What's in store for 2004 legislative session?

Monday begins the 2004 Legislature.

And while every legislative session is unique, the next 45 days will be different for several reasons.

While we've certainly had freshmen governors in a Legislature (the start of each of their first terms), this may be the first time in the state's history where we have a freshman governor who will see only one Legislature.

Gov. Olene Walker succeeded former Gov. Mike Leavitt in November when Leavitt was finally confirmed as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Walker is no neophyte, however.

She served 10 years in the Utah House, a couple of years in leadership, in the 1980s. She was then an appointed head of a state department for a while before agreeing to be Leavitt's lieutenant governor, where she worked to get budgets and bills approved for 11 years from the executive side.

Walker hasn't said if she'll run for governor this year or not. But she would start a campaign in March well behind in money and wooing of GOP state delegates. And while Walker may consider herself a conservative, many would see her clearly in the moderate wing of the Utah Republican Party — not a good place to be in trying to be one of two GOP gubernatorial candidates coming out of the May party convention.

Along with having a one-session governor, this will be the last general session with House Speaker Marty Stephens and Senate President Al Mansell sitting over their bodies. Stephens is running for governor, and so retiring from the House at the end of the year. Mansell still has two more years on his Senate term, but in November becomes president of the national association of Realtors, and will be traveling a lot for that group, and so won't seek re-election as Senate president.

Aside from personalities, Utah's economy is clearly turning around — although very slowly — and that could greatly affect the 2004 session.

The state is running a $52 million surplus in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. And leaders hope that come the mid-February revenue estimates more money will be found for the next fiscal year — whose $8-billion budget will be adopted during the upcoming Legislature.

So legislators and Walker won't have to actually cut budgets, a problem Leavitt and lawmakers struggled with the last three years.