New Utah caucus leans to the right

A group of conservative state House members has formed a new caucus and founded a political action committee — a first for Utah politics — that soon will have more than $40,000 to be used to promote its own campaigns and limited-government agenda.

The political action committee, whose maiden report was filed this week, is called the Conservative Caucus PAC, said caucus chairman and organizer Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper.

The caucus already has one notch on its political belt, Hughes believes — helping lead the 56 House Republicans to recommend a $230 million tax cut next year.

The new PAC report has just one donation, a $10,000 gift from the hazardous-waste firm Envirocare. But Hughes says the caucus — which boasts around 25 members from the House Republican majority — is not tied to Envirocare's agenda, which includes expanded land and authority to store more radioactive waste.

"As a group we have many conservative issues" that the group will espouse, said Hughes.

Envirocare's check just came in at the end of 2005 — the PAC reporting deadline. Hughes said he already has a few other checks and promises of donations of "at a minimum, another $30,000."

The new caucus has some heavy political hitters in its ranks, including House Majority Whip Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, who briefly challenged U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch last summer, and Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, a banker who is seen as a state financial expert for House Republicans.

Like the old Cowboy Caucus, which has more or less faded in recent years as some of its most powerful members moved up to the Senate or retired from the Legislature, the Conservative Caucus' first test of strength deals with the state's growing revenues.

"A group of us just believe we can't grow government beyond our means to sustain it" when Utah's economic good times turn down, said Hughes.

Between one-time surpluses this year and projected new tax revenue growth for the next fiscal year, the 2006 Legislature — which convenes Jan. 16 — will have an extra $1 billion to spend, a record sum that has some legislators concerned.

Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s recommended 2006-2007 budget calls for 14 percent growth in major state funds, said Hughes. "We say it should be more like 5.5 percent growth — around the growth in population and inflation."

There have been other informal caucuses in the Republican-dominated Utah House, but none has had its own PAC or raised any cash.

The Conservative Caucus may well re-energize the so-called "mainstream" caucus of moderate GOP House members, which was formed in the mid-1990s as a political counterweight to the then-powerful Cowboy Caucus of rural House members.