Latest Utah initiative: ethics in government

Remember the anti-voucher political juggernaut that crushed the Legislature's private school tuition tax credit law in 2007?

It's back.

A like-minded group of pro-public education advocates, including the Utah Education Association, the main teachers union, are forming ranks again to push a legislative ethics reform initiative.

The goal of Utahns for Ethical Government is to get a broad-reaching ethics initiative before voters in 2010.

Supporters must gather 95,000 signatures of registered voters by April 15 — a difficult task — to place the measure on the ballot.

But the 2007 anti-voucher group gathered the required signatures in just 45 days.

Not only are many of the old voucher group coming back, but UEG may well join forces with another initiative effort this year, the Fair Boundaries coalition.

Fair Boundaries wants an initiative law before voters setting up an independent commission to recommend to the Legislature new legislative and congressional boundaries following the 2010 Census.

If signature gatherers carried both petitions, it would halve the work for each group.

Former GOP Rep. Kim Burningham is chairman of Utahns for Ethical Government. Burningham, a State Board of Education member, was a major backer of the Utahns for Public Schools, the umbrella group that successfully repealed public school vouchers two years ago.

Lisa Johnson, who in 2008 ran as a Democrat against Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper, ran Utahns for Public Schools in 2007.

Johnson said she will be a volunteer for UEG but won't run this new campaign, as she did two years ago.

"Certainly, many of us are the same," said Burningham on Tuesday. "I know many educators" who worked on the anti-vouchers campaign and will likely work on the ethics campaign. "But it is a mix" this time around, he added. For example, the Utah chapter of the AARP "is very involved in the new (ethics) initiative, but to my knowledge didn't do anything on vouchers."

Those who supported the anti-voucher effort, both with money and volunteering, will be contacted for help with ethics this year, Burningham said.

Vik Arnold, political director of the UEA, said his group will not determine an official stance on either of the citizens' initiatives until its board meets in early September. But the idea proposed by the UEG — raising the bar of legislative accountability — jibes well with the association's philosophy, he said.