The governor's new policy, which only affects current executive branch employees, also states that employees cannot take part in any hiring or contracting decisions involving family members or their businesses.

Meanwhile, Wednesday the House Rules Committee voted a gift-ban bill to the House floor for debate. The bill, sponsored by House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake, would ban most gifts over $5, although it, too, has a number of exceptions.

However, House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, declined to "read in" the Rules Committee sifting report. So those two-dozen bills don't go on the House floor calendar for debate. Asked why he didn't read in the report, Curtis said there are already enough bills on the calendar to consider Friday — a day when the House is supposed to debate House-sponsored bills.

"I'm not so sure the bills" sent out by the House Rules Committee "are really priority bills — that should come before some others." Curtis said he would take a look at the next list of bills Rules sends out to decide if they are worthy of consideration by the whole 75-member body. And Becker's gift ban bill may not be on that next Rules report, anyway.

Public opinion surveys by the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV show time and again that most Utahns want to either ban lobbyist gifts to legislators or at least have more disclosure.

Current law says that legislators can accept any "intangible" gift, like a sport ticket or a meal. If a lobbyist spends more than $50 in one day on a legislator, that legislator's name must be listed in the lobbyist's financial disclosure report. A Morning News study of lobbyist gift-giving in 2006 published several weeks ago showed that more than 80 percent of gifts given to legislators were under $50, and so no legislators' names came with the gift. Lobbyists gave legislators more than $115,000 in gifts last year, on average that came out to more than $1,100 per legislator.

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E-mail: lisa@desnews.com; bbjr@desnews.com