from the rest of the state.
The sense of disenfranchisement felt by rural Utahns is real, Johnson said, noting that only about 15 of Utah's 104 lawmakers represent rural districts.
"We have issues they cannot relate to living along the Wasatch Front," Johnson said. "Their image of the U.S. Forest Service is Smoky Bear. Our image is one of a federal bureaucracy that controls our very economic existence."
The Legislature, which traditionally meets at the Capitol for committee hearings the third Wednesday of every month, chose to hold its July meetings in Cedar City and St. George at the behest of Johnson, Reps. Bud Bowman, R-Cedar City, and Bill Hickman, R-St. George.
The rationale, they say, was simple: Every year, the Higher Education Committee holds its July meeting in Cedar City. Because of several complex issues involving roads, wildlife and state lands in Washington County, the Natural Resources Committee and the Transportation Committee also decided to hold July meetings there.
More than half of Utah's 104 lawmakers serve on those three committees. "It seemed like a natural to have the entire Legislature meet down here," Johnson said. Legislative leadership wholeheartedly agreed.
But the St. George/Cedar City excursion has drawn criticism from some, including Marie George, Utah coordinator for United We Stand America. "They say they are doing it for taxpayers. They're not doing it for us; they are doing it to have a good time."
"I hope they do have a good time while they are down here,"
Johnson replied. "But that's not the reason why they are coming."
A lot has been said about lawmakers getting free tickets to the Utah Shakespearean Festival, courtesy of the Utah Public Employees Association. But four times as many lawmakers and spouses will be attending a Dutch-oven cookout on the Southern Utah University campus as will be attending the Shakespearean Festival.
"It tells me they are coming to learn about what issues are important to southern Utah. And that's what good government's all about."
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
On the agenda
Lawmakers will use the two days in southern Utah to learn about a host of issues: how the endangered desert tortoise is hampering economic growth, how coal trucks could threaten the safety of schoolchildren in Hurricane and the need for new water projects to meet the demand of unprecedented growth. Gov. Mike Leavitt will deliver a policy speech in Cedar City Wednesday on making higher education available to tens of thousands of Utahns through computer hookups.