Utah legislators will hold their first official interim day in their new digs next week.
As the state Capitol undergoes a three-year, $200 million retrofitting, executive offices have been moved to a new office building east of the plaza behind the Capitol, while legislative offices and chambers were moved to a building just west of the plaza.
And with the move comes new restrictions on public and media interaction with legislators.
Access to public officials these days, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is cloaked in security.
And legislative leaders and the building bosses who work for them have, over the past year or so, used security and the smaller office space of the temporary legislative headquarters as a reason for a number of changes that will mark — not for the best, I believe — how the public interacts with and learns about legislators and their actions.
Some changes really can't be helped.
Others can, or could have been, avoided, but were changed on purpose to limit public and media access to legislators.
Some examples of each:
Can't be helped: Lobbyists and trade associations will no longer have the large, beautiful rotunda in which to entertain lawmakers. Likewise, in the new building there is no large open area for groups to protest or hold rallies indoors during the general session.
As more time-pressure is put on lawmakers, and as the media and others have become more critical of freebies taken by legislators from lobbyists, more and more often groups who want to host a lunch for legislators did so in the rotunda. Legislators could drop in for a few minutes and grab a bite, lobbyists had access to bend a few ears, and it was done relatively in the open and on the cheap — no $90 Jazz tickets or $150 meals at the New Yorker here.
But now there's no place for such a large gathering. And legislative employees are guessing that come the 2005 Legislature there will be more such functions down at local hotels — more expensive for the lobbyists, more difficult to attend for the legislators, with the byproduct being that the minglings will be out of the eye of media reporters and Capitol Hill watchers/workers.
Can be helped: It's understood that all legislators, at times, don't like to be bugged by pesky reporters, lobbyists and citizens as they walk around the Capitol. In the old building, legislators had to come out of private areas to get to hearing rooms and elevators.
The new legislative office, however, has private elevators for lawmakers. They can come from secure underground parking, up to their chambers and up to their fourth floor staff offices without having to meet the public.
In addition, reporters were moved off of the House and Senate chamber floors in the new building. They will now sit behind thick glass in small public galleries, viewing legislators' actions. And reporters also can't walk out on the floors while the Legislature is in session. They couldn't do that in the Senate before the move, but the House adopted the same rule last session.
In short, partly under the guise of security, partly under the desire to be less available to the media and public, Utah's 104 part-time legislators are setting themselves more apart.
This, clearly, is not a good thing.
Part of the irony of the post-9/11 security argument — at least as the new legislative offices are concerned — is that the conservative Legislature won't do perhaps the easiest thing to increase security: Put in metal detectors and don't let people carry guns or knives into the office building.
Congress, the courts and other public places do this. I visited London and Paris this summer, and all the major museums and public buildings there use metal detectors.
The conservative GOP majority in the Utah Legislature won't do this, of course, because gun-rights advocates would likely be angry. As now-U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop (then a gun-rights lobbyist) assessed at the end of one recent legislative session: "We won everything" in the gun-control debate. Not much has changed since.
Certainly, the powerful citizen gun lobby wouldn't like the no-carry restrictions unless gun lockers were placed at the doors so they could put their pistols in the lockers, retrieving them when they left. (You do remember the 2002 brouhaha among GOP leaders when legally permitted concealed weapons owners protested against Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to a state GOP convention and they couldn't carry their guns into the arena.)
So instead of restricting dangerous weapons in the new office building, designers restricted access to legislators via private elevators, parking and hallways.
No one wants a public safety incident. And legislators do want to do their work in the public eye, with the public's support.
But through structural changes in the new building and operational decisions by legislators themselves, the public come the 2005 Legislature will not have the availability to lawmakers that they have had before.
And both sides will be the poorer for it.
Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com