Lawmakers bite bullet on Salt Palace funding

Utah state legislators ended a two-day special session Wednesday night, adopting all but one measure Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. wanted and even coming up with $4 million to help finish the Salt Palace Convention Center expansion.

While a number of bills were important, including creating a new drug rehab program and setting a high bar for future transportation funding (see accompanying stories), the Salt Palace brought the harshest words.

Huntsman and GOP lawmakers pushed for the cash even though it will help Salt Lake City and its mayor, Rocky Anderson, the man some Republicans love to hate. It took some last-minute negotiating to come up with a plan acceptable to enough lawmakers.

That plan, which was still being crafted into a bill midday Wednesday, took the $4 million needed for the Salt Palace from the $18 million already set aside for tourism promotion — a key piece of the new governor's economic development effort.

"It was a tough call, but arguably that is a relevant fund to draw from," Huntsman told the Deseret Morning News. Expanding the Salt Palace, he said, needed to be done to stay competitive with other convention cities in the region.

Mike Deaver, the state's deputy director of tourism, said conventioneers often return as tourists after seeing the state and occasionally even decided to relocate their businesses here.

"We checked our egos and decided this was going to be in the best interest of the state," Deaver said of the administration's decision to go along with giving up some of the tourism promotion money. "The Salt Palace is that important."

Lawmakers have pledged to restore the $4 million taken from the tourism promotion fund.

Although Huntsman didn't get one of the 15 items he asked lawmakers to approve — a property annexation bill sought by Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem — he labeled the first special session of his administration a success.

"The results say it all," the governor said. "By and large, with the things I had high on my list — DORA (the drug rehabilitation program), the Salt Palace, the veterans nursing home and No Child Left Behind — we're in good shape."

There were complaints that the governor had given lawmakers too much to do in a special session, traditionally called only to consider items that can't wait for the annual legislative session that begins in mid-January.

But it was the controversial Salt Lake mayor and his connection to the Salt Palace project that generated the most friction during the two-day session.