Lawmakers are feeling excluded

Worried that freshman Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is forming a plethora of study groups that could exclude lawmakers, GOP legislative leaders are asking that their branch of government get in on the ground floor of the new policy panels.

While Huntsman has invited a number of legislators onto what's called his "working groups," who gets invited or who gets to pick who gets invited follows no stated formula.

The result is a membership hodge-podge counter to efforts — at least in the 75-member House — "to affect (state) policy" during its most formative stages via the working groups.

The number of working groups springing up is making some legislators wonder who is in control.

House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, told a recent meeting of his 56-member Republican caucus one reason he's hired a chief of staff to coordinate and work on policy development — a new position for the House — is to keep tabs on the working groups. The concept might have gotten off on the wrong foot with legislators. Huntsman referred to his study panels as "task forces" until legislative leadership pointed out that both history and state code consider a task force to be an agent of the Legislature only, with its own budget and incorporated into law for a specified purpose and for a specified time.

Curtis worries part-time lawmakers' input will only come at the end of the process. A newly desired state department or a major new policy or initiative could be dumped on their doorsteps at the start of the 2006 Legislature and little background or time to decide the correctness of proposals from Huntman's groups.

Curtis said he's also "concerned about the appointment process" to the working groups.

He remembers an executive branch study on education by former Gov. Mike Leavitt "that wasn't controlled by those in education" or in the Legislature. It came up with recommendations to lawmakers that "we didn't support," said Curtis.

"It just hit the Legislature" and there were bad feelings, political jockeying, wasted time and effort, he recalled. "It substantially increases the odds" of final legislative approval if some lawmakers sit on such working groups early on, Curtis said.

That 2002 business/education task force ended up recommending $90 million more money for schools, which was later interpreted as a tax increase for schools, which conservatives in the Legislature neither liked nor approved.