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Show Your Representative Speaks S By State Rep. t ts' JohnCarr ium i-V i? Residents of Grand County: Monday, January 10 marked mark-ed the opening of the 1977 General Session for the State of Utah. Governor Scott Malheson presented his State of the State message and budget message in a single address to a joint convention of the House and Senate. His budget message calling for total budget of $997,241,200 as opposed to former Governor Govern-or Hampton's budget message calling for $914,511,300, was an increase of $82,629,900. Following the Governor's address the session got underway under-way with a flurry of bill introductions-202 bills in fact. Friday ended with a total of 318 bills being introduced during the week. That's 133 more bills than were introduced intro-duced during the 1975 General Gener-al Session. Representative Dmitrich and I requested, before the session began, that leadership and rules committees com-mittees establish a limit of five bills that each legislator could sponsor. The House leadership and rules committee commit-tee indicate they favor such a ruling, but don't know how to accomplish it for this session. Perhaps something can be done for future sessions, though. At . that time we projected that there would be in excess of 1000 bills introduced intro-duced for legislative consideration. consider-ation. I'm sure we will exceed that number. Such proliferation prolifera-tion of bill introductions is an unnecessary and additional expense to the legislative process, and results in good legislation being bypassed or overlooked because of the time limitations we must, by law, work under. Rep. Dmitrich surprised most legislators by striking the enacting clause on HB 42, which required the posting of a surity bond on injunctive requests to delay or stop State or private land developments. develop-ments. His reason being that after careful research he discovered dis-covered that such a law presently exists in our state and hasn't been used. He feels that his bill produced the desired effect, in that now people are aware of the existing exist-ing law and can use it to protect themselves from unwarranted un-warranted injunctions that would stop or delay development develop-ment in our state. Other legislation legis-lation sponsored by Rep. Dmitrich, Dmi-trich, with my assistance, was HB 33, which requires that one college student serve on the Board of Regents, giving students a voice on that Board. This bill passed the House, and is now before the Senate, where it should receive re-ceive favorable consideration and passage. Of particular interest to our senior citizens was passage of Rep. Dmitrich Dmi-trich 's HB 60, which provides for low cost or free enrollment of persons 62 or older in college classes on a space available basis. The original bill provided for age 60, but was amended in a compromise situation to age 62. A particularly important piece of legislation, sponsored by Rep. Irvine and myself, requires that instruction on the free enterprise system be required as a requisite for graduation from high school. This guarantees that graduates grad-uates will at least be exposed to the basic fundamentals of our economic system. This bill, HB 8 passed the House and is being considered by the Senate. I have been working closely with Rep. Jones to combine the merits of HB 1 and HB 119 to enable the owners of all trucks and other vehicles to obtain personalized license plates if they desire them. The previous law permitted only automobile owners to purchase personalized plates. This bill should be before the House early next week, and hopefully will receive favorable favorab-le consideration. A matter that is of particular partic-ular importance to the southeastern south-eastern part of the state (and is not legislative), is the proposed reclassification of the ambient air standards by the Utah Air conservation Committee. I feel it is vitally important to every citizen of this area to become familiar with the proposals. Copies are available from your local public pub-lic health officer. If you agree that the proposal provides for the orderly development of industry in our area and protects our air, then so advise the Air Conservation Committee, 44 Medical Drive, Salt Lake City, 84113 of your approval of the proposal, prior to January 31, 1977. I would appreciate hearing from you either by phone 5331848, or by mail addressed address-ed to me at the Capitol. Include your name and address add-ress on your letters and send them to the following address: Representative John M. Garr; Utah House of Representatives; Repre-sentatives; Utah State Capitol; Cap-itol; Salt Lake City, Utah 841 14. |