Legislator regrets focus on liquor laws

A Utah legislator who switched a bill creating a task force to study the state's liquor laws to a task force to review tourism said Thursday he regrets broaching the idea of the first group.

"I was probably premature in writing the first bill out the way I did," Rep. David Ure, R-Kamas, said after his substituted HB57, creating the tourism study task force, was passed out unanimously by the House Workforce Services and Community and Economic Development Standing Committee. "All I would have had is people there trying to liberalize the laws, and I didn't want that."

Ure said he changed his mind about the task force study issues after hearing from several organizations, individuals, legislators and representatives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other churches.

Ure and other lawmakers said Thursday that they disagree with the premise that loosening alcohol laws will boost tourism in Utah.

"It is not my intent to liberalize the (alcohol) laws," he said.

During the committee hearing, Ure said that "through different conferences with different people, I was asked not to run the alcohol bill directly, and now, in hindsight, I wish I'd never filed the alcohol bill."

He added that the first version would have resulted in "a full-blown task force on alcohol, which would have brought out everybody in the state of Utah that has any strong feelings at all about alcohol to come testify before the committee."

"There is one thing to promote tourism and work to the best of our ability to get tourism taking place," he testified. "It's another thing to sacrifice the principles of the state of Utah. . . . I believe there is a balance that can be done on both."

Ure later said it is "not my intention of circumventing the process or trying to get any greater availability of alcohol in the state of Utah tomorrow than what there is today."

Those comments and others were well-received by the committee.

"I would not be interested at all in loosening any of the alcohol laws that we have," said the group's chairman, Rep. David Cox, R-Lehi. "It's one of the things that makes this state unique and promotes the quality of life.

"And here we are, trying to tighten tobacco and what it does, the harmful effects it has on society, we don't do that with alcohol and somehow excuse it that somehow we might get some money out of it if we loosen those laws. And I think that's a kind of a hypocritical stance of a particular leader of this community."