Utah legislators are not getting a pay raise this year, but they are hiring some new staff and giving some of their own employees pay raises above the cost-of-living raises allocated to all state workers.

Legislative leaders are suggesting that the Legislature itself get $550,000 more this year in one-time surpluses and $1 million more in fiscal 2005-2006.

House budget chairman Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, said the Legislature is hiring two more attorneys for Legislative Research and General Counsel, one more auditor for the Legislative Office of Auditor General and one more fiscal analyst to help prepare the $8.6 billion state budget lawmakers are now considering.

"We want to stay a part-time Legislature," said Bigelow. "To do that, we have to make sure that when we are working up here, we have the staff support to let us do our work."

In addition, like other state departments this year, the Legislature should give some of their employees whose salaries are below the private/public market level appropriate pay raises.

For example, as part of the current budget negotiations with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., lawmakers are looking at pumping $10.8 million into state worker salaries to get much-desired skilled workers closer to what they could earn in the private sector or in local government.

Finally, lawmakers have squirreled away — at least temporarily — $350,000 into their own budget for a special study that Huntsman wants on high-tech research.

Why is the $350,000 for the STAR plan (a Science, Technology and Research proposal for the University of Utah and Utah State University) in the Legislature's budget?

"Because we didn't know where else to put it," Bigelow said, adding that legislators aren't trying to keep it for themselves but only keeping it there until he further explains how he intends to spend it.

Preliminary budget proposals show $3 million for STAR next year, but those final votes haven't been taken, Bigelow noted.

Suggested by former Senate president Lane Beattie, now head of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, STAR would pay for five buildings at the U. and USU and begin a high-tech medical/computer research program modeled after research and development programs at other leading universities across the nation.

Huntsman wants STAR as part of his new economic development plans for Utah.

---

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com