Utah lawmakers got their 45-day general session under way Monday with prayers, speeches, votes on a few bills and remembrances of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Utah House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, in his opening remarks to legislators and the public, said expect different groups and individuals to have competing ideas.

"Arguments will be born. But ultimately reason will prevail," said Curtis, who enters his second year as GOP leader of the 75-member House.

"There is nothing more damaging to the legislative process than when we lose our cool, question motives, malign character or spread half-truths," he said.

Lawmakers face about $1 billion in new money. "We need to be sure that we come up with old ways to spend less," Curtis said. "And one of the best old ways to spend less is to take less" from taxpayers in the first place.

The session may not be easy, "but public service is about making tough choices among competing priorities," Curtis said.

Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said even lawmakers "face challenges requiring grit and foresight, particularly the heartbreaking decisions of the recent lean years when we had to cut significant budgets."

But there are challenges, too, in flush years, Valentine said.

Prosperity, he said, "can be an even greater adversity, than when we had bad times. When we had bad times, our goals were clear. We had to balance the budget. Prosperity demands discipline and vision."

The Legislature must grapple with what to do to reform the state's tax system — including looking at "how much tax can we responsibly cut" — as well as how much to spend on transportation and education. All this must be done, Valentine said, while remembering that the good times financially are "cyclical. They come and go."

He told the Senate that "we are at a crossroads. What we do here will affect us more profoundly than what we did even in those lean years."

There were light moments, too, during the opening day of the session, which is held annually on Martin Luther King Jr. Day since the state Constitution requires the session start on the third Monday in January.

The Senate was visited briefly by "Miss Barbara," who years ago hosted the children's program, "Romper Room" and is the mother of Sen. Karen Hale, D-Salt Lake. "Miss Barbara" looked in her "magic mirror" and asked that the lawmakers have a "great session."

And lawmakers arrived to find "Evolution Amber Ale" beer on their desks, courtesy of radio personality Tom Barberi — although the bottles were empty to comply with the state's ban on liquor at the Capitol.

The brew, produced by Wasatch Beers, is intended to poke fun at the local and national debate over "intelligent design," the idea that life is too complex to be explained by Darwin's theory of evolution.