Controversial county council bill now changes just one word in Utah law - KUTV 2News
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (KUTV) — It was a proposal that elicited strong words and revealed a sharp division between members of the Salt Lake County Council.
In the end, a compromise version of Senate Bill 57 will change just one word in Utah law – and everybody seems okay with that.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore (R-South Jordan), specifies that county councils only need to seek the advice – not approval – of district or county attorneys on proposed legislation. Originally, the bill sought to require counties with a county executive-council form of government, such as Salt Lake County, to use their own attorney to review proposed legislation and policy.
The new version of the bill passed the Senate on a second reading Friday afternoon, 26 to 0. It still needs to pass one more time before moving to the House of Representatives.
“Once the bill passed committee, the opposing sides started talking to each other and to me,” Fillmore told his colleagues, “and we’ve reached a consensus bill.”
It’s a compromise that comes after weeks of contention and division over a bill that Fillmore said was necessary to ensure separation of powers, but that the Salt Lake County Council argued was “a solution in search of a problem.”
In thanking the parties for coming together, Fillmore noted, “This process works well.”
How the bill came to be
Fillmore originally brought the bill forward at the request of Dave Alvord, a Salt Lake County Council member, who said the district attorney’s office has a conflict of interest because it belongs to a different branch of government. The Salt Lake County district attorney, Sim Gill, is a Democrat. Alvord is a Republican.
Yet, the Salt Lake County Council opposed the bill until it was most recently revised. Nearly three weeks ago, after the bill did not move out of a Senate committee, council members held a frank exchange with each other, airing grievances about the process and bemoaning the “surreal” scene of different council members testifying against each other.
Now, with the latest version of the bill, Alvord told KUTV 2News he’s pleased.
“Although this bill now only changes one word, the effect will be favorable to the legislative body at Salt Lake County,” Alvord said, saying that a signature has traditionally been required from the district attorney’s office before an item is placed on an agenda. “By withholding his signature, Sim Gill’s office could slow down ordinances or policies with which he may have disagreed or that his legal opinion didn’t square, which went beyond the original intent of his authority.”
That’s what Alvord and fellow council member Dea Theodore – who were both elected in 2020 – alleged has happened in the past. But other members of the county council said there has been no problem, and that proposed legislation runs through the DA’s civil division which is made up of 20 non-partisan, merit system attorneys.
“By changing ‘approve’ to ‘advise’ allows us to receive the DA’s legal opinion, compare it to the opinion of our own legal counsel, and then employ our legislative discretion as to whether to pass the ordinance,” Alvord said.
Aimee Winder Newton, who spoke twice against the measure at Senate committee hearings, told KUTV 2News she’s fine with how the bill has ended up.
“We didn’t think the bill was needed,” Winder Newton said, speaking of the full county council, “but we are not opposing the new version.”
Gill’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the new bill over the weekend.
source: https://kutv.com/news/local/controversial-county-council-bill-now-changes-just-one-word-in-utah-law-legislature-senate-bill-57-dave-alvord-lincoln-fillmore-politics-salt-lake-county
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