Briefly at the Utah Legislature

Utah: Land of the ski, home of the inversion

Not to be outdone by Colorado, Utah House members voted Friday to make skiing and snowboarding the state’s official winter sports.

“You may ask why we need another state symbol,” said Rep. Steve Elisaon, R-Sandy, who sponsored the measure.

State symbols, he said, represent land and people, and this is the first one to tie both together.

Eliason noted the ski/snowboard industry brought $1.2 billion to Utah last year, up 67 percent since the 2002 Winter Olympics. Utah is the third most visited ski destination in the country and 40 percent of Utah homes have a skier or snowboarder, he said.

Even given all that, Eliason said he decided to run the bill after he saw Colorado had designated skiing as its official sport.

Eliason had no trouble getting his bill passed. But Rep. Fred Cox, R-West Valley, wondered if he had considered ice fishing, bobsledding, tubing, car crashing and breathing through an inversion.

— Dennis Romboy

Intergenerational poverty reporting bill advances in Senate

The Senate gave preliminary approval Friday to a bill that would require the Utah Department of Workforce Services to examine its public assistance data with the aim of creating policies to end intergenerational poverty.

Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, said he feared the study would be no more effective than research into “why marriages fail or why kids drop out of school.”

“I doubt the results will be honestly worth the effort,” he said during debate on the bill’s second reading in the Senate on Friday.

But the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Stuart Reid, R-Ogden, said changes in practice and policy are needed. Regardless of whether a family’s poverty is chronic or episodic due to a job loss or illness, public assistance programs are administered the same.

“If we don’t do something different, we know the next generation of children will be victims of poverty and the next generation of children will be victims of poverty,” said Reid, sponsor of SB37.

— Marjorie Cortez

Light to dim on longer fireworks celebrations

Igniting fireworks legally for an entire month in the summer may soon be over.