Guv wants ethics study narrowed

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has told his government reform commission that it must stop looking at legislative ethics and redistricting.

And it just so happens that dropping those two items from Huntsman's Commission on Strengthening Utah's Democracy is exactly what GOP legislative leaders want.

"I did ask the governor that this (commission) stand down on those two items," said House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara.

Clark said it is the Legislature's own constitutional responsibility to discipline unethical conduct of its members and to redraw the lawmakers' own district boundaries, U.S. House seats in Utah and those of the state school board.

Huntsman asked the commission, who held a meeting at Utah Valley University Thursday afternoon, to continue looking at three other areas originally assigned to it — campaign finance, lobbying and elections.

"I serve (on the commission) at the pleasure of the governor," said commission co-chairman Kirk Jowers, head of the University of Utah Hinckley Institute of Politics. "We had a very broad mandate" before Huntsman asked for the narrowing of the study.

"We've already done a lot of work in all five areas, and there is some excellent legal summaries in all the areas" on StrengthenDemocracy.org, the commission's Web site, Jowers said. "I hope those will be of benefit in the future. We'll now bore down on the remaining three areas of study and make progress on them."

Huntsman spokeswoman Lisa Roskelley said the governor did acquiesce to GOP legislative leaders' request. But "there is the question of separation of powers, and the commission has already done some useful study" in the two areas that it must now abandon, she said. "The commission will still be very productive. And the Legislature is looking" at its own ethics reforms, she added.

Some may argue about how well the Legislature dealt with so-called ethics reform issues in the 2009 general session, said Clark, but it is certainly "unprecedented" the time, effort and first-step actions lawmakers took in passing four bipartisan reform bills.

House Majority Leader Kevin Garn, R-Layton, said Thursday that it was legislative leadership's understanding some time ago that Huntsman would back off of the two contested points — legislative ethics and redistricting.

"I'm very pleased that he sent that letter out" to his commission, said Garn. "We've had ongoing conversations with him about our concerns" that those two areas are for the Legislature to deal with, not the executive branch of government. "I guess it just took him (several months) to write and send the letter."