Legislative tome offers lot to digest

Picked up your copy of the Digest of Legislation yet? I didn't think so. I was at the new Utah State Capitol Complex yesterday, picking up my copy, and I was the only person in line. For a minute I thought I'd made a wrong turn and was volunteering for jury duty.

But nope, I was in the right place, and soon a friendly young woman named Cassandra Bauman, the legislative secretary in the Office of Legislative Research & General Counsel, handed me my absolutely free 236-page copy of this year's Digest of Legislation.

The Digest lists every bill passed by the 2004 General Session of the Utah State Legislature, including those vetoed by the governor, and presents a brief synopsis of what each bill means.

About 400 bills were passed by the Legislature in the session that began on Jan. 19 and ended March 3 — accounting for the 236-page book. You can see the bills in their entirety by going to the government Web sitewww.le.utah.gov and can print them from there, providing you have a heavy-duty printer and a lot of paper. The full-text version would be longer than Bill Clinton's memoirs.

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Because of all the work put in by legislators in tweaking the state's lawbook every winter (imagine if they worked year-round), I wondered how a regular citizen such as myself could possibly keep abreast of all the amendments, alterations, expansions, explanations, policy declarations and outright changes. Which is how I got to know Cassandra, who said when I called her on the phone, "Well, we have a book that has thumbnail sketches of all the bills . . . and it's free."

Anybody who wants one just has to drop by the Capitol and pick one up.

When I dropped by to pick mine up, Cassandra said that not a whole lot of people like me come in for a copy. "Mostly it's business people and government people," she said. "We don't ask them who they are, but I think for the most part it's people who need to know the new laws for some specific reason."

Most of the laws do not affect daily mainstream life. The two biggest sections, I discovered as I thumbed through the subject index, have to do with business and government.

For the most part, the new bills, with titles such as "Municipal Annexation Provisions in First Class Counties" (SB18) and "Outsourcing State Jobs" (SB199), have all the pizzazz of high school algebra.

But as with most books, there are always some interesting parts if you look long enough.

SB214, for example, deals with "Obesity Lawsuits." Sponsored by Sen. Howard A. Stephenson, R-Draper, the bill enacts the "Commonsense Consumption Act" and "provides manufacturers, packers, distributors, carriers, holders, sellers, marketers, and advertisers of food with immunity from civil liability for obesity and weight gain claims."