Deseret News (Salt Lake City): County learns lesson after spat with lawmakers

If there's one thing the Salt Lake County Council has learned this year, it's this:

"Just remember, for next year, don't spank the hand that feeds you until after the session."

That's according to Council Chairman Michael Jensen, who was sent in last week to do damage control after some council members dissed legislators, calling them "children" and other terms not quite suitable for printing in a family newspaper.

The council, upset about the Legislature's handling of Salt Palace Convention Center expansion funding, made its comments the penultimate day of the Legislature, forcing county lobbyists and officials to scramble to save the funding bill with 24 hours to go before the closing gavel.

The funding was saved in literally the last minutes of the session -- in fact, the county got more than it expected -- but only after some groveling. Jensen wrote an apology letter which Sen. Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, read on the floor of the Senate, and Councilman Jim Bradley, who was the most inflammatory, wrote a letter of his own.

"That apology letter was key," said the council's legislative liaison, Kara Trevino.

Having had what Councilman Randy Horiuchi called "the biggest piece of legislation that we've had for a decade" saved by adroit damage control, the council was appropriately relieved and chastened in its post-mortem meeting Tuesday, though some irreverence remained.

"I shouldn't have called them children," Councilman Joe Hatch said, tongue in cheek. "They're probably teenagers."

Bradley privately circulated "A Public Apology," a humor article written by comedian Steve Martin. In the article, Martin apologizes for, among other things, attending a bar mitzvah while wearing white gabardine pants and shouting the word "Savages!" after losing six thousand dollars on a roulette spin.

The Salt Palace expansion was rescued, but consequences of the council's comments did bleed over into another, unrelated, bill: SB203, an attempt to increase the county's maximum tax rate to pay for fire protection, paramedic and emergency services. Also sponsored by Waddoups, the bill ultimately failed -- primarily, Jensen said, because "there were some people in the House who thought Salt Lake County had acted inappropriately."

"Don't let anyone fool you; SB211 affected SB203," he said. "That changed the whole deal."

The council will try to have the bill reconsidered in special session.

So, did the council learn its lesson? Hard to say. Privately, several members say the outburst actually did the county good, waking legislators up to the pressing need for funds.

"It was touch and go all day Wednesday," the last day of the session, Trevino said. Overall, however, "it was a good experience, I thought."

E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com