Salt Lake County recreation centers and golf courses are off the hook, after a move to consider privatizing the facilities failed in the House on Thursday.
SB45 originally would have forced all cities and counties to create an inventory of all "competitive activities" that are not a so-called core governmental activity. But an amendment on the House floor changed the bill to only target Salt Lake County.
Then, the measure failed on a 34-36 vote.
That news was relieving for Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon. He feared the push for privatization would shut down recreation centers and golf courses.
"We felt the bill was unnecessary," Corroon said. "The services we provide through our recreation centers are services that otherwise would not be provided to all our citizens in Salt Lake County."
Rep. Craig Frank, R-Pleasant Grove, the bill's House sponsor, said government should "stick to the activities they are good at" and just use the yellow pages to find the private companies that could do the rest much better.
"They will know whether or not they should be involved with these activities," Frank said.
Frank has another bill that targets activities on the state level, HB75, that already passed through the House and is awaiting a debate in the Senate. That bill originally included oversight at the county and city level, but was removed during the committee process.
Rep. Brad Dee, R-Washington Terrace, said Frank's push for SB45 is essentially trying to make law what he couldn't get in the other bill
"Isn't this just coming back and trying to do something we worked with you not to have in the bill?" Dee said. "I'm still not thinking this is something we want to impose on locals until we see how well it works at the state level," Dee said.
Corroon said he agrees that government shouldn't compete with the private industry. Even so, "private industry, unfortunately, doesn't always and can't always serve the needs of the community."
"You can privatize just about anything if you really want to," Corroon said. "The question is what will best serve the citizens, will government or private industry best serve the citizens."
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