Lawmakers heading north

After a five-year hiatus, the annual legislative road trip will commence again this year with a journey north on Monday.

In two tightly scheduled days, legislators will get a crash course on the issues important to Box Elder, Cache and Rich counties, including transportation problems, agricultural struggles and business development. They will also open their ears, so to speak, to their constituents during a Town Hall meeting and a 30-minute Tax Reform Task Force meeting at the Eccles Theater in Logan.

Leaders hope that this trip is educational for both legislators, who will get a ground-level view of the issues, and the general public, who can meet the "decisionmakers" without having to travel two hours to Salt Lake City, Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said. It is also an opportunity for both sides to realize that despite geographical separation, many areas of the state have very similar concerns.

"Often you get a perspective that there are problems you have in your district that are the same in other districts," Valentine said. "It can be refreshing to know that we're all struggling with the same things."

House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake, said that the visit to northern Utah will be important for the area, since there are a number of issues that legislators do not fully understand and have not adequately addressed.

"Cache Valley has been going through some struggles that I don't think we've been very responsive to at the Capitol," Becker said. "There is a real loss of agricultural land and a lot of urban development, which is jumping into those agricultural areas, which causes conflicts."

Because of budget crunches during the past few years, the Legislature has not convened a meeting of its own outside of the state Capitol since 2000 when lawmakers visited Carbon and Emery counties, although they did travel to Fillmore earlier this year at the behest of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. for the State of the State address. Their first legislative trip was actually in 1992, and the annual tradition continued for eight years, during which time they visited every county at least once.

Valentine said that those early trips "brought us a lot of heat," but lawmakers soon learned the value of getting to unfamiliar corners of the state. Thanks to a booming surplus this year, Valentine and House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, decided to resuscitate the road show.

"It gives legislators an opportunity to see the issues — education, agriculture or business, for example — first-hand and to talk to some of the local leaders," Curtis said. "It gives them a better understanding and shows respect for the local people and their issues."