Guv wants ethics study narrowed

Huntsman, who is on vacation this week and unavailable for comment, had spoken a number of times about how Utahns are not participating in elections and government as they should, and part of that reason was the lack of confidence in the whole process of democracy — including government officials' ethics.

Over this summer and fall, the current bipartisan House and Senate ethics committees will meet as one (Garn is on the House committee) to study how the Legislature's own ethics process can be improved.

The concerns come after two nasty, controversial House ethics hearings last October that cleared a GOP and Democratic House member of any wrongdoing. However, some of the critical decisions came on partisan 4-4 split votes, and committee members themselves said the process was politicized and fractured.

The joint ethics interim committee — which unlike other standing committees will have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on it — will only look at reforming the "dysfunctional process" of internal ethics investigations, said Garn, and not take up redistricting.

"Reforming the ethics process is meaty enough to take up all of our time," said Garn.

Clark said he and Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville — who was the Senate chairman of the 2001 redistricting committee — have already started the process of forming a legislative redistricting committee which will make recommendations in 2011 to the whole body on new legislative, state school board and U.S. House district boundaries.

Clark said he is the redistricting committee chairman in the National Conference of State Legislatures, which will provide extensive resources and training for legislative staff and lawmakers across the country as the every-10-year redistricting process begins.

Clark said the Utah Legislature is not looking at forming an independent, or outside redistricting commission — as Democrats and some others want — but will seek extensive citizens participation in the Legislature's internal redistricting effort.

In fact, Huntsman himself has called for an independent redistricting commission in some form to recommend district boundaries to the 2011 Legislature. But now the governor has clearly backed away from that stand by asking his own democracy commission to abandon redistricting as a study topic.

Both the Legislature's own bipartisan ethics committee and Huntsman's democracy commission will make recommendations to the 2010 Legislature.

E-MAIL: bbjr@desnews.com