OCR Text |
Show Under The Capitol Dome I l By Harry Marlowe Trends come and go in Utah politics but the one thing you j can bank on is that the most of the people whether Republicans or Democrats, seem to prefer public pub-lic servants with a solid, "middle of the road" program. Every Legislature comes up with its share of "liberals" and "reactionaries" "reac-tionaries" overworked words used to describe most politicians'. The rest are "conservatives." Every legislature a little "liberal" "liber-al" legislation gets through, as well as "reactionary" legislation. But the big bulk of it, particularly the best legislation of recent years has come as the result of some healthy, middle of the road compromises. com-promises. A good many of these compromises com-promises -come through the work of the Utah Legislative Council. It doesn't seem to matter who does the appointing of this group, the men appointed are, for the most part, earnest, hard-working, slow to excite men given to careful care-ful pondering of facts before reaching decisions. This is not to say that the Council cannot act quickly. Its members can and have done so. It's just that these men know which ,way they are headed when they act. The council for the next two years should follow along those same lines. If anything, the so-called "liberal" "lib-eral" element may claim to have been shortchanged, because even the liberals on the council tend to be somewhat conservative. These 13 men carry a lot of prestige. They will study some tough problems. And, if past performances per-formances can be any criteria the solutions these men come up with to these problems might very well become the law of the state next sessions. For one thing, the council will have another two-year period to dig into Utah's tax structure to see if there are any other overhauls over-hauls needed. The whole field of city government govern-ment cooperation and integration integra-tion if necessary will be studied. stud-ied. Labor management relations are on the agenda. Highway financing and interstate inter-state highway surveys will be the eye of the group. They will study underground water and flood control con-trol problems and ponder as to whether all water agencies should come under one head. Probably the hottest issue to handle will be the whole field of business and trade regulations and how far such regulations should go. In all, the council has 23 assignments, as-signments, including such things as feasibility of diking the east edge of Great Salt Lake, need of a State Office Building, studies of hospital and medical needs for the future, etc. Each time something comes up that is too hot to handle in the , Legislature or a matter on which more factual data is needed before legislative action ' the chances are the Legislative Council gets the job of taking care of the problem. prob-lem. And the chances are good that they will do it. |