Lawmakers to face some huge challenges

Utah's 104 part-time legislators open their 2009 general session Monday with more problems than they usually face when they meet in the dreary-weather days of January.

The smog that wrapped the Salt Lake Valley last week was an appropriate setting as lawmakers start their 45-day struggle with balancing budgets after a $1 billion revenue drop; the rising cost of health care; growing numbers of students with less money to educate them; liquor and ethics reform; gay rights; and Human Service program cuts.

Coming to work with bad air and fog seems about right.

House Speaker David Clark, R-Santa Clara, puts it this way. As he was driving home two weeks ago to Washington County, after spending a day reviewing the cuts to state programs and employees reflecting the state having 15 percent less money next fiscal year, as lawmakers believed, "It was the longest drive of my life."

Not that GOP legislative leaders are depressed or regretful. It's just that the 2009 Legislature "will be the most challenging I've seen," says Clark, who, like Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, is new to the top job in his body.

Waddoups said he's "really optimistic and encouraged" about the budget process, especially since it appears lawmakers and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. have agreed on reducing the amount of the cuts in the current budget year that ends June 30 from $350 million to about $170 million, about a 3.5 percent cut.

"It's not nearly as dreary and forlorn-looking on the horizon as people have been saying," Waddoups said.

Senate Minority Leader Pat Jones, D-Holladay, and House Minority Leader David Litvack, D-Salt Lake, are new to their jobs in the minority.

The veteran of the group is the governor, fresh off his re-election with the largest victory in a gubernatorial contest in state history.

Nationally, many Americans are optimistic about President Barack Obama's new administration and an at-least-for-now feeling that Democrats and Republicans in Congress will work together to solve the nation's many problems.

There is a feeling of optimism in Utah, as well. But it's been tempered the last few weeks as state workers, teachers, college professors and human-service advocates viewed the dismal picture of cutting upward of $750 million from state and public education budgets.

When Huntsman refused to call lawmakers into a December special session to deal with the growing tax revenue shortfalls, GOP legislative leaders set up special party caucuses and budget subcommittee meetings to get a jump on the 2009 session — which starts a week later this year after the Utah Constitution was changed by voters to keep lawmakers out of session on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.