Sun sets on session

Tight quarters. Lots of money.

The 2005 Utah Legislature adjourned at midnight Wednesday after dealing with both.

The 104 part-time legislators adopted a nearly $9 billion budget for next year, one that includes no general tax cuts even though lawmakers had the most cash ever.

And even though lawmakers met in new, smaller digs behind the closed-for-renovation-Capitol, legislators said the session went pretty well considering the lack of space, crowded committee rooms and no real area for citizens to gather in large groups to protest or applaud legislators.

"As a citizen and taxpayer myself, I think we were well served" by legislators' work, said freshman Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. in a midday interview. Huntsman now has 20 days to veto any of the 400-odd bills adopted or individual line item spending.

The rancor of recent sessions was missing the past 45 days, with no emotional, gut-wrenching debates over same-sex marriage, hate crimes, abortion or guns. Even public education funding and immigration debates were civil.

Huntsman, like other governors before him, got most of what he wanted from lawmakers. He got his main priority: millions of dollars more for economic development and tourism.

But he didn't get a phase-out of the 5 percent corporate income tax. "That will be taken up immediately" in a huge tax reform task force that will look at all kinds of tax reform "and set the (major) agenda for the 2006 Legislature," he said.

Huntsman declined to name any possible vetoes. But sources said Wednesday night that Huntsman is not looking favorably on four items, should they have passed at the last minutes before adjournment.

Those include a bill that authorizes a new, non-hazardous waste dump in Tooele County, two bills that could curtail his influence in managing the Capitol grounds, and a bill that could — with future legislative approval — push $150 million a year in sales tax money into roads.

Over the past 45 days other policy items were debated, few adopted, more to await legislative study over the next year or the 2006 Legislature.

A last-day snag between House and Senate Republicans sank both a $4.5 million appropriation to build a new veteran's nursing home near Ogden and several million dollars for a start-up drug-offender rehabilitation program (called DORA).

But by and large, said House Speaker Greg Curtis and Senate President John Valentine, the session went smoothly, even if some new ideas went under. "You will see (the drug program) and the veterans home in the next session," predicted Valentine.