Twelve Utah legislative leaders will be traveling to China.

Last year, government officials from Liaoning province visited Utah, and state legislative leaders signed mutual pacts that now requires a return visit by state legislators, the Legislative Management Committee was told Tuesday.

House Speaker Greg Curtis and Senate President John Valentine said they personally were not going — Curtis visited China last year with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and Valentine said he's been twice to China.

Instead, Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble, R-Provo, and House Majority Leader Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, will head the 12-person Utah delegation, with six senators and six representatives going on the weeklong trip at the end of July.

It will cost around $1,600 per person, with the state picking up the airfare and hotel costs, the province paying for all food and ground transportation, said Mike Christensen, head of Legislative Research and General Council. That will be a total bill of around $20,000 for the state.

Legislators' spouses can go, but the state won't pick up any of their costs, leaders decided.

In other action, leaders will allow a special subcommittee to meet up to six times this year to study privatizing various state operations and looking at areas where the state is now unfairly competing with private industry.

Prisons, the state mental hospital and other state operations have been discussed as potential privatization efforts for years, said Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper.

Senate Majority Whip Dan Eastman, R-Bountiful, said he's sat on the state's privatization committee for several years. While a number of issues have been discussed, no real-world attempts to get the state out of areas usually run by private businesses have happened.

Finally, the Legislature will now start archiving recordings of House and Senate floor action. Since the Legislature moved into its temporary quarters in a new office building behind the Capitol while the 90-year-old structure is remodeled, legislative staff has video-taped the sessions.

But staff was rerecording over old floor sessions with new ones to save costs. Now the original tapes will be saved. It will cost $7 plus staff time to make a tape copy of a floor debate, $10 to make a DVD of floor action.

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