The 45 Day Legislative Blur
Tonight… the Utah legislative session is done, so let’s consider whether there might be another way to do this. Utah leaders are proud the session lasts only 45 days. It allows lawmakers to be gainfully employed citizens.
Of which we have lawmakers who are Doctors, Lawyers... Home Depot Clerks ..and Homemakers.
Presumably, at the end of the session, they slip on a T-shirt and binge-Netflix for the weekend… before heading back to their daytime jobs and real life. And the rest of the year… they’re just like you and me.
But the rest of the year …truth is they have one eye on constituent service and they work what’s called the interim. Meetings and committees that convene between now and next January. And of course, a politician usually has the other eye on re-election.
So at the end of these frantic 45 days of lawmaking - a Utah tradition scribed into the state constitution - we’ll wake up tomorrow and discover what laws they jammed through at the deadline. What they rejected. But you’ll never hear about hundreds of laws passed at the speed of light the past six weeks… our legislative reporter is exhausted beyond words trying to keep up.
because it’s such a jumble of lawmaking…there’s no time to contemplate good or bad policy. There’s no time for reflection consideration or second thoughts.
Maybe… this is radical… we should double it and have a 90-day session. So -as citizens- we can ABSORB everything they’re doing here on the Hill.
Sure… lawmakers would have to wait another six weeks to binge Netflix but at least we’d be able to follow the plot on capitol hill.