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Show By JAMES ' CONRAD i Harmony is still the watchword of Utah's 27th Legislature. With more than two weeks of law-making behind them, members mem-bers of the current session on Capitol Cap-itol Hill have shown defnite trends toward ignoring party lines in the interest of the state. The spirit, too, has reached relations rela-tions of Gov. Herbert B. Maw with the legislature in respect to the appropriations bill. After submitting submit-ting his budget message on the eleventh day, the chief executive sent word to the joint appropria-1 appropria-1 tions committee that he would be willing to regard its requests in preparing his appropriations bill. It is reliably reported that his excellency even went so far as to say he would accept any legislative legisla-tive recommendations that might be made in the way of a contingent conting-ent fund. Two years ago, it will be remembered, the appropriations committee spent a great deal of j the session debating over policy ' on the contingent fund. It finally ! wound up by taking the half-j half-j million dollar fund away from the governor, placing it under the board of examiners as a supplemental supple-mental fund and submitting the appropriations bill on the final day of the session. Should the committee avoid a fight on policy this year, it may be able to introduce the bill as early ear-ly as the 45th day, as provided in the joint rules, according to many observers. In spite of the Governor's budget bud-get message, in which he outlined departmental expenditures which were $7,000,000 under departmental departmen-tal requests, he has made it clear that there are many proposals that he supports. He explained this stand by saying that 'Tt is the prerogative of the Legislature, not mine," to determine if and where the state is to expend its services. He specifically referred to the University of Utah which he said should be expanded into a graduate gradu-ate school. Whether or not this should be done, he said, is a job for the Legislature to determine, "not me.". On other measures there appeared ap-peared to be perfect harmony between be-tween the chief executive and his bipartisan legislature. He expressed express-ed support for the bill to clarify the filling of vacancies, which is a top political issue in Salt Lake county. On the" other hand, he has outspokenly opposed the two house measures which would remove re-move the Engineering commission from under the budgetary control of the finance commission. The governor was also bitterly opposed to a pair of bills introduced intro-duced in the Senate by the Tax Study Committee that would eliminate elim-inate the State Publicity and Industrial In-dustrial Development Dept. One would do away with department funds and the other would transfer trans-fer its duties to a publicity director under the governor. The latter bill, incidentally, is being held up by some legislators who are of the opinion that an unpaid advisor should be named to guide the publicity pub-licity director. |