Walker vetoes 5 bills, including a voucher plan

Utah won't recognize gay marriages, and its tax dollars won't fund abortions under two controversial measures in the stack of 383 bills Gov. Olene Walker signed into law by Tuesday's legal deadline.

But Walker also at times overturned the will of the Legislature, vetoing five bills, including one tipping the child welfare system toward families' rights, and using line item vetoes on two budget bills. She also did not concur with a resolution opposing Internet taxes.

And in a rare move, Walker essentially split up a controversial education voucher bill for parents of children with disabilities. She vetoed HB115 but left intact $1.4 million to pay for it and sent the money to the State Board of Education to contract with private schools helping students with disabilities.

Advisers' opinions are mixed on whether the action requires a special session of the Legislature, Walker said.

"This last 20-day period has been a very weighty time for me," Walker said. "I always said my test would be if (a bill) did more good than harm, I'd sign it. If it did more harm than good, I wouldn't."

The statements came two hours before Walker appeared at an Avenues neighborhood mass meeting, where residents selected state and county delegates to help determine her fate in the crowded GOP governor's race. Her actions on the legislation could help or hurt her candidacy. As Walker says, pen wielding "cuts both ways."

On one hand, she said, "I signed bills I think will play very favorably with conservative members of our party."

Walker approved bills that would halt partial-birth abortions and state funding for abortions. She said they maintain the status quo and won't cost extra money to defend because they would be stayed until any federal legal challenges are resolved.

She also signed SB24, which states it is Utah policy to only recognize as a marriage the union between a man and a woman. Utah voters also will decide this November whether to amend the Utah Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman under a separate resolution the Legislature passed. The bills came in response to a flood of gay marriages performed in various cities nationwide after Massachusetts' top court ruled such marriages must be allowed.

On the other hand, backers of the vetoed voucher bill, dubbed "Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships," believed her stroke of the pen would anger GOP convention-going conservatives enough to keep her name off the November ballot.

Walker acknowledges the possibility.