Utah Legislature: Lawmakers pleased with achievements in 2010 Legislature

SALT LAKE CITY — The 2010 Utah Legislature enters its last four days with leaders from both parties saying much has been accomplished, especially considering the dire condition of state revenues.

"We've had a very successful session," said House Majority Leader Kevin Garn, R-Layton.

Still to be finished is the 2010-11 budget, although major balancing decisions, like a $1 per-pack cigarette tax hike, have been made.

Garn said the leaders came into the 45-day session with several goals: ethics reform, solving long-term state employee retirement issues and avoiding a general tax increase while closing a $700 million budget gap.

"We've achieved all of those," Garn said.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, said lawmakers have had fewer bills to deal with, likely because there's no money to spend.

"We're actually a little ahead of where we were last year. We're making good time," Jenkins said. "We're pretty happy right now."

Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, said he's not hearing from any senators who felt their issues have been ignored.

"I'm not feeling any stress from anybody," he said. He's talking about the session being wrapped up early on Thursday night, ahead of the mandatory midnight adjournment.

After all, lawmakers already have approved a package of ethics bills intended to counter concerns raised by a citizens initiative on ethics reform. (Leaders of the citizen initiative say not enough was done.)

The legislative bills set up an independent ethics commission; mandate greater disclosure of campaign finances and conflicts of interests both of office-holders and candidates; restrict personal use of campaign funds; ban gifts over $10; and require disclosure of who takes meals over $10, among other changes.

And lawmakers overhauled the state retirement system, which lost about $6.5 billion in the economic crisis, a liability that could have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year over the coming decades.

Now, in the fix hammered out with employee groups, current workers keep their promised pension plan. But state and local government workers, schoolteachers, police officers, firefighters and others covered by the state system hired after July 1, 2011, will end up with smaller retirement benefits. Money will also be saved, lawmakers decided, by ending so-called "double-dipping" by rehired retirees in most cases.