But other local groups most assuredly have issues before the Legislature.

The Utah League of Credit Unions and various banks have over the past five years been in a bitter, even divisive, political fight in the Legislature.

Envirocare's very future depends on the Legislature. The hazardous waste firm in Tooele County pays the state considerable sums in legislative-set waste dumping fees. And while it has abandoned its request now, a year ago Envirocare wanted the Legislature to allow it to take a higher grade of low-level radioactive waste.

Philip Morris is a longtime giver of legislative political cash. And while some lawmakers and their party PACs declined Philip Morris money for a time in the 1990s, now most legislators and their party PACs accept tobacco donations again.

Some may see it a bit ironic that Utah legislators — more than 80 percent of whom are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and so don't smoke tobacco, abstain from alcohol, coffee and tea — would have raised more than $100,000 for this convention from industries they personally boycott.

But then the LDS Church itself, through providing a free concert of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and choir CDs as gifts to conference attendees, has donated more than $25,000 to the event, legislative staffers say.

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Contributing: Josh Loftin

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com; leonard@desnews.com