"If you pay hard dollars for a certificate, that certificate is as good as money, isn't it?" Clark asked. "Money never expires. Why would that certificate expire? . . . If they have a problem with it, maybe they shouldn't issue certificates. If it's a problem accounting-wise, maybe they shouldn't get into it. To me, when I pay $5 for something, then I ought to be able to have $5 of worth as long as that's in my possession."

Wiley acknowledged that businesses need "some kind of closure" if certificates remain unused.

"I support some type of legislation that would hold certificate holders to a longer period of time than a couple of months, but the five years is causing me a little bit of grief," said Rep. Todd Kiser, R-Sandy. "I do believe it's a problem, but I'm not convinced that five years is the (best) response. Maybe we need to print something on certificates so that consumers are aware. I'm not sure."

Frank surmised that expired gift certificates result in "unduly enriched" retailers, but Jim Olsen of the Utah Retail Merchants Association disagreed.

"The retailer doesn't benefit from this," Olsen said, citing Utah's unclaimed property laws. "After five years, if those gift certificates aren't redeemed, we have to escheat that money to the state as unclaimed property. So the retailer isn't gaining from this."

HB75, proposed this session, would add electronic cards to the unclaimed property mix and would consider those cards abandoned after three years instead of five.

Olsen said businesses would face higher accounting costs, questioned why gift certificates and cards issued by financial institutions were exempted from the bill, and said the bill could be interpreted to affect prepaid phone cards and coupons.

"The definition is so broad that it also is going to include many marketing programs that are not necessarily the target of this legislation," he said.

"If there's a problem with gift certificates, most consumers aren't aware of it. In fact, this past holiday season, gift cards were up 25 percent over last year. It is by far one of the most popular new marketing tools that retailers have introduced in the last few years. We would love to work with Rep. Wiley in the interim to see if we can get our arms around this, but it's a much broader problem," Olsen said.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com