Special sessions of the Utah Legislature are often warped affairs.

It's not necessarily that the individual legislators are warped. Well . . . OK, a few of them are.

Rather, it is that issues that in a regular 45-day general session may not rise to the importance of defining political moments are, in the bright spotlight of a single-day special session with only half a dozen issues on the table, suddenly twisted into monumental measures.

Such was the case this week.

The 104 part-time lawmakers met from 2 p.m. to midnight Wednesday to argue over around a dozen matters put on the special session call by GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

In the end, legislators decided — in one of the twisted situations I speak about — not to reallocate Health Department funds to spend $2 million for "emergency" dental work for poor and/or disabled Utahns.

Then using convoluted reasoning that sometimes hurts a listener's head, legislators spent an extra $15 million to build a new 270-car parking garage east of the Capitol Building.

(Democrats supported the $2 million Medicaid dental appropriation, the majority Republicans killed it. Democrats and Republicans alike voted for the $15 million parking garage.)

Now, if you listen to the majority's arguments on these issues, you can come away saying . . . all right, I can understand what you are saying.

But if you stop for a moment and put the comments into a broader context, they don't make a lot of sense.

I mean, after all the talk, they ultimately denied dental care to some of the most needy among us and voted to spend seven times that amount on a parking garage.

Adding insult to injury, legislators pushed aside arguments for the Medicaid dental care, a program they've funded for years, and voted to spend $15 million on a garage they only first heard about 30 days ago, taking the recommendation of a group of University of Utah engineering students.

I mean, come on.

Here's an idea — maybe the state could hire some of the disabled, poor Utahns to hand out parking passes at the new garage, or clean the garage, or wash visitors' cars in the lot, and as full-time state workers they could get the great health and dental benefits that state employees and part-time legislators and their families get.

And then you wouldn't need the $2 million Medicaid dental plan.

No, wait, that probably won't work — because the $2 million, with federal match, would help something like 40,000 poor, sick Utahns.

And not even the incredibly myopic and self-centered Legislature would want to hire 40,000 people to take care of its parking garage.