Shared photos

I tapped on the shoulder of a stranger with a camera last evening and asked if he would send me photos of the protests. He did. So I have some photos of the events I described in the post below.

People Will Stand Up --- Even in Utah

A revolution at Tahrir Square in Egypt sparked similar protests against Gadafi in Libya, and now in Saudi Arabia, and even in Kuwait. Perhaps these people gave courage to the hundreds of people who converged on the Capitol Building this evening, the last day of the Utah State Legislative Session.

Carrying signs calling on the Governor to veto HB477, to recall the bill's sponsor, and some other actions less to the point, the people eventually poured into the Capitol Building itself. Some had drums, most had flashlights, all were singing or chanting. The chants went from "Ve-to!" to "Our House!" and ever back to "This little light of mine." The rotunda was filled with the sound of their protestations and it was stirring. A few of the legislators moved with confidence before the crowds, smiling and waving. Most others were tucked away in their closed Caucus Room.

The crowds worked their way up the stairs. They were not allowed into the House or Senate Chambers but chanted out side the doors before moving upstairs to the fourth floor.

At the time, I was awaiting the end of the dinner recess in the House Gallery babysitting the bags and computers of the other PTA Legislative Advocacy Committee members. I turned to the visitors on my left and leaving the supplies in their care, I went out in the hall to see the action.

I tried to take a few pictures with my mobile phone but it isn't a very good camera. Heading back to the south Gallery door, I noticed that the crowds had arrived at the north Gallery door and the security personnel were holding them back. Then I found that the door I had come from was now locked. A few others were in my same situation when we noticed that the north doors were open and people were beginning to file in. We slipped into the group and a few who were anxious to be disruptive were quickly removed.

Rules in the Gallery are that visitors must be seated, no signs and no outbursts. No one however stopped them when they began to sing softly. Sometimes in harmony. I believe that the Republicans who were caucusing across the hall were waiting for them to leave before they began to appear. A couple of the Democrats on the floor made their own sign that said, "We voted NO!" and that brought a cheer from the gallery.

Finally the rest of the legislators wandered in and Speaker Lockhart brought down the gavel to call the meeting to order. When a couple of people called out to disrupt the meeting, The Speaker called them to order but suffered a slip of the tongue, "I will kill --- clear the gallery if necessary." It served to ease the tension; the disruptions stopped and the work of the House went forward --but very circumspectly.

The protests went on in the rotunda for a little while but from the gallery, we couldn't hear much of it after that. My hopes are that the sounds of their voices will not fade away over the next few months. I heard an indication that they won't; a group of people have already filed a referendum on HB 477 with the Lt. Governor's office.

Tahrir Square -- Utah style.

The Governor who Wouldn't Govern

The GRAMA bill of 2011 is HB 477. It exempts electronic communication of legislators from being open to the public and increases the fees for obtaining copies of records that are open to the public.

The Legislature passed HB 477 like a rushing wind and created a series of tornados in its wake. The response came not only from the news media but protesters arrived at the Capitol to express outrage, both at the content of the bill and the method it was carried out.

The people turned to their best line of defense against this breach of government transparency. The tool that gives the Executive Branch of government balance with the Legislative Branch is the Governor's veto power.

When Governor Herbert hesitated to answer the demands for a veto of HB 477, the legislators who signed on as co-sponsors of the bill called upon the Governor to keep his promise to support this legislation. Governor Herbert was in a quandary. If he vetoed the bill, that would anger the legislators who thought he had signed on. If he didn't veto it, he risked anger from voters.

Amid the tumult, the bill sponsors called it back in for an amendment. The amendment changed the date that it would take effect to mid-summer and required that the topic be studied in interim study sessions.

This gave the Governor an out. It wouldn't become the law for four months and maybe people would forget about it by then. He signed the bill. In doing so, he took himself out of the issue. Whatever happens or doesn't happen by the effective date in July, he has no veto power. He has taken himself out of the balancing act.

Unfortunately for him. the outcry didn't subside so he felt he had to explain himself. He claimed that the legislature would override his veto, resulting in a "bad law". How is that different from what we now have? He has signed what he called a bad law. It is just as possible to change any part of state law as it is to change this bill. It is, with his signature, the law.

If the Governor is cowed by the strength of the legislative leadership from vetoing what he admits is a bad law, there is no balance of power in state government.

The Governor should govern. If he is not willing to do so, we need someone who is.

Planning for Migrant Workers

The bubble up process for legislation is unpredictable because some bills seem to have the skids greased for them. I think I understand the feeling of having a bill that is still number two on the agenda while bill after bill is placed in front of it. I remember the feeling watching older kids cut in the lunch line.

I have some concerns about one bill that went from a boxcar to legislation awaiting the Governor's signature all in four days. The sponsor is Representative Sandstrom; it is HB 466, Migrant Workers and Related Commission Amendments.

On March 1st, its text was made public. It was introduced in the House and send to be heard in the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Standing Committee. That is the only place that the public is able to testify in favor of or opposed to the bill and on March 3rd, it received its hearing. On March 4th, it was read on the House floor and passed unanimously without many questions. It was then rushed to the Senate for a vote and passed with only one nay vote.

In a nutshell, the bill sets up a relationship with the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, such that migrant workers could apply in Nuevo Leon, have a background check and be granted an H2 visa to work in the United States. They would be chosen based on the needs of businesses who apply for migrant workers to fill jobs here. The bill also calls for a commission to evaluate this arrangement.

There are many good things about this bill and I hope it is as good as its sponsors say. At the same time, I have a few concerns.

I remember hearing about a program similar to this in a state in the Southeast. I don't remember details but I think the jobs that were being filled were in the logging industry. The workers were brought into the states and sent to remote logging camps and kept in squalid conditions. They had no means of personal transportation or communication. Their wages were held by the company but exorbitant fees for their participation in the program were deducted till there was little if anything to be held for them. Information about this situation came out when one worker escaped and traveled north to New York City and found a relative who was working and living comfortably without documents. The reporter pointed out the irony of the worker who tried to come the "legal way" and found himself a virtual slave as opposed to the illegal immigrant who could provide well for his family illegally. I fear this program could easily turn into indentured servitude, especially if the Mexican partners can skim fees from the wages that workers receive from their US employers.

The program might also be abused if businesses here advertise for unskilled laborers and are instead sent skilled workers. The business then finds that they have valuable human resources and move the skilled laborers into positions, displacing US citizens who cost more to employ. This brings wages down for all the other laborers and keeps our unemployment high.

Finally, I hope that there are safeguards in place that this cannot become a form of state-sanctioned human trafficking. I would like to be certain that the work of the Commission that evaluates this program includes watching for how women are involved as migrant workers.

GRAMA Got Run Over By a Ramrod

I have been posting a lot about education but I have been interested in other bills as well. While the media is focusing on the torrent of immigration bills, a few have slipped in, perhaps in the hopes they will pass under the radar. The news media didn't let it happen in the case of HB477 Government Records Amendments. This one will be called the GRAMA bill of the year.

GRAMA stands for Government Records Access and Management Act, which was passed in 1992 and clarifies what records are protected as private information and which records are available to the public. According to the Constitution, many records must be open to the public. A GRAMA request is used to force government agencies to make records available. It is often through government records accessed through GRAMA that investigative journalists expose corruption or track down improprieties. It is a good safeguard for citizens.

The difficulties arise when individuals or organizations make unreasonable GRAMA requests that bog down government office employees. Government officials tell of news media on "fishing expeditions" looking for anything that might make a story but causing a lot of work for record keepers, many times at great expense to taxpayers.

Legislators also are told that they must keep records of communications, including those that are written or audio recordings, on paper or digital. They say that they are uncomfortable placing their email messages and phone messages open to the public. They feel that their constituents assume that their messages are private. The sheer number of emails that a politician receives is mind-boggling. It is bothersome to collect and still more bothersome to store them all, on the chance that someone will ask to search the records. On the other hand, would we have known that Governor Blagojevich was auctioning off the Illinois Senate seat, had his phone calls been protected communication?

HB477 would protect messages to legislators and would require those who request records to pay for the cost of the items and the time of the staff who searches for them. This is meant to make folks think twice before making voluminous requests for records.

Whether the bill should pass is no longer debatable; it passed three days after it was introduced. Whether the bill should have passed is debatable. The bill passed way too fast. There is a reason why a three day period is necessary for a bill to be passed on the Consent Calendar. There should be time for the bill to be studied, not only by the legislators but by the public and the media. To wait until the last days so that it passes from one house to the next and is signed, sealed, and delivered in less than a week is not good public policy.

Which Tax is the "Best" Tax?

An important pair of bills that I am still trying to get my head around have to do with public school funding. One, HB 301, changes how district schools can levy property tax increases. The other, HB 313, requires school districts to share with charter schools the funds that they get from property tax. This is what I know so far about these bills and the history behind them:

Currently, charter schools cannot claim property tax money. The state makes up the difference from income taxes. When charter schools were first approved in Utah, the claim was that they would be so much more efficiently-run that they could provide education for less and didn’t need the property tax funds. They do receive the WPU from the state and the state has a special line item in the general education budget that helps them with capital and start up expenses.

If these two bills are passed, the extra expenses to the state income tax for charter schools will go away and local property taxes will have to pick up the slack. The bill sponsor claims that having school districts responsible for the cost of funding charter schools in their boundaries is a matter of local control but all of the public school entities (except the charter school administrators) are protesting. The districts have no control over the charter schools in their districts. It would be like telling you as a household that you were responsible for the cost of maintaining your neighbor’s house and grocery bill without giving you a say in how they furnish their home or what food they purchase. This is not local control; it is an unfunded mandate. It also guarantees that your property taxes will go up. This will affect you whether you own your home or rent, since landlords will pass on the expense. Seniors who own their homes but are surviving on a fixed income will be hit hardest. If these bills were combined, they would probably not pass. They look likely to pass one gulp at a time.

Some are seeing a connection between these bills and vouchers. For that perspective, see this.

Tying Citizens' Hands

If you were involved or interested in the historic referendum on education vouchers a few years ago or involved or interested in the petition drive for the Fair Boundaries or Legislative Ethics reform initiatives last year, you might be interested in a bill by Senator Bramble which is opening up this part of state law again.

As you may remember, after the success of the voucher referendum, the Legislature passed several laws that would make it increasingly difficult to qualify another citizen-led petition for the ballot. In this way they managed to hold off legislative ethics reform and the creation of an independent redistricting commission in 2010.

As the deadline for the Fair Boundaries and ethics reform petition drives neared, both groups were having difficulty gathering the increased number of signatures in the shortened span of time. They began using electronic signature gathering in order to speed up the process.

There was no law prohibiting this method. Electronic signatures can be verified and, in fact, are used for online voter registration. In spite of that, the Lt. Governor was unwilling to accept these signatures for the petition drive and this spurred quite a bit of debate.

Senator Bramble’s bill is designed to close the debate by prohibiting electronic signatures from petition drives. It also tightens once more the time allotted to collect signatures. Ironically, the same bill validates electronic signatures for voter registration up to 15 days prior to an election.

This bill appeared harmless in the original form (see http://le.utah.gov/~2011/bills/sbillint/sb0165.htm). The second substitute claimed to hold only a minor amendment but there were many more provisions included (see http://le.utah.gov/~2011/bills/sbillint/sb0165s01.htm). It will be interesting to see what other obstacles lay in store to a citizen’s right to petition government.

It was obvious what initiatives were targeted by earlier restrictions to the process. It makes me wonder what Senator Bramble fears now.

Attitude Shift

As I sat in the House Education Committee meeting, I overheard an individual state to his neighbor, “Education money should follow the student where ever they go to school.”

This is an assumption that the State will fund, at least in part, each student’s education. If this assumption is universally accepted, it will have long-range impacts on public schools. It represents a subtle shift in the concept of public education.

The establishment of public education in the 1890’s put a school system in place that would service children in their neighborhoods. It was clearly understood that we have a stronger community and a brighter future when our children are educated. We can take pride that we offer education to all comers. Over time, programs have been created to address the many different abilities and challenges of an increasingly diverse population.

At the same time, there has never been a requirement that families must choose the public schools for their children’s education. Just as you are free to choose a private doctor for medical care, you are free to choose a private school for education. The County Health Department remains an option funded by tax dollars.

In more populous areas, more options for education do spring up. But often in the very rural regions of the state, public education is the only option and it is a much more expensive program to offer. They do not enjoy economy of scale, or as you may have heard: things are “cheaper by the dozen.”

When attempts to properly and equitably fund education resulted in creating the WPU, or “weighted pupil unit”, it also created the idea that each child in the state was entitled to education money in the amount of this WPU. It was not a stretch to decide that each child should receive the amount of money the state would spend toward educating him/her in public schools.

I am very committed to public schools and I appreciate that they provide quality teachers, innovative programs, and diverse opportunities for my children. I want my children to mix with others in their neighborhood. I want them to understand their communities by seeing themselves and their neighbors as one unit. Because of this, I am anxious to step up and help all I can to improve the education that public schools provide. It doesn’t mean I think all families must or should choose public education for their children nor that I think public funds should go to the alternative schools they may choose.

The issue boils down to whether we are financing public education or funding the education of each child. These two attitudes are subtly different but are colliding in the Legislature.

Don't Trust Rumors

I said in a recent post that partisan elections of State School Board members would not be brought up. I was wrong. SB224 is called Partisan School Board Elections. It is scheduled for a committee hearing this afternoon. Judging from the reception to the bill calling for non-partisan election of State School Board members, it is probably headed to easy passage -- unless enough voters contact their senators and representatives and talk them out of voting for it. A poll conducted last fall showed that the majority of Utahns believed that education is best served when partisan politics are kept away.

Get an answering machine

I wrote about SB142 in an earlier post. It requires all elected officials to have their direct contact information available to the public. It affects public schools particularly because members of School Community Councils are elected officials. It has now passed the Senate and the House and is on its way to the Governor's office for his signature.

It was amended along the way to say that email addresses and phone numbers must be posted online “if available”. That means that members of Community Councils who don’t have a computer and therefore no direct email availability, aren’t required to get a computer with internet access in order to serve – same with a phone.

The other thing I think of with regard to this bill is the amendment that added the word "directly". This means that if you want to contact the Governor, you should be able to call a phone number that goes to him directly. Will his secretary or intern answer the phone? Will this be considered direct? If it is allowed, it will definitely be a disadvantage to School Community Council members that they do not have personal secretaries or interns.

I would feel better if the posted contact information were only available to their constituents, for example through password-protected PowerSchool, but I am not certain that this would satisfy the new law.

Holding the Reins of Education

The Senate debated SJR9, the resolution that would amend the State Constitution so that education, K-12 and higher education (UVU, MATC, U of U, etc.), would become a department in the Governor’s administration, subject to the rules made by the legislature, instead of being controlled by the elected State Board of Education. The resolution passed the Senate with a two-thirds majority and will now be sent to the House. If it passes the House with a two-thirds majority, it will be on the November ballot in 2012, when voters can decide whether to amend the State Constitution this way. As rigorous as this may seem, remember that last November every Constitution amendment question on the ballot was approved by the voters.

There is another resolution removing control from the State Board of Education, as is currently a provision in the State Constitution. SJR1 would have put the control of education strictly in the hands of the legislature. While SJR9 is moving forward, the sponsor of SJR1 is dropping his resolution in favor of SJR9.

Those who are guarding the interest of the School Trust Lands have a concern about this resolution. The management of the School Trust (SITLA) is a department under the office of the Governor. Public education is the beneficiary of the Trust. It is bad fiduciary policy for the manager of a trust to be the same person as the beneficiary.

In regard to the election of members to the State Board of Education, the excitement to make the elections partisan seems to be cooling and I believe it is because it could be found unconstitutional. The State Constitution prohibits partisan qualifications for employment by the public schools. Since the Board members are paid to serve, they are considered employees. There is still a bill calling for partisan elections but I have heard rumors that it may be abandoned.

Spring Ahead, Fall Behind

If you are bugged by the changes on and off of Daylight Savings time each year, Representative Wilcox has drafted a bill you will like. It calls for Utah to discontinue the time changes for Daylight Savings Time and just stay with Mountain Standard Time all year long.

Daylight Savings Time has never made sense to me. I won't miss it if it goes away. It will still be a problem to keep track of the other states who use it but at least it won't disturb my sleep patterns.

I can’t predict how this bill will be received; it doesn't look like it is moving right now. I’ll be sure to let you know before the next time change!

Update on OEK

The Provo School District has been offering Optional Extended-day Kindergarten (OEK) at some schools for children who need help getting prepared for mainstream first grade. The results of this program has been very positive; however, funding for this program has run out so if it would be continued, the legislature would have to include it as a new item in the budget.

Currently, the proposal we are hearing is to allow districts to apply for Early Intervention Block Grants, which could be used for OEK, if that is how the district wants to use it. That may be a good way to fund it. The size of the grants will determine whether it is adequate.