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©Stephen Peterson
2007 Legislative Wins and Losses
by Mark Clemens
Good news from the legislature comes in two forms: good bills passed and bad bills defeated. We had enough of each to be grateful during the 2007 General Session. In the former category, Sen Howard Stephenson (R-Draper) carried a bill to restore the tax credits for residential and commercial installation of renewable energy systems including wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass. The tax credit available to businesses will be calculated based on output rather than capacity, but otherwise most of the provisions of the credits that expired as of 31 December 2006, have been retained. Ultimately, Stephenson’s bill was rolled into the omnibus tax reform bill, Second Substitute Senate Bill 223, that passed easily.
Further incremental steps in improving energy efficiency were made with Rep Fred Hunsaker’s (R-Logan) HB 110 that directs all state agencies to submit vehicle efficiency plans and provide written justification for vehicles that are larger than standards. Rep Roger Barrus (R-Centerville) shepherded HB 351 that creates an energy efficiency fund to improve efficiency in schools. A one-time appropriation of $5,000,000 creates a revolving loan fund that will support projects from around the state.
The legislature expressed its reservations about the speed with which Department of Natural Resources Director Mike Styler is working with the State of Nevada to divide the groundwater aquifer in western Utah’s Snake Valley between the two states. Rep Richard Wheeler’s (R-Ephraim) House Joint Resolution 1 urges the governor to include a citizen from Snake Valley in the negotiations and encourages him to refrain from concluding the agreement before scientific studies have been completed. Another bill, Third Substitute HB 422, sponsored by Rep Jackie Biskupski ( D-Salt Lake City), would have established a committee to look over Styler’s shoulder during these negotiations. That bill passed the house but never made it out of senate committee. However, Styler must now understand the unease in both parties about his haste.
Bad Bills Dispatched
Rep Mike Morley (R-Spanish Fork) introduced a bill, HB 233, to make zoning for environmental protection almost impossible. Morley’s legislation would have forbidden any municipality from zoning based on aesthetics, protection of wildlife habitat or vegetation, or on the cost of delivering services, and would have compelled municipalities to enter into binding arbitration—paid for by the municipality—with developers if their application is denied. Fortunately this bill never made it to the house floor, but another bill limiting environmental zoning protection did pass.
Senate Bill 183, sponsored by Sen Sheldon Killpack (R-Syracuse), demonstrates the legislature’s infinite mutability on constitutional principle when it can advance its ideological agenda. The federal government is always wrong—at least according to legislative leadership—when its laws conflict with what’s convenient or profitable for the Utah legislature. However, if a Utah city or town should decide that a wetland unprotected by federal wetlands regulations deserves to be spared from developers, SB 183 now forbids it, “A municipality may not designate or treat any land as wetlands unless the United States Army Corps of Engineers or other agency of the federal government has designated the land as wetlands.” Corps of Engineers take note. The Utah Legislature is now on record that you are always right.
Rep Mike Noel (R-Kanab) came to the 2007 session armed, as usual, with bills to give all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and their users priority over every other conceivable use or need. Noel’s First Substitute HB 425 would have opened all highways in Utah to ATVs. Although municipalities would be able to limit—not prohibit—ATV use on some roads, this legislation would have applied to all other highways in Utah except in Salt Lake County.
Noel and certain Kane County commissioners have declared war on the Department of Interior’s authority to control vehicle access within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Their suit to vindicate their presumed authority over federal land is expensive so they were banking on this legislation forcing the State of Utah to take over the costs. If ATVs were legal under the terms of HB425S1 on all the fictitious trails and washes Kane County claims within the monument, then the Utah attorney general would be required to defend their claims.
Fortunately this bill was defeated, but another Noel-sponsored bill, HB 97, passed. HB 97 mandates another voluntary check-off on motor vehicle registration forms that will channel donations into smothering federal land managers with lawsuits promoting ATV access and for off-highway vehicle education programs. The bill provides no oversight whatsoever that both ends must be served.
Two Big Disappointments
Our most painful loss this session was Rep Roz McGee’s ( D-Salt Lake City) Fourth Substitute HB 122, Clean Air and Efficient Vehicle Tax Incentives. The bill would have provided a $1,000 tax credit to businesses or individuals purchasing low-emissions, high efficiency vehicles such as hybrids and alternate-fuel vehicles. Although the bill passed the house on a 68-0-7 vote, it never made it out of the Senate Rules Committee.
Bills allowing non-profits agencies to own water rights to guarantee some minimum amount of flow in rivers and streams have been introduced in at least three different sessions. This session the bill, SB 29, was sponsored by Sen Pete Knudson ( R-Brigham City). In order to allay outlandish fears that some environmental non-profit might buy up water rights in order deliberately to put farmers out of business, this bill was very narrowly written. Only non-profit organizations dedicated to promoting fishing would be able to hold these new rights, and they would last for only ten years. The bill failed on a 36-32-7 vote in the house.
The complete scorecards for the 2007 General Session, including the house scorecard which takes up too much space to fit in a newsletter, and several past sessions are all available on the chapter website, http://www.utah.sierraclub.org/legislative.asp.
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