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Show mzdev 'Urn k By Harry Marlowe After every recent session of the Utah Legislature, there has been a special session following to take care of seme matter overlooked in the regular session or to corrupt cor-rupt some regular session error. Why? According to theory, the GO-day regular session is iplenty long enough to take care of the pressing matters. Also, the theory goes, legislators have several chances to ,tro thoroughly Into all legislation legisla-tion passed. That's the theory. "The practical application isn't as easy. Hundreds of bills flood in upon up-on legislators in a regular ses sion. There are mighty few legislators leg-islators who can assimilate all the Information good or bad contained In these bills. Committee Com-mittee work is supposed to bring out the good and the bad points. And, In the big bills about the major issues, this is usually the CAST. For Example Bo! lake the little child labor law which is causing all the fuss Oris year. Not a very major law as taws go. And the changes wsr not supposed to be major, sus changes go. But the changes Kb at however inadvertently were made were major ones. How did it slip through? The explanation on this year is more simple than most. Typographical errors were made In indicating deletions. It was near the end of the session. No one caught the error in the last minute rush. The debate on the bill took up an entirely different dif-ferent segment of argument. But some of the other errors made in the past and which will be made in the future are not as easily traced or as easily rectified. recti-fied. Most of these errors can ic iiuilu iu ii ensure 01 one kind or another. There have been Instances where too much lobby pressure has been exerted and a bill is rammed through with some items in it which should maybe have been looked at more closely. Partisan Politics The second pressure Is partisan politics. It has come to the point that many times a good bill is attacked by one party simply because the other party sponsored spon-sored it. When it comes to this Impasse, the party with the majority ma-jority wins its point, and usually us-ually uses that majority to ram the bill through with very little amending whether amendment amend-ment is needed or not. Both parties par-ties are guilty. Ordinarily, no bill is so well drawn up that it should not be scrutinized. Even the bills that are agreed upon after long conferences con-ferences among interested parties, par-ties, full of compromise for the public good, cannot be lightly passed over. But it will take many years before these errors which cause special sessions can be ellmin-inated. ellmin-inated. For, in most cases, they are errors caused by the American Ameri-can political system, which is still the best system we have. That type of thing takes a lot of changing. |