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Show Idnei the Qafxiialbame By William T. Igleheart UTAH STATE PRESS ASSOCIATION While Senator Ward Holbrook, the Davis county crusader had the bear of liquor control by the tail last week and hadn't yet let go the legislature went on mote or less merrily making laws. They sort-of solved a few financial finan-cial problems when Senator Sol Selvin had them put a ceiling of $6,000,000 on welfare funds, ;the balance to go to the state general fund. What's left over will partially partial-ly meet prospective grants to other purposes. Then, of course, the legislature abolished the state department of publicity and industrial development develop-ment by the simple expedient of creating a new department of publicity. pub-licity. The move means a bit more than the dropping of two words. The commission had done some good jobs, the legislature said, but the personnel was obnoxious, they also said. For instance, the influenzal influ-enzal Henry H. Lunt from Cedar City and a lot of the movie people peo-ple who've chosen Kanab country for some of the most beautiful pictures pic-tures even made would have preferred pre-ferred to pay the salary of one commission employee just to keep him away. Mitchell Melich the up-and-coming senator from Moab presented the bill and persuaded his democratic demo-cratic opponents to go along with him. It's a pretty good guess that the house of representatives will concur when they get around to senate bills this week. Appropriations remain the bete noir or black cat as you wist, of the last week. The joint committee of house and senate have already slapped down Governor Herbert B. Maw's request for an $800,000 contingent con-tingent fund and while the scrap will probably go to the floor of the house this week, there isn't much prospect that the governor can win. The board of examiners composed of the Governor, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General will most certainly have control of that money. The Governor is in another quandary quan-dary as to what the senate will do with his nominations for major ap-pointmens. ap-pointmens. Neither the senate nor the democratic bigwigs seem particularly par-ticularly happy about some of them, especially the transfer of Justin Hurst of the liquor control board to the welfare commission and John S. Evans from the road commission to the liquor control outfit. By the time these few remarks re-marks see the light of day, however, how-ever, those two confirmations are more than likely. Governor Maw hasn't vetoed any bills, pribably for the simple reason rea-son that nothing has yet been presented pre-sented to him of a dubious nature. In other words, the bills passed thus far have for the most part been good, decent run of the mine laws without right or left wing unpalatable un-palatable taint. Educational financing is about taken care of. The expansion of the industrial commission laws with increased benefits has been carried. A lot of odds and ends from the licensing of fur dealers to better educations for cosmeticians have gone on the books. Some of the perermial nightmares night-mares like the oleomargarine bill, the homestead exemption constitutional consti-tutional amendment, the revisal of the big game board of control and others have met varying but e-qually e-qually conclusive fates. And as it now stands the respective sifting j commutes of the two houses are jmore than likely to keep buried the lunatic fringes of legislation which invariably attaches to every session. For instance, there is very ! little chance at all that the so- called severance tax on natural resources re-sources will ever emerge from committee. com-mittee. There is also, perhaps less fortunately, very little chance that some of the post war planning legislation leg-islation will even get a test vote in senate or house. While the senate has sort-of smouldered on without inspired leadership or particularly effective organization, the house has been much more vigorously and dex-trously dex-trously directed by the firmly pleasant plea-sant speaker Rulon White of Ogden. Og-den. Speaker White, it should be said emphatically, has no axes to grind of his own, but the orderly conduct of the house within the rules and regulations has been notably not-ably more orderly than the some-i some-i what extra-Roberts Rules of Order , processes in the senate. Jim Nielsen, the veteran republican repub-lican from Fountain Green, told ! the house the other day that the twenty-sixth legislature will go j down in history as the "Santa .Claus Legislature" when they seemed inclined to get extrava-; extrava-; gant. Tom Jones, the ruddy, genial .San Juan stockman took an occasional occa-sional whack at what seemed to be legislative frills and fancies. Tom Argyle, the fish and game expert from Davis, went down fighting on a couple of his bills as did Enimett Olson, Price democrat and administration stalwart. Alon-zos Alon-zos Hopkins, the Woodruff senator found himself at weekend sort-of in betwixt and between as appointment's appoint-ment's committee chairman, because be-cause whatever his committee recommends re-commends there'll probably be some floor arguments. But as they go. into the last lop this week, temper's are pretty much unruffled because while some good laws have been passed and some more will be, no really bad ones have been. Of course it might be alleged that some mighty good ones have been neglected. But that depends on the point of view. There are sixty members of the house and tweny-three members of the senate representing every cross roads in the state, and all the sorts of people who make those cross roads worth living in. The best bet is that the laws that have been passed and that will be passed in this last hectic week will make those places even more desirable homes. You can't ask more than that, can you? |