Legislators upset over veto request

Two legislators are ticked they didn't get a fair hearing with the State Board of Education before the board urged the governor to veto their bills — contrary to what they call an agreement struck last year.

But it doesn't sound as if the governor is eager to veto those targeted bills.

And the board's new chairman on Tuesday told the Deseret Morning News that maybe it's time to go about things in a more legislative-friendly way.

"There is no doubt there is a separation of powers ... but the government does not prosper when there is not good feelings and good relations with each other," board chairman Richard Sadler said. "If we act too independent of each other, then the most important thing that should happen, and that is the education of children in Utah, gets lost in a power struggle. And that's not what we're interested in."

The board voted Friday to ask Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to veto SB162, which requires gubernatorial and/or legislative approval before schools can accept federal money for education programs that cost the state more than $100,000. It also urged the governor to exercise line-item veto power on SB2, the "education omnibus bill" that rolled a dozen money-linked school bills into the schools' $2.5 billion budget, the Minimum School Program Act.

The board feared SB162, sponsored by Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, could affect programs from school lunch to career and technical education, though many viewed it as targeting No Child Left Behind.

SB2's omnibus nature bothered the board, particularly considering three of those bills had been defeated. The board's letter to the governor urges he exercise line-item veto power, allowed on budget bills, "to state without equivocation that an abuse of power is not appropriate." And if the bill isn't a budget bill, then board member Kim Burningham said he believes it's unconstitutional to bundle unrelated bills.

But it doesn't sound like the governor will take up the board's request.

"We don't see (SB2) as an appropriations bill" because it sets policy, Huntsman spokeswoman Lisa Roskelley said, adding constitutional questions would have to be taken up with legislative attorneys. "Certainly there's a lot in there we support ... it's a lot of education funding."

As for SB162, Roskelley said, "it's going to go through our review. But it's actually, from my understanding ... fairly in line with current practice for other state agencies."