The winners and the losers

Winner: It may have been largely symbolic, but the decision by Utah House Republicans this week to cut their own pay by 10 percent was a welcome acknowledgement of the hard times faced by many of their constituents. State lawmakers work part time and don't get a lot of official compensation. Before the cut, it amounted to $130 a day plus per diem and mileage. But of course that doesn't count the gifts they receive from lobbyists, plus the free laptops and BlackBerrys from the state. Utahns might have been even more happy if they had voted to keep their salaries and forgo all gifts. That may come later in the session.

Loser: Salt Lake Mayor Ralph Becker has thrown his support behind The Leonardo, a struggling science museum that wants to renovate the old city library using bonds backed by the city. We've felt all along that this was a shaky venture, as have some members of the City Council. Organizers have had trouble raising private funds to supplement the city money, and the current economy seems to make the prospects of success even more difficult.

Loser/Winner: Running for office costs more with each election. Taken together, the candidates for state offices, from Legislature to the governor's office, spent $6.25 per voter last fall, or a total of $6.1 million. The biggest spender was Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., with $824,684. Naturally, the higher the cost, the less likely it is that regular people who happen to have good ideas will get involved. However, the winner in all this is the way in which the state makes all donations and expenditures public on the lieutenant governor's Web site, even though that site crashed unexpectedly for a few days this month.