Lawmakers need to find a new train of thought

The Utah legislators gave themselves a pat on the back for "balancing" the state budget this year. So, they got the train running on time and just had no idea where it was going.

If they took a good look, they might find they let the people down in some ways. Most disheartening was the hypocrisy: silencing fellow Utahns who disagreed with them, while legislators openly criticized the federal government; passing ethics laws that put no limits on contributions; and, cutting funding for K-12 education while its population explodes.

Our Utah state legislative government is broken, but don't expect those in office to fix it. People within an organization, especially those in power, quickly become addicted to holding it, resist change and fight to protect it. This last Utah legislative session appears to have reaffirmed that. Governance is more than budgets — it's leadership.

Hypocrisy about transparency, ethics and lack of civility permeated the Capitol, where legislators seemed to think their version of "ethics reform" was more than adequate; as long as they told everybody how much they were taking and from whom, then it was OK. When it came to raising taxes or cutting education, they seemed more concerned about keeping their seat in office.

They lacked the courage to make the hard choices about investing in our children and Utah's future. Rather than making the long-range investment in K-12 education necessary for our children to succeed in today's global economy, they set Utah back even further by reducing education funding, while enrollment continues to skyrocket. And they did so by making it look like they were doing children a favor because they could have cut even more from that budget.

They ended the legislative session praising themselves for having balanced the budget, claiming Utah is the best-managed state. They lamented the fact that for the first time, they had to do "take-aways" instead of "let's see what we gave them last session and add a bit more." If their great accomplishment is to simply balance a budget, then perhaps there might be an easier way: go to any office supply store, get a program off the shelf — like Quicken — then enter the budget requests and revenues, and out would come a balanced budget. The end game for many lawmakers was to give the appearance of working for the public good while pleasing their campaign contributors and maintaining the status quo.