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Show land for speculation, but wish to protect the farmers of our state," said Speaker Rench-er. Rench-er. Habitual criminals were the subject of a bill sponsored spon-sored by T. Quentin Cannon (R-Salt Lake). The bill would allow the court to determine if a person is a habitual criminal. One of the bills which will be considered by the House in the fourth week involves a Utah Housing Finance Agency. "It is an exciting concept which will help families fam-ilies build homes -- especially espe-cially low and middle income families," said Speaker Rencher. "The basic idea is for the agency to sell low-interest bonds and use the revenues for housing loans. The incentive in-centive to buy the bonds is that the income would be exempt ex-empt from taxation. This allows al-lows lower interest rates on the housing loans," explained explain-ed Speaker Rencher. "If this agency is approved it could bring on a surge of new building in Utah. It would allow families to build homes who are presently out of the market because of high interest in-terest rates. All of this would not drain state funds," he said. THIRD WEEK CONCLUDES . FOR HOUSE by Rep. Ronald L. Rencher Speaker of the House The House of Representatives Representa-tives settled into the third week of the 41st session of the Utah Legislature. They considered 26 pieces of legislation leg-islation with topics ranging from farmland to habitual criminals. One of the bills which passed pas-sed the House provided for a public information officer for the Utah Legislature. Speaker Ronald L. Rencher Rench-er (D-Ogden) explained, "We feel that individual citizens should have access to information infor-mation about specific bills which concern them in addition addi-tion to the bills which are reported re-ported in the mass media because be-cause of their general interest. inter-est. A legislative information informa-tion officer can provide this service to the public." "This session we have a ' public information officer and he is working hard to keep up on bills, committee meetings, and. voting. This service has been greatly aided aid-ed by a telephone which allows al-lows anyone in Utah to call him without charge for information," in-formation," said Speaker Rencher. The number is (800) 662-5350. Another bill which is on its way to the Senate for consideration con-sideration involves farmland assessment. "The bill's basic intent is to promote the use of land for agriculture in Utah. We are . concerned about tax exemptions exemp-tions for those who purchase from Senator Leavvitt The development is access roads into Southern Utah's new energy and mineral resources re-sources is a perplexing problem facing the state of Utah. State Senator, Dixie Leav-itt, Leav-itt, (Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, and Washington counties) coun-ties) is presently having legislation leg-islation drawn up that he feels will help solve the problem. The legislation being proposed pro-posed by Senator Leavitt would give the companies developing de-veloping these resources the initial responsibility to come up with the money needed to build the access highways. The state of Utah would then . "pay back" the developers in the form of a sales and use tax abatement. Senator Leavitt stated that the costs of these roads would be too great a burden for the state's budget to handle. han-dle. As an example, Senator Leavitt commented, "the road needed for the Kaiparo-wits Kaiparo-wits project will cost in the neighborhood of 26 million dollars." This road will go from U.S. 89 near Glen Canyon Can-yon City to Cannonville, in Garfield County, a distance of approximately 65 miles. Senator Leavitt continued, "The roads into Beaver County's proposed Alunite project will also run into many millions of dollars. Tliis legislation could also be used to finance those roads, when the time comes." As well as being a logical solution to the sticky problem prob-lem of financing, Senator Leavitt feels that this legislation legis-lation would also offer some definite benefits to the state. "If the developing companies com-panies were to get their sales tax abated on items purchased pur-chased in Utah, this would give the developers an extra incentive to buy from Utah suppliers. This could add huge amounts of income to Utah's economy," , Senator Leavitt explained. ; : Senator Leavitt emphasized empha-sized that the State Department Depart-ment of Highways would still be over all aspects of the construction of the roads, from the planning and letting of bids, to the final completion comple-tion and ribbon cutting. The developer's role' would only be in the original financing of the highway. In relation to theKaiparo-wits theKaiparo-wits project, Senator Leavitt stated, "To this point, most of. the developers seem to feel that this is a logical and fair way to work out this problem." "It is also a possibility," said Senator Leavitt, "that new school developments that will be needed in connection con-nection with the Kaiparowits project could be financed through the application of this proposed legislation." |