Winners: Every year, the Sterling Scholar competition, sponsored by the Deseret News and KSL-TV, gives Utahns plenty of reasons to cheer and to feel great optimism for the future. This year was no different.
The winners, who were awarded their scholarships this week, displayed outstanding intellectual, leadership and character traits. Our former education editor, Lavor K. Chaffin, started this program in 1962 to make sure young people were honored for something other than athletics. Through the years the program has done this well, and it has reminded the rest of the community that there is much to celebrate in academic and artistic achievement.
Winner: Fewer dangerous chemicals were released into Utah's environment in 1999 than at any time during the past 13 years, according to the state's recently released toxic inventory. That's great news for a state that has been known in the past as the home for some of the nation's worst polluters.
Even with the reductions, however, industries still spewed 1.2 billion pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment that year, which means much work remains to be done. However, it was heartening to see that Magcorp, long known as one of the nation's worst polluters, has reduced its emissions of chlorine considerably due to technological upgrades.
Loser: The name game is getting a bit ridiculous. All the City Council had to do was come up with some acceptable new monickers for the TRAX line that will extend from downtown Salt Lake City to the University of Utah. But after listening to input from many locals who had passionate opinions, they came up with a series of hyphenated names that are simply too long to put on a sign.
That has sent the Utah Transit Authority board of directors back to the drawing board. It will have to come up with some names of its own and give those to the City Council for consideration. More importantly, once the names are known, it will be too late to get permanent signs ready at the stations for when the new line is scheduled to open in the fall. That's what happens when you try to please everyone.
Loser: Once again, lobbyists spent a bunch of money on state lawmakers during the legislative session this year. The total came to $107,000, according to disclosure reports. And, once again, it is difficult to trace much of this money because lobbyists are adept at exploiting the loopholes in Utah's porous disclosure laws.
A lobbyist who spends more than $50 on a lawmaker during a 24-hour period must disclose the name of that lawmaker. But more and more lobbyists are learning to band together and split the costs of these gifts so that very few of them fall into a category that would trigger disclosure — at least technically. Many states require full disclosure or outlaw all gifts from lobbyists. We're still waiting for a good explanation as to why Utah lawmakers think they don't need to do the same.