James Evans Speaks out on KVEL

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Listen to this link: KVEL Interview with James Evans of UTGOP james evans

If you want to know why Evans intimidates Democratic Party insiders, take a look at James’ Goals and Strategic Objectives. With his strong profile and vision, their party, candidates, and elected officials are going to have a tougher time making a case for issues that don’t reflect the mainstream Utah voters views. James Evans’ focus is to:

• Preserve the Caucus/Convention system, as it is, and implement processes to allow more participants and greater participation.

• Make sure every statewide and federal office is in Republican hands, with a priority on defeating Jim Matheson in 2014.

• Promote the UTGOP Platform.

• Help every county party become financially stronger through better and collaborative fundraising.

• Help every county party become more competitive through the use of technology and administrative best practices.

• Raise $1 million over the next two years to support Republican candidates. As Salt Lake County Chair, James raised over $500,000 over four years.

• Increase the Party’s margins in each of the State’s legislative chambers in 2014.

• Increase the number of registered Republican voters, and reach out to them to ensure they vote in 2014.

• Reach out to the Unaffiliated Voters across Utah to educate them about the UTGOP and to encourage them to join.

• Strengthen Republican Youth Groups (TARS, College Republicans, YR’s) and incorporate them into a winning statewide strategy.

• Create and conduct a consistent messaging campaign that presents the Republican philosophy, values, activities, efforts, and ideas.

About James:

-The immediate past Chair of the UTGOP Constitution and Bylaws Committee. Recent focus has been to look into ways to provide more participation in caucuses, and to possibly enable more participation by candidates in our election system.

-Former State Senator from Senate District 1.

-Over a decade of energetic county and state grassroots political work geared towards improving the health of the Caucus/Convention system.

-Over four years on the Salt Lake County GOP Bylaws Committee, working to reduce infighting and to streamline and improve the administration of the county party.

-Four years as the Chair of the Salt Lake County GOP, with a focus on improving precinct participation, countering the liberal media’s efforts to continuously portray Republican candidates and elected officials unfairly in a bad light, and winning races in normally liberal districts in Salt Lake County. Attendance at Salt Lake County GOP Central Committee meetings went from a low of 60 to regularly over 500.

-Personally participated in the training of every Salt Lake County candidate while County Party Chair.

-Successful fundraiser as the Salt Lake County GOP Chair, raising over $500,000.

-Served as precinct, legislative, senate and region chair as well as county, state, and national delegate.

-Graduated from Tuskegee University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering.

Guaranteeing that Every Republican’s Vote Counts in Utah

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The Creed of Joni's Front Porch

This is a brief description of my belief system, in case you question it.

Quiet moments can be thoughtful times to contemplate.  I love Utah’s caucus system and as Winnie the Pooh might say, I have been “puzzling and puzzling” over solutions. Like Winnie the Pooh I don’t claim to be a great attorney or knowledgeable scholar, but sometimes when you love something and know the value of it, you feel protective of it.  You get easily defensive of it when it is criticized, so I ask my fellow Republicans to step back, sit in a quiet place and consider my proposal.  This is a very simple solution to a complex problem, although it will put many of you out of your comfort zones I hope you all realize I propose this with the sincerest of intentions:

I propose that IF the Republican Party of Utah REALLY wants every Republican’s vote to count, we should make these changes to our Caucus & Convention system:

  1. Each precinct in the State of Utah would have their own website designed by a State Party Committee. Candidates for office could self nominate, upload their pictures, a video, endorsements, their bios, and a statement about themselves. It would also provided contact and location information for caucus times, locations, host names and methods to affiliate.
  2. Prior to caucus meetings those who would like to attend but may have conflicts, would be allowed to print off an absentee ballot generated from the precinct website and turn it into the caucus host any time before the meeting adjourns.
  3. Candidates for offices would not be required to be present to run. (With the ability to post ahead of time, their willingness to serve and their point of view, anyone who wishes to run for any office can make their case and be seriously considered in their absence.)
  4. Results would be announced at the close of caucus elections
  5. That the threshold to avoid a Primary Election be raised to 70% of the delegate vote at the State Nominating Convention. (This will allow for the consideration of a greater number of candidates. A Primary Election makes our candidates better and more seasoned before a General Election.  If we have a candidate that is so oooba-remarkable that we all love them dearly we can support them enough to bypass a Primary Election.)

Summation: This proposal will allow people who have valid reasons for being unable to participate on caucus nights to be fully vested and considered in the caucus system. This sends a clear message that the Utah GOP is committed to making sure that rural counties are represented in the caucus system and that the UTGOP doors are open to all willing to enter. Representative government is what we believe in – “A democracy withing a republic, a sovereign nation of many sovereign states, a perfect union, one and inseparable…”

Losing the right of citizens to elect people that represent their local issues and neighborhood views will be the outcome if we continue to say we welcome all voices, but don’t make accommodations for them to be heard. This is my good faith effort.

Dear Legislators – Listen Up!

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vernal area chamber logo

FROM: Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce, Legislative Impact Council

TO: Senator Aaron Osmond; Governor Herbert; Utah Legislators 

RE: S.B. 81 School Property Tax Funding Bill 

March 5, 2013

The Legislative Impact Council representing the membership and board of the Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce, along with the undersigned representatives of Utah whose goal it is to promote a positive business environment and economic development in our state and region are distressed that our legislators would consider passing S.B. 81.

Although education and educational funding for Utah schools is an honorable goal, this equalization of property taxes is reminiscent of the Obama Administration’s plan to redistribute the wealth.  According to this bill, in order to recoup money lost by rural school districts, they will have to proceed through the “truth in taxation” public self-taxation process.

We expect that citizens who are experiencing pay cutbacks, lower hours of employment and higher health care costs are going to be “less likely than ever” to support self-inflicted taxes to make up the loss.  Below we list some of the criteria we find extremely questionable.

Lines 170-179 remove School District exemptions for levying taxes and makes them use “truth in taxation” to regain funds lost to other school districts.

Lines 247-270 impose a “Fixed minimum basic tax rate” of 0.001691. (This will require that all school districts will have to reduce their levies by this same rate. Requiring the 25 affected school districts to restore their previous year funding levels through “truth in taxation.”)

Lines 283-292 impose an ANNUAL increase in per-pupil spending WITHOUT any analysis of investment return.  It ASSUMES that money spent should PERPETUALLY increase and therefore student achievement improves. This gives new entities TAXING AUTHORITY and circumvents the current taxing process.  THIS IS A HUGELY CONTROVERSIAL ARGUMENT TO MAKE.

The bill incrementally increases property tax revenue, which, by FY 2025, would amount a cumulative amount of $870 million.

Lines 707-707f  make this bill RETROACTIVE to Jan. 1 2013 and will effect CURRENT county and school district funds & budgets negatively.  It also states that if this bill AND the budget pass, this TRUMPS the budget.

Twenty-five districts will actually lose current funding with this bill and would have to go to Truth in Taxation in order to recoup their losses.  (See attached spreadsheet of the effects of SB81.)

Counties with little or no growth will have stable funding, but areas that have fluctuating populations because of their industry will not be able to have stable budgets and end up using “truth in taxation” yearly.   In essence, this bill punishes counties who have proactively enhanced their economies by encouraging and incentivizing development of neighborhoods and business climate.

S.B.81 flies in the face of all free market principals and dis-incentivizes county governments from creating & promoting profitable business environments throughout Utah.  We strongly oppose this bill.

Joni L. Crane, Chairman – Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce; Legislative Impact Council
Steve Evans, President – Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce
Adam Massey, Executive Director – Vernal Area Chamber of Commerce
Mike McKee, Commissioner – Uintah County
Darlene Burns, Commissioner – Uintah County
Mark Raymond, Commissioner – Uintah County
Uintah County Board of Education
Jerry Steglich, Commissioner – Daggett County
Brian Raymond, Director of Economic Development – Daggett County
Gary Showalter, Mayor – Vernal City
Jeff Duncan, Production Superintendent – Anadarko
Irene Hansen, Executive Director – Duchesne Chamber of Commerce
Mark Krall, General Manager – Simplot Phosphates
Jill Goodman, Owner – McDonalds (Vernal & Roosevelt)

Attachment (see below):

county comparison


Anti-Fossil Fuel Spin on UT Air Quality Facts

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Salt Lake & Cache Valley experience year round air quality issues due to particulate matter.

Salt Lake & Cache Valley experience year round air quality issues due to particulate matter.

uintah basin air

Unlike the Wasatch front and their particulate matter haze, the Uintah Basin only every few years has a few days of non-attainment of EPA standards due to ozone. This lasts only a few days, only in winter, if it happens at all. Ozone is NOT caused by oil, gas, coal, tar/oil sands or shale exploration. It is caused by our topography combined with a strong weather inversion and is invisible.

So it’s been about 2 weeks since the release of the Uintah Basin Air Quality Study findings.  In only seconds, the Salt Lake Tribune and anti-fossil fuel lobbyists went crazy cherry picking sentences from the study and rearranging them into stories to make their case.  As I read through the study I had to wonder if they had read any of it, or just scanned through it for sentences they could spin.  I brought the first few articles to the attention of Seth Lyman the head scientist on this study and here is what he sent me:

  • Unlike the Wasatch Front & Cache Valley, the Uintah Basin only experiences poor air quality occasionally.  Analyses of historical meteorological conditions predict that we will have good air quality in about 50% of winters.  Even in bad winters, we tend to have no more than somewhere around 30 bad air quality days.
  • The Wasatch Front & Cache Valley have very high particulate matter pollution in winter, and they can have high ozone in the summer, so they get hit with bad air year round.  In the Uintah Basin, our poor air quality is restricted to winter months when people are more likely to be indoors and will be less affected by high ozone outside.
  • News articles a few months ago that proclaimed that the tricounty area has asthma rates twice as high as the state average were incorrect and misleading.  Our asthma rate is the same as other areas of Utah, but we have a higher rate of hospital and emergency room admissions related to asthma than other parts of the state.  This could be due to air quality, but it could also be because of different lifestyles here (more smokers, fewer people with health insurance, etc.).  Right now the data don’t show any evidence for an increase in asthma-related hospital admissions during winter months.  There are some groups, including ours, looking at asthma data in the Basin more closely to see what else we can find out about this.  In the end, the science showing that ozone exacerbates asthma symptoms is very strong, but that doesn’t mean places with high ozone will necessarily have statistically significantly different asthma rates.  There are a whole host of factors involved in asthma rates and asthma attacks, and blinding pointing to ozone as the cause is not helpful to the effort to help the public obtain accurate information about air quality and its effect on human health.
  • The only place in the Basin so far that has had particulate matter concentrations higher than EPA standards is Vernal.  While particulate matter (which you can see has visible haze, ozone is invisible.) does increase around the Basin during long inversion periods, it stays below EPA standards even in the heart of the oil and gas fields.  The particulate matter pollution in Vernal is from urban sources, not oil and gas-related sources.
  • The news media took our final report and pulled the parts out of it that would make the most tantalizing headlines, including that the oil and gas industry is likely responsible for a very large portion of organic compound (a.k.a. VOC) emissions that lead to ozone production.  What they didn’t pick up out of the report is that our emissions of organic compounds per well is less than half of the emissions per well in the Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, another area with winter ozone problems.  It is not surprising that most of the organic  emissions are from oil and gas extraction.  Oil and gas ARE organic compounds, so we expect than any extraction of oil and gas will lead to organic compound emissions.  The news media likes to point to anything bad they can about oil and gas production because it sells newspapers.  The reality, though, is that ozone formation is exceedingly complex, and while emissions from the oil and gas industry are important for ozone production, there is more to it than that.  Also, we have high ozone here because we are pretty much the worst place in the country for wintertime inversions.  Other parts of the country have much more oil and gas extraction and higher emissions, but they don’t have winter ozone or they have less winter ozone.  We have this problem because of our unique topography and meteorology, not just because we have an oil and gas industry.

I urge any reader of this (written by the head scientist of the study) to go back and reread the articles written in the last few weeks and ask yourself “Why would they write it this way? What is their agenda?”

Oil, gas, tar /oil sands, coal and shale in the Uintah Basin are being extracted in the most efficient, regulated and environmentally conscious way they possibly can, but no amount of regulation will EVER be enough to those whose agenda is to shut down ALL extraction and make us dependent on foreign nations for our U.S. energy resources.

I had to share what I had learned and what we are up against out here in the Uintah Basin. Please be advocates of “responsible exploration” and stop assisting those who use everything in their arsenal whether true or not to hurt our Utah economy. These are my neighbors, these are their livelihoods, and this is a huge boon to education funding & general funding for the state of Utah.

BREAKING NEWS – Explosion and Fire in Jensen, Utah

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Jensen, UT – An explosion in the Ashley Valley Industrial Park has destroyed 1 industrial building and severely damaged 8 eight others. Two homes in the area also received moderate damage.

The explosion occurred in a facility operated by Adler Hot Oil Service. At this time there are no reports of fatalities or injuries. The explosion was felt in all parts of the Vernal, Naples, Jensen area (and as far away as Lapoint) with many calls being received by central dispatch.

First reports of the explosion were received at approximately 00:13. Fire crews arrived on scene and immediately began to search the area surrounding the explosion. An evacuation order was issued by incident commander Jeremy Raymond, Director Uintah Fire District at approximately 00:30 for all persons within ½ mile radius of the explosion.

Red Cross (& the Uintah CERT team) opened a temporary shelter for any displaced persons at Vernal Middle School. Those individuals who may need assistance during this evacuation may contact the local Red Cross representative at 435-828-8563.

At this time crews have brought the fire that occurred following the explosion under control. The evacuation order is expected to remain in place until at least 12:00 noon on March 2. Crews are continuing to deal with a 1000 gal propane tank that is leaking as a result of the explosion. (At 3:30 am CERT & Red Cross Responders had no displaced evacuees and closed the temporary shelter at Vernal Middle School. However if evacuees need assistance in the morning they should call the above Red Cross representative hotline for help.)

Fire crews from Jensen Fire Department, Vernal Fire and Naples Fire responded. The Uintah County Sheriffs office was assisted by Utah Highway Patrol, Naples City, Vernal City in effecting the evacuation. Gold Cross ambulance provided medical stand by for crews on scene.

The Utah Sate Fire Marshal has dispatched investigators to assist with the investigation of the explosion.

Uintah County Office of Emergency Management would like to extend a thank you to the Uintah School District, the Uintah Basin CERT Team and the Red Cross for their assistance with this event.

Press note: A press conference is scheduled to take place at 09:00 this morning. Further updates will be made available as soon as they are available.

Tal Ehlers Emergency Manager tehlers@uintah.utah.gov 435-828-5088 cell

Chief Todd Wallis jensenfire@easilink.com 435-790-1977 cell

Information in () added by Joni Crane of the CERT team who assisted at the shelter and provided personal information from friends in Lapoint.

SB 128 = I Ain’t Fraid of No Bill!

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scarybill

Transparency in Education?   Who would have thought a 2-line bill would be so scary to let out of a House Education Standing Committee?  

Especially when legislators are weighing in on Guns, Global Warming, Ethics, Impeachment, and Terrorist Threats.  So here are 8 super brief points that explain why this bill is so scary…

  1. SB128 is a two line bill. It asks for the State School Board to just SHARE information THEY ALREADY COMPILE and it adds no requirements to any school or any district.
  2. Right now education is 52% of our state budget and we only know in broad strokes where that money goes.
  3. The State School Board has very specific accounting practices and rules that must be followed to track how those funds are spent.
  4. That data is NOT shared with the public, the legislature or the Governor.
  5. The State School Board uses the data to prepare an annual report but it lacks the detail and specifics of the raw data.
  6. This raw data could vastly improve the legislative appropriations process and assist the Governor with his budget recommendations each year.
  7. Most importantly it would for the first time allow us to start comparing outcomes against expenditures.
  8. The small expense of this Bill is to make a minimal change to the state website where the information will be disclosed. The website already exists. It will also help provide districts responses to data reporting questions.

Anti-climatic isn’t it – it is a simple, common sense bill, that no regular Joe would ever oppose…  that is unless there is something Joe doesn’t want disclosed….

Australia lifts Shale Oil Mining Ban – Technology Proven!

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ECCOS Logo

ECCOS NEWS ALERT:

Newman Government lifts shale oil mining ban to create new revenue stream

A BAN on shale oil mining in Queensland will be lifted, creating potentially thousands of jobs and providing the cash-strapped State Government with a new revenue stream.

Natural Resources Minister Andrew Cripps will today announce plans to lift the ban, placing the Newman Government on a collision course with environmentalists.

The decision will mean the Government can count on new royalty revenue from shale oil, liquefied natural gas and uranium in the future.

The shale oil industry has been in limbo since 2008 after a 20-year moratorium was placed over a major deposit in north Queensland and the industry told it must prove its technology before the Government would give the green light to proceed.

Shale oil is a sedimentary rock that can be mined, crushed, heated and processed or heated in place to produce petroleum and other fuels.

The Newman Government’s decision will allow one operator, Queensland Energy Resources, to progress its trial plant at Gladstone and seek approval for a full commercial operation.

Other potential operators are likely to kickstart the approvals process for their own operations in coming years, with 90 per cent of Australia’s known oil shale reserves in Queensland.

However, the Government will maintain until 2028 the moratorium on the controversial deposit near Proserpine in north Queensland, which critics claim is too close to the coastline and sensitive wetlands.

Mr Cripps said the industry could provide huge economic benefits to Queensland, with the current resource considered capable of producing 22 billion barrels of oil.

“As the world supply of conventional crude oil diminishes, there are strong prospects for oil shale to become the next major source of liquid fuel supplies in Australia, and Queensland is well placed to lead that charge,” he said.

Under the new shale oil policy, the Newman Government promised project proponents would have to demonstrate how they would meet high environmental standards.

Environment Minister Andrew Powell stressed approvals would be made on a “case-by-case” basis.

QER chief executive Pearce Bowman said the Government’s decision recognised the potential importance of oil shale to Australia’s transport fuel future, and QER’s achievements in constructing and operating a clean and quiet technology demonstration plant.

eccos.oil.shale@gmail.com

Potential $25M Annually for Utah Education

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02.08.13 - Lincoln Brown & Joni Crane

Vernal, UT – According to Utah State Senator Kevin Van Tassell, a Bill to fund the Uintah Basin Energy Transportation Study is headed to committee this morning. The study was commissioned to gain an understanding of important issues in Uintah and Duchesne Counties.

Phase one of the study indicated that because of transportation constraints, the basin has lost some 30 billion dollars in the past 30 years in oil and gas production.

The study also indicates potentially significant returns resulting from additional investment in transportation infrastructure in the Uintah Basin.

The study states that the added annual oil and gas production represents about 7% of Utah’s GDP.  Of the $180 million average annual added tax revenues, the SITLA royalties alone would add about $25 million per year directly to public education.

The study also estimates the opportunity cost resulting from the constrained transportation system, in terms of tax revenue, private rents and royalties, jobs, transportation user cost savings, and environmental and safety effects is at a present value of over $10 billion of net benefits and almost 27,000 long-term, high-quality jobs.

The bill asserts that in order to capture these opportunities and realize the lost revenues, further assessment of transportation investment options, production regulation and policies, and environmental impact mitigation strategies would be necessary.

Dear #utleg – Please Read before 2 pm 1/31/13 from Joe Public RE: HB80

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HB 80 Good or bad for Utah?

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the state of Utah:
Section 1. Section 30-2-9 is repealed and reenacted to read:
30-2-9. Family expenses — Joint and several liability.

(1) A husband and wife may be jointly or individually responsible for expenses of the family members for reasonable and necessary medical and dental expenses, and other necessities, including education of the minor children.

(2) In addition to the expenses described in Subsection (1), a creditor shall be entitled to recover from the husband and wife, jointly and severally, the following additional amounts if the amounts are provided for in a written contract signed by either the husband or wife:
(a) a collection fee;
(b) interest at the rate specified in the contract;
(c) court costs;
(d) reasonable attorney fees; and
(e) any other amounts provided for in the contract.

(3) Unless the court determines that it would work an injustice, Subsection (2) applies to all contracts under this section entered into by either spouse any time the parties are married and living together as husband and wife.

Utah Legislature HB0080

le.utah.gov

The offical web site for the Utah State Legislature.
  • Lisa Shepherd Please explain what is bad. It states necessary medical expenses. It doesn’t say new truck, does it?
  • Mary Wilson Burkett Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a legislative session where less than a dozen bills were passed? I’ve been reading some of the bills and few, if any, are NEEDED.
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane line 27 and 28 ” and other necessities,” that could be defined as just about anything.
    39 minutes ago · Edited · Like · 2
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane So is your house in both your names, are your cars. Is the debt in your life? There are reasons people keep things in one name only, and this does away with those reasons. Do I want to be on my husbands loan for a business I have no interest in? Maybe, but with the asset comes the debt. What if he goes to Vegas and loses it all and owes a loan shark
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone Line 36 also says “any other amounts provided in the contract” and if only one spouse knows what is in the contract, I think that is bad.
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane Utah law today let’s me make my own decision on my own debt. This change makes it possible for someone else to enslave me unknowingly to their debt. UnAmerican – takes away my personal liberty.
  • Marc Schulz Collective punishment for individual misdemeanor.
  • Lisa Shepherd Yes, that could be true. I wonder which word could be inserted into this bill to tighten that up. I may want to send my child to UVU and my spouse could want to send hi to Princeton and I would have to incur that expense? I’d like to see what “reasonable” is.
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone In addition, this takes discretion from a judge and give the authority to creditors, who have a financial advantage in extending the credit.
  • Mary Wilson Burkett Unfortunately, “reasonable” is subjective. Now that we no longer use common sense in our society, reasonable can mean anything!
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane So it could turn over divorce settlements where one spouse was supposed to pay for a students college while the other had another judicial obligation.
  • Marc Schulz If a rich wife marries a poor husband and the wife loves Porsche cars, the husband is screwed. “Reasonable” always applies to current living circumstances.
  • Lisa Shepherd Also, as a married unemployed homemaker, if I were to divorce and have to incur some of these debts that are in his name only, it would be tough since I do not have the earning capacity anywhere near what my spouse does. I can see where this could really stick it to a spouse who couldn’t later afford the decisions of the other spouse.
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone It also means that creditors can come after and take by garnishment from either spouse and then it would cost additional expense to that spouse to go before the court and request redress. This bill is a boon to collectors and lawyers, not the general public.
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane Super bad bill and a super good lobbyist is in favor of it, we need EVERYONE who can to be in room 20 at 2pm today to speak against it.
  • Marc Schulz Line 35: “(d) reasonable attorney fees; and”. Sounds also bad. If the husband can afford the best attorney in Utah, the wife will have to burden the legal fees, too.
  • Lisa Shepherd One thing it could do for a potential ex-spouse would be that your current spouse could no longer take you to the cleaners by spending a lot and making expensive choices and leaving you with the bill due to ability to pay. This ability to pay seems to be a key point for an ex-spouse.
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane This is very anti-women since in general they proportionally will be more often homemakers and stuck with mortgage, education and other debts not their own.
  • Lisa Shepherd Divorces are very individual , painful, etc… and shouldn’t be put into the creditors hands.
  • Marc Schulz That’s why I used a rich wife as an example Joni, who loves Porsche. I did not want to be anti-women in my statement.
  • Lisa Shepherd This is a very interesting discussion. I encourage more of these on what’s going on at the legislature.
  • Marc Schulz ”any time the parties are married and living together as husband and wife.” That is also bad quality language, since when the debt is incurred, a divorce will not change the situation for either spouse. Basically, it also discourages marriages.
  • Lisa Shepherd I’m trying to think through this scenario and see it from both sides. If a divorced person were to try to get married again, it could be tough based upon all of the residual expenses. I can see the creditor’s side of this and how non-payment affects their bottom line. ………..
  • Marc Schulz Since a marriage is then only meant to be a “debt distribution deal” and not meant for love and compassion.
  • Lisa Shepherd …….how does bankruptcy fit into this scenario? Would this encourage more bankruptcy and could it potentially damage the creditors even more? ……..
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone Lisa, the creditors are the ones who assumed the risk, and the solution to the problem of non-payment would be to require married individuals to have the consent of their spouse on financial contracts, or to not extend the credit.
    24 minutes ago · Edited · Like · 2
  • Alisa Kirkham Interesting conversation on this subject. I wonder if this bill was a misguided attempt to control outcome of those who have divorced, yet stay together as if married (so the divorce is not obvious to anyone at all) so they can squeeze out of obligatio…See More
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane Good thought Lisa, remember how the banks did not assess risk and caused a huge problem in mortgage loans, well if this passes they can risk loans to people who don’t have the money to pay because the spouse is unwillingly a co-signer on the debt. They will be thrilled because they can extend riskier loans, gain loan fees and offset the risk by making 2 people responsible legally instead of just one.
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone I agree. I do not believe the bill sponsor had evil intent. I think he was legitimately trying to solve a problem. I just don’t believe this bill is good policy for Utah.
  • Marc Schulz The bill is good for current marriages (because it discourages divorce), but bad for future marriages (because it encourages living alone).
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone Joni, I think you hit the nail on the head, and this is probably where the money for the lobbyist is coming from. Good thinking.
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane I actually looked into the sponsor and saw that he is the president of an organization that advocates for some form of child welfare. I believe this was a misguided attempt at getting divorcing families to fund ongoing support and education for children affected. This is just a guess but the bill is poorly thought out and needs to go back to the drawing board.
    19 minutes ago · Edited · Like · 1
  • Lisa Shepherd Wow, imagine this….a husband wants a brand new truck because the old truck’s engine went bad. The wife says “Honey, we can’t afford it” while knowing the life situations and obligations…..and the dealership has a great new F350 Super Duty with a re…See More
  • Shawn L Spring It needs to stay the way it is. Every time the legislature gets a brilliant idea of how to mitigate divorce issues because of outside influence (credit/debt collectors) it will only make the fight worse. You can’t legislate our problems away by legislating another problem. Getting real tired of this kind of trash legislation.
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane The sponsor is a younger republican man who may need to do more research before he puts anything forward.
  • Marc Schulz So, many people need to be there when the bill is discussed.
  • Shawn L Spring I have a perfect example of why this is a stupid bill! My wife’s ex had property that was purchased while they were married and several years after he didn’t pay property taxes. The divorce decree ordered him to remove her name from the deed/title of…See More
  • Shawn L Spring The laws now can bifurcate financial issues from the divorce. They now protect you, Lisa, from his debt. The new law, screws both of you. Am I reading it wrong?
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane Isn’t it amazing how life changing just a few words can be? An entire family’s, future welfare could hang on the few words in this bill.
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone Shawn, you are not reading this wrong.
  • Cory Thackeray Shawn you are reading it correctly, it would hold both in the marriage responsible for any debt.
  • Barbara Thatcher Stallone For those of you who can’t be at the capitol at 2:00 pm, it would be great to send a short email to the committee members letting them know that you are against this bill. If you open the link to the bill, there is a list of committee members who will hear the bill today. If you include the bill number, HB80 in the Subject line of the email it will really help the legislators now what is going on
  • Joni L. Hilliard-Crane Hey I have an idea… I am going to post this thread to my blog so it has an http address – then I will tweet the link to all our legislators with a note to read it before 2pm is everyone okay with that?

Basin Propane Fire Causes Evacuations

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About 10:32 am Tuesday morning a fire broke out at the Basin Propane facility, technically in Naples, UT. This it the view from Jack’s General Tire whose employees received a phone call telling them that everyone within a half mile radius was to evacuate as soon as possible.

With in only minutes firefighters were on the scene and Uintah County’s new Code Red system was put to the test.  Reverse phone calls went out to all who had signed up for the free notification service and neighborhoods adjacent were quickly evacuated.

No injuries have been reported and Sheriff Jeff Merrell confirmed that there was no need to evacuate the prisoners from the nearby Uintah County Public Safety Complex. KVEL’s Lincoln Brown quickly provided updates to the crew at Fox 13 News.

Hwy. 40 is open again and we are about to receive a final update.