Legislature to spend 2 days in Logan this summer

Look out, Logan, here comes the Legislature.

GOP legislative leaders say they will resume summer visits to various points around the state, a practice stopped three years ago when state revenues crashed and lawmakers cut out the trips to save money.

Come this August, the entire 104-member body will travel north for two days of visits and town meetings.

The two- and three-day tours were always praised by local residents and legislators alike. Local residents liked the idea that all lawmakers would take the time and trouble to visit their areas and learn about their concerns, and legislators liked getting out and seeing different parts of the state.

But controversy sometimes followed the legislators' bus: complaints that lobbyists were picking up too much of the tour amenities and, in Logan, criticism that legislators were meeting in a well-known religious building.

In 1994, when the Legislature visited Cache and Box Elder counties, some Democratic legislators and citizens were upset that lawmakers held a town meeting in the Logan Tabernacle, a historic building owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The prohibition against church and state, especially in heavily LDS Utah, needed to be maintained, the critics said. Some Utahns even picketed outside the Tabernacle during the town meeting.

"We won't be meeting in the Tabernacle this summer," said House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy. "We've learned from that."

Actually, said Rep. Fred Hunsaker, R-Logan, there are non-religious meetings all the time in the Logan Tabernacle. "They have concerts, citizen meetings, all kinds of things. I see it as acceptable to a lot of people" if the Legislature used the Tabernacle again.

Leaders have yet to put a price tag on the trip. A supplemental appropriation will be approved to handle the cost, Curtis said. Previous trips reportedly cost $30,000 to $40,000, newspaper archives show.

But the cost won't be much more than a normal meeting day in Salt Lake City.

"We are already scheduled for an August interim day," said Curtis. Each month when the Legislature is out of general session, lawmakers meet for a day (leaders meet for two days) on Capitol Hill in various committees.

In the 1990s, the legislative tour grew to three days total, with legislators being put up for two nights at state expense and going on all kinds of side trips and tours. Two or more town hall meetings with local citizens were normally held, too.