A government records request filed by the activist group United for Social Justice reveals the state has spent more than $85,000 defending Utah’s illegal immigration enforcement law passed last year. As KCPW’s Whittney Evans reports, it’s calling on the state to stop wasting taxpayer dollars fighting an issue they say should be left up to the federal government.
Segment 1: Under his watch as Commissioner of Higher Education, William Sederburg saw student enrollment at Utah’s eight colleges and universities grow 22 percent while state funding was cut 14 percent. After four years, he’s stepping down and Tuesday, he joins us to talk about making the case for higher ed and doing more with [...]
Internet entrepreneur Pete Ashdown is once again venturing into politics. The founder and CEO of Salt Lake City-based Internet service provider XMission will make another run for the U.S. Senate in 2012, hoping to tackle the influence of money in government.
Pete Ashdown, founder and CEO of Utah Internet Service Provider XMission announced his second candidacy for the U.S. Senate Friday at the State Capitol, taking on Utah’s senior Senator Orrin Hatch for a second time. Ashdown, who took more than 30 percent of the vote when he challenged Hatch as the Democratic candidate in 2006, says his top priority is tackling the influence of money in government.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says punitive illegal immigration measures than have taken effect in states like Arizona, Georgia and Alabama are knee-jerk, extreme reactions to a delicate and complicated issue. As KCPW’s Whittney Evans reports, Shurtleff told the first-ever Mountain West Immigration Summit he hosted today that states need to forge a consensus on comprehensive, humane and economically-sound immigration reform.
Business, law enforcement, faith and government leaders will gather in Utah tomorrow to discuss immigration in the Mountain West Immigration Summit hosted by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
Hairs were split at the State Capitol this morning when licensed cosmetologists filled a committee room to protest a potential bill that would remove the license requirement for braiding hair in Utah. Right now, a person must obtain a cosmetology license.
The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that criminal defendants who can’t afford a lawyer must be provided one by the court. But a new report from the ACLU of Utah says the state is woefully lacking in both providing funding and oversight of its public defender system, and that means indigent defendants aren’t getting justice.
Republican Representative Stephen Sandstrom is known as the sponsor of a highly controversial new illegal immigration law, currently tied up in federal court. And he’s pondering a run for Congress in 2012. He joined us to talk about the future of that law and his political plans.
In a special session last week, the Utah Legislature weighed in on the current debt ceiling crisis by passing another resolution urging Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. But it got no support from a clearly frustrated Democratic caucus in the Utah House of Representatives.
