Huntsman nixes 3 bills, 4 budgetary line items

Environmental litigation bonds, the rights of natural parents, concurrent enrollment fees and transportation funding are all issues Utah legislators may revisit in the next few weeks.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. vetoed three bills and four budgetary line items Tuesday night. All of the vetoes were announced less than four hours before the midnight deadline.

The vetoed bills include: HB100, Environmental Litigation Bond; HB148, Parent and Child Amendments; and HB151, Adjustments to Funding for Concurrent Enrollment.

Huntsman also vetoed — for technical reasons — four budgetary line items, according to letters Huntsman sent to House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, and Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem.

Three of the line items are transportation appropriations totaling $235 million that were simply budgeted from the wrong fund, while the fourth is a $150,000 appropriation for legislative research that is duplicated in a different budget bill.

Now, House and Senate leaders will begin to poll their members. If any of the vetoed bills has more than two-thirds support for a veto override, the leaders will set a veto override session date, which will include all vetoed bills and line items. That session cannot start after April 30. And once convened, lawmakers will have five days to vote to override any of Huntsman's vetoes.

HB148 would have prevented common law doctrine from awarding any parental rights of a minor child against a parent's wishes. The only exception would have been for parents who had been declared unfit.

Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, sponsored the legislation hoping it would prevent cases such as one pending before the Utah Supreme Court, in which visitation rights were awarded against a biological parent's wishes to her former lesbian partner.

To override the veto, Christensen will have to sway at least five senators, since the bill only passed the Senate 15-12 and it takes 20 votes for a two-thirds majority. The House passed the bill with 54 votes supporting it, which is enough for the two-thirds majority.

Christensen declined to comment until after he discussed the veto with Huntsman.

In a letter to Senate and House leadership explaining the veto, Huntsman said he was open to the idea of legislation protecting parents' rights, but the bill "goes too far and would create undesirable consequences not anticipated."

He expressed particular concern about custody cases involving a non-adoptive stepparent who raises a child from infancy and a biological parent who is a complete stranger to the child.

Mike Thompson, executive director of the gay-rights advocacy group Equality Utah, praised the governor's veto, saying the bill "rubber stamped" who could be parents.