Huge budget bills, hate crimes penalty enhancement, and more discussion of education funding were on the table Monday as Utah legislators systematically moved toward adjournment Wednesday night.
As leaders presented bills that to spend upward of $7.3 billion in fiscal 2001-2002, they were still squabbling over how to pay for three extra days of work for Utah public education teachers.
State employees and college professors will each get 6 percent raises next year.
Republicans in the House and Senate have also agreed to increase the main weighted pupil unit (WPU), the main funding formula for public education, by an equivalent of 6 percent. But mandating three extra days of teacher work means the WPU is really around 5.2 percent, teachers and Democrats say.
"We're working with the Utah Education Association and others and believe we can do something there," said House Majority Leader Kevin Garn, R-Layton,
who has been a critic this year of the UEA, the state's largest teachers union.
The Legislature does not set teacher salaries. That is done by each of the 40 school districts. But legislators do provide some basic spending for all school kids. And much of yearly teacher pay raises come out of WPU increases.
The UEA called a one-day strike in early December over education funding and relations between the teachers and GOP lawmakers have been tense since.
Garn and other leaders said they are proud of the nearly 13 percent increase that public education will see next year.
And even House Democratic leaders, questioned by reporters Monday morning, said they were pleased with the overall education budget. But, "we would have done some things differently," said House Minority Assistant Whip Brad King, D-Price.
"It's just not fair (to give teachers) a different compensation package than state employees and higher education workers," King said.
Still, "overall this is a good year for public education and a good year for Utahns," King said.
The biggest political battle among those still looming may end up being the jurisdictional dispute over who runs the Applied Technology Centers across the state.
The differences pit House Republicans against GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt and some Republican senators.
House Speaker Marty Stephens, R-Farr West, had his version of the ATC governance passed in the House a week ago after Leavitt's alternative was soundly defeated.
But Monday morning he said he had "no idea" where the issue of who oversees ATCs may go now.
Stephens said Sen. Leonard Blackham, R-Moroni, was drafting a new governance plan. But Stephens said he hadn't seen it yet.
"I think my bill will pass in the Senate if it gets a vote. But I don't know," Stephens said, sounding a bit frustrated. Stephens idea, backed by a ATC governance task force that studied the issue last year, calls for a blended board of 21 members, some from the State Board of Education, some from the Board of Regents, along with a number of business representatives.
Leavitt wants the task force to study the issue for another year, perhaps with an eye to having a super board, or blended board, that oversees public, higher education and the ATCs, whose charge is to train students to meet jobs in the private sector.
Citing a procedural foul-up, House Republicans pulled a number of Senate bills off the calendar and sent them back to the Rules Committee. Democrats voted against the move, and afterward several of them said they believed it was done to prevent a debate on Sen. Pete Suazo's controversial hate crimes bill, SB37.
The Salt Lake Democrat's bill, which would enhance crimes one degree if the victim is selected because of bias or prejudice against a group, barely came out of House Rules in a 7-6 vote last week and one Rules Committee member said Monday that it may not come back again.
Meanwhile, with less then three days left, a number of compromises over difficult issues are coming together.
Stephens said the state will provide a $24.5 million package for the Utah Transit Authority to "secure the commuter rail corridor from Brigham City to Payson."
Ultimately, it will cost UTA around $140 million to get the corridor, along with spurs to Sugar House and Magna, he said. But the state stepped up to help out, the speaker said.
Democrats see it differently. House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake, said if Republicans hadn't bonded for $100 million for the Legacy Highway, "which will be tied up in the courts for two years or more, we could have done a lot more" not only in education but in commuter rail as well.
"Commuter rail will be delayed for years" because other priorities were sought by the Republicans, Becker said.
But Stephens said with federal participation and the quarter-cent sales tax increase that passed last fall, UTA will move forward with commuter rail.
E-MAIL: bbjr@desnews.com