Lawmakers combine education, tax bills

In an unprecedented move, GOP legislative leaders are lumping together two groups of the most important bills to be heard in this year's Legislature —public education and taxes.

While it is not uncommon for legislators to run "omnibus" bills that capture disparate elements of a topic, it is almost unheard of for multiple individual bills — including some previously defeated in the current general session — to be bundled together into one bill. This year's session ends Wednesday at midnight.

Monday night, it was not immediately certain if the tax or education omnibus bill would contain an extra $25 million in one-time money GOP leaders want to use for new teacher bonuses and bonuses based on teacher performance, details of which also were released Monday. The primary hurdle for House and Senate Republicans is a continuing disagreement over $1 million for teachers seeking a special national certification.

Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said the education omnibus bill includes individual bills some might like and others they don't. Many of those individual bills address education reform, like differentiated pay and longer contracts for math and science teachers.

"Given the fact we only have two days left in the session, I don't know how we could fairly consider them all without having them all in one bill," said Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, chairman of the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee.

House budget chairman Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, told House members that the main reason for combining taxes and public education into two massive bills was to help legislative attorneys who are hard-pressed to keep track of more than a dozen bills in the final days of the session.

One GOP House leader said from a political aspect, having two major bills combining all measures left in those two important topics will allow for two extensive debates, followed by just two votes in each body, ultimately saving time and the possibility of drafting mistakes.

The huge new bills — which were drafted over the weekend by staff — will be explained section by section so that members can vote on each area that used to be a single bill.

"We're not trying to sneak anything through," Bigelow said. "If the votes are not there (for one piece), representatives will vote to delete it, period."

Five tax bills will be lumped into one tax package, and a dozen public education bills will be lumped into the Minimum School Program Act, the schools' budget bill that also will contain a 2.5 percent boost to the WPU, which is the state's basic student funding formula, and a $1,700 teacher raise.