Lawmakers to consider 15 items on Tuesday

The NCLB and the Salt Palace are just a few of the tough compromises that have been chiseled out over the past several weeks after lawmakers adjourned March 2.

One such compromise seems like thin soup for its sponsor, Rep. Becky Lockhart, R-Orem. Lockhart and a number of House Republicans want to dedicate part of the state sales tax for roads.

While small in percentage — 0.36 percent in fiscal 2006, 0.56 percent thereafter — the sales tax set-aside would pour hundreds of millions of dollars into roads over the next decade, taking money away from other state programs. The compromise bill dedicates the set-aside, but other language says the governor doesn't have to follow that recommendation in drafting his own budget recommendations if he doesn't want to.

And legislators don't have to follow the sales tax set-aside either, explained state budget director Richard Ellis. Still, the bill "does set the bar" for transportation funding in the future, even if no one has to follow it, he added. In any case, the special session is expected to provide funds to expand I-15 in Utah County.

Transportation officials and Utah County lawmakers are cheering the inclusion of HB18 on the special-session agenda.

"We support it," said Sam Klemm, spokesman for the Wasatch Front Regional Council. "We support it as is, and hopefully we'll be able to in the future strengthen it a little bit to where there will be more certainty for money coming to transportation."

For four years, Utah's veterans have lobbied the Legislature for $4.5 million to help fund a veterans nursing home in Weber County. Every year they come to the Capitol, and every year they leave without the funding.

The veterans were caught in a political tug-of-war during the waning hours of this year's session. When given the choice to fund the Drug Offenders Reform Act or the veterans nursing home, or scrap them both, the House GOP caucus voted unanimously to fund neither.

Now, in the special session, both the home and the drug treatment program, called DORA, will get some cash, although both will be somewhat limited, Valentine said. DORA will be proposed during the session as a pilot program in the 3rd District Courts, with costs between $1.5 million and $2.5 million, while the nursing home will be given a $4.5 million bond that is contingent upon an additional $8.5 million in federal funding for the home by Dec. 31, 2006. "There were some unhappy veterans about this" when lawmakers adjourned without funding the home, said Terry Schow, director of the Utah Division of Veterans Affairs. If built, the $12.3 million facility would have 120 beds and serve veterans in Box Elder, Cache, Davis and Weber Counties.