LETTER: Get the facts right
Editor,
Flipping through The Statesman lately one can find lots of good stuff and also some crap ripping apart the Utah State Legislature for HB 331.
I say it’s time to get some facts straight about the Legislature. They did not take a $20 per day pay increase. They voted last year to DROP their pay by $20 a day during special sessions. This year they didn’t make that vote, taking their pay back to what it was the year before. Try getting your facts straight.
People harp on the Legislature for passing HB 331. Do you really think they wanted to? Do you think they sit there in the Capitol and come up with ways to make students leave Utah. No. The issue of higher ed appropriations is ALWAYS one of the toughest battles when budget time comes around. Higher ed actually took one of the smallest hits out of any agency in Utah.
Also, the bill wasn’t even initially put forth by a member of the House, it was proposed by a member of the Board of Regents, the body which governs Utah System of Higher Education.
Even with HB 311 in place, Utah has one of the most lenient residency laws in the western United States. In some states you have to have graduated from high school in that state to even be considered for residency.
One writer commented on how legislators who come from Box Elder and Cache county could stay in their own homes and commute every day. I would like to see that person get up at 5 a.m. every day to be at meetings that start at 8 a.m. then spend all day at the Capitol in meetings. Then drive home 2 hours at 10 p.m. and do it all for the 45-day session. Be realistic.
People need to get their facts straight about what is happening. Anne Stanley hit it on the head. Each person needs to get to know his representatives. At school we tend to get blinded and think that nothing is happening to anyone else in the world.
Everyone has been hit financially. We can either whine about it and make things hard for everyone, or we can realize that everyone is in this together and work together to find the solution. If we continue to just be mean to each other, nothing will get accomplished.
Alex Earl