State porn czar Paula Houston is going to start getting tough.
Fresh off the 2002 legislative session where lawmakers forced Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to fund the porn czar out of his own budget, the attorney general said he's eager to debunk Houston's image as a Pollyanna peeking into mailboxes, snatching up the latest Victoria's Secret catalogs lest they fall into the hands of unsuspecting teenage boys.
"There's been almost a caricature made of the office, and our goal is to do away with that caricature," Shurtleff said. "We're going to get serious."
In the past year Houston has responded to 1,400 citizen complaints, helped write tougher laws against pornography and assisted local agencies in prosecutions. She's never carried out her own prosecutions, though.
Two years after writing the position into law and providing the funding, legislators threatened to cut Houston's position in the wake of the state's $250 million budget deficit.
After Shurtleff ripped into a legislative budget committee over their proposed cuts, lawmakers agreed to let Shurtleff keep Houston's position — with one caveat. He would have to fund the position himself and find other places in his office to cut the $150,000 that would have covered Houston's job.
Now that his office is writing the checks for the porn czar, Shurtleff is determined to move Houston into a more aggressive role of prosecuting child pornography cases.
Over the past year, Houston personally handled most of the calls that came into her office from parents concerned with vulgar images their children were receiving or stumbling upon via the Internet.
The answers to those common concerns and questions are now compiled and will soon be featured in a "Frequently Asked Questions" section on the Pornography Ombudsman Web site www.attygen.state.ut.us/pornography.html.
Instead of serving as a 24-hour help line, the former West Valley prosecutor will move into enforcing the laws.
"We now know the questions that are coming in," Shurtleff said. "What you'll see is more emphasis on prosecutions and locking people up."
And that doesn't mean clearing the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue off newsstands.
"The majority of the complaints Paula has been getting lately have been with bestiality involving children," attorney general spokesman Paul Murphy said.
Shurtleff says he's passionate about punishing such "purveyors of filth."
Even before this year's session began, Shurtleff had to do away with 15 positions in his office and let seven or eight staffers go. None of those laid off included lawyers, Shurtleff said.
This year, 14 bills were passed that have a fiscal impact of $2.8 million on the Attorney General's Office. Lawmakers funded about 7 percent of that figure, Shurtleff said.
Still, with 17 of the 20 bills the Attorney General's Office had an interest in passing, such as the expansion of DNA testing for convicted felons and stiffer laws against sexually explicit e-mails, Shurtleff said he's happy with what lawmakers accomplished this year.
E-mail: djensen@desnews.com