A bill that would have increased the amount of taxes oil and natural gas drillers pay to the state of Utah didn’t make it far in a legislative committee yesterday. Salt Lake City Democratic Representative Brian King says Utah energy companies have been getting a bailout from the state since the 1980s, and now it’s time to stop.
Beds in Utah’s prisons and jails are hard to come by for new inmates. But this year, the legislature is committing to creating new space for minor parole violators in Salt Lake City. As KCPW’s Jessica Gail reports, some say it would help alleviate the problem of overcrowding in prisons, and give parolees more of a second chance.
A state lawmaker’s bill to eliminate gun-free zones around schools, daycares and universities was jammed this morning in the Utah House of Representatives. Under Democratic Representative Jen Seelig’s amendment, if a school goes into lockdown because someone is recklessly displaying a gun, that person would have to reimburse the school for that cost.
Despite voting the bill down last month, the Utah House of Representatives reconsidered and passed a bill allowing school districts to sell and display advertising on school buses today.
Energy innovation in the United States has stalled, but with transformational change, it can get running again. That’s the message Jeff Muhs, director of Utah State University’s Energy Dynamics Laboratory, will deliver tomorrow night as he kicks off the Utah Museum of Natural History’s 2011 Nature of Things Lecture Series.
A bill that punishes Utah businesses for employing undocumented immigrants cleared the legislature’s House Business and Labor Committee yesterday. But as KCPW’s Whittney Evans reports, it was sharply divisive.
Two dozen companies may soon be prohibited from doing business with the Utah State Retirement Office. Republican Senator Curt Bramble is sponsoring SB 112, which would prevent Utah’s pension system from investing in companies that support the Iranian petroleum industry.
If Utah really wants to counter the rising rates of alcohol and drug addiction, it should promote programs that help people recover. That’s what a few addiction experts and several hundred recovering addicts who rallied in the Capitol rotunda Monday had to say to the Utah Legislature. As KCPW’s Jessica Gail reports, they’re asking lawmakers to treat addiction more as a health problem than as a crime.
Utah lawmakers on a committee that oversees education funding were deadlocked this morning after spending two hours trying to decide where in the education budget to fit $91 million in unallocated money. Lawmakers trimmed the budget by $173 million, but are going back to fill in some holes.
Utah’s schools will have to teach that the United States is a constitutional republic, if a bill passed by the House of Representatives this morning becomes law. Republican Representative Mike Morley, a member of the highly conservative Patrick Henry Caucus, is sponsoring the legislation.
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