Legislator tour starts today

Utah legislators will take a two-day tour of Davis and Salt Lake counties starting today, and while there will not be any public hearings during the cram-packed 48 hours, residents can get online and pose questions that will be answered by legislators.

Eyebrows were raised last week when Salt Lake County Council members agreed to kick in $25,000 for the Salt Lake County tour that will cost upward of $105,000.

While the Salt Lake County tour Thursday has a $105,000 price tag, a daylong tour in Davis County today has a budget of under $15,000, local officials there say.

The Salt Lake tour is hosted by the Salt Lake Area Chamber of Commerce and one of its subsidiaries, the Downtown Alliance. Those groups are raising about $56,000 from a variety of well-known, politically active groups, including EnergySolutions, a hazardous waste storage firm.

In Tuesday's Deseret Morning News, chamber president and former Utah Senate president Lane Beattie wrote an op-ed piece explaining all the work that's going into the tour and listed wide-ranging issues that the 104 part-time legislators will learn about.

Meanwhile, the Senate has set up a Web site where residents can pose real-time questions to legislators and get quick answers to their queries.

Senate chief deputy Ric Cantrell said, "This is an experiment. And if it works well, we may just keep it up and running." Residents can post questions and receive an answer, either from one legislator designated by leaders to deal with a technical question, or they can get dozens of answers if the question is sent out to all 104 lawmakers. Residents who don't have an Internet connection can can phone in questions to the state lawmakers at 801-326-1677.

Starting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, you can visit www.utahsitevisit.com. Click on the box to ask a question and write it out. Cantrell will read the question, and if he thinks it has some value, he will e-mail it to Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, and to House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, or a member of GOP leadership assigned by those top leaders. The questions will pop up on the leaders' Blackberries while they are on the tour, and answers to the questions can be sent back in real time. Cantrell will then post the questions and answers on the Web site, for all to see.

"We can even use voice — the answering legislator may call me back, I'll record their answer and post that audio on the Web site," said Cantrell. "If this works well, we may well keep it going" all year long, he added.

For more than 15 years, the Legislature has visited — and in some cases, revisited — various areas of the state each August. Each visit has included two or more public hearings to allow local residents to ask lawmakers questions. But there will be no public hearings Wednesday or Thursday, even though this is the first time the Legislature has visited Davis and Salt Lake counties.

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