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The Legislature Ends: We're Supposed to be Happy It Wasn't Worse |
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 The 45 days when the legislature meets seems to be the longest 45 days of the year. I hold my breath waiting to see what mischief our Republican legislators can come up with this year. They never cease to amaze me with their message bills (which they take quite seriously), their disregard for (or intense dislike towards) public education, their obsession with all things guns, and their open distrust of the people.
Each year, they threaten to do many terrible things to the voters of the state, including draconian budget cuts. By the end of the session, we are all supposed to give a sigh of relief that all those bad things didn't happen. We're supposed to be grateful to them for not carrying out all of their threats and acting as irrationally as they indicated they would at the beginning of the session.
Of course, that kind of attitude misses the point: They have done a lot of damage as it is. Let me recount some of that damage:
1. Further limiting citizen initiatives. They want to make it very hard for citizens to overturn their work. They were serious when they said they believed this was a republic and not a democracy. In a democracy, the citizens have the ability to check what their legislators do. The Republican majority in the legislators know that they can scare voters away from voting for Democrats by using words like "Obama" and "Pelosi." That allows them to keep winning re-election and then thumbing their noses at the electorate while they are in office. If the Republican legislators have their way, it will be impossible in the future for vouchers to be overturned by citizen initiative the next time they pass them through the House and the Senate and the governor signs them into law.
2. Weakening the public's right to know what our legislators are doing in our name. By exempting electronic communications, Republican legislators can follow the lead of the extreme right and cater to special interests without the public watching. Hey, Republican legislators, isn't it the case that in a republic, the public has a right to know what is going on so we can hold our representatives accountable at election time? Perhaps we're not even a republic!
3. No vision for public education. Public education in Utah is in a crisis. The legislature failed to fund growth last year. It barely did so this year. All the legislature did was keep public education from falling further behind. The Republican majority and the governor did nothing to provide a vision for public education. Peter Corroon promised such a vision in his campaign last year. Gary Herbert did as well. Herbert did not deliver. I don't think he is capable of such visionary thinking. Utah's problems will continue to get worse until there is a long-term plan for public education. The governor and the Republican legislature aren't going to provide it.
4. Grading schools. The legislature approved a bill that would give grades to public schools, but, of course, provides no help for struggling schools. The Republican majority cited Florida as a model for this program. Yes, and Florida also spends far more per pupil on improving its public schools than Utah does. Moreover, Florida has a cap on class size; Utah doesn't. In Florida, the grading is coupled with resource assistance to improve public schools. In Utah, the grading is nothing but a device to label Utah public schools as failures so charter and private schools will thrive. Many of our Republican legislators send their children to private schools. Some have investments in charter schools. And the majority seem to be quite willing to harm public education every chance they get. This is merely another example.
5. Immigration reform. Regulating immigration from other nations is the job of the federal government, not individual states. It is true that the bill that passed the legislature is not as bad as the original Arizona-style bill offered by Steve Sandstrom. (See above for the fallacy in being relieved about that). But even the bill that passed is something that doesn't belong at the state level. For example, the guest worker bill places power in the hands of employers to decide whether someone should be allowed to stay in the country. Again, that is a power that doesn't belong there.
As evidence that this bill isn't quite right, the bill sets up a guest worker program with a Mexican state. However, the visas to work in the United States must be issued by the federal government, as the legislature acknowledges. Could that be because it is the federal government, not the states, that actually has power over this issue? No doubt the federal government has been remiss in solving the immigration problem. But just because a state is unhappy with some aspect of U.S. foreign policy, that does not mean that the state can engage in their own foreign policy.
Of course, we're supposed to be glad the Republican legislature didn't make school board elections partisan, raise the food tax, and cut public and higher education budgets more. But I refuse to express praise to a legislature because it didn't do worse things. The things it did were bad enough.
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