Leaders OK interim studies

Utah legislative leaders decided Wednesday to conduct in-depth studies of four different issues this summer and fall.

But in at least one case — performance pay for public education teachers — the payment policies, and actual payments, may be made before the special legislative study is finished.

The Legislature's top leaders, both parties in the House and Senate, met as the Legislative Management Committee. Starting an hour late — keeping staff and public waiting while GOP leaders met privately over pending litigation — the leaders decided to study immigration, teacher performance pay, property taxes and governance of the state's applied technology centers in different committees.

Two of the regular interim study committees will just meet extra days on two of those issues, while there will be separate task forces on immigration and higher education/applied technology control.

The tens of thousands of dollars it will cost in extra legislative pay and travel for these four groups is already in the Legislature's budget. That's because the task force-like meetings were placed in a budget bill, and passed, even though a separate task force bill died the final day of the 2008 Legislature. That bill, HB490, outlined specific study areas for the four task forces that, in the end, were not authorized by the whole Legislature. Now through leadership's decision, those studies will still take place.

At the insistence of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., legislators in the final hours of the session approved $25 million in extra teacher pay, with $20 million of that coming through some kind of performance merit pay system. The State Board of Education has until July to come up with that new merit system.

But the extra study by the Education Interim Committee — authorized by leaders Wednesday — won't have its study done by then. But that is OK, said Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, who suggested that the committee "have a few meetings before" the State Board sets the merit system "and a few meetings afterwards" to see how that merit system was working.

It is the second year in a row where the management committee approved task force-like studies that, while discussed in the general session, actually were not approved by all legislators.

In a related matter, leaders decided that the public and higher education interim committees will meet in mid-July in Cedar City, along with the separate governing boards of colleges and public education.