11/3/07 State Central Committee Report

Another installment of As the State Central Committee Turns

By Ricky Hatch
Chair - House Legislative District 6

The State Central Committee met last Saturday, 11/3/07. Short agenda, fairly short meeting, unbearably long report. Don't believe me? Read on....

State party Chair Stan Lockhart said that he will begin a campaign to promote the party's platform. I just finished reading 1984, so every time I type “The Party,” I feel a little uncomfortable. However, as I researched the Utah Republican Party Platform a few years back, I was thoroughly impressed. It hits SOOO many critical principles right on the head. From the first sentence (which declares a belief in God, the only author of our rights), it is evident that this document was written by good, wise people. You should read it – it's only 3 pages long. It's available for reading here. A hat was passed around, collecting $350 and a little dandruff to get the campaign started.

The party's accountant has left to be a full-time mom. Her duties are now being split by Maria Uboldi, and Mike McCauley, the current Treasurer. Now, you fellow auditors out there need not be alarmed, Mike's check signing ability has been removed to avoid funding any potential purchases of small tropical islands with party funds.

Information Access Policy: We discussed a proposed change to the party's Information Access Policy. In the past, the state party has put the contact info of all delegates on the web site. Making these names available is required by the party's constitution and bylaws, although these documents do not specify HOW these names must be made available. Apparently, these lists have been sold in the past, and some counties have been hesitant to give the names of their delegates to the state party for fear of being contacted too much by the buyers of these lists. The proposed change would require anyone who gets the list to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This option, thankfully, was met with quite a bit of skepticism and concern. Our own Christie Moore brought up a good point that the Weber County party has all of our delegate names available on the web site, and we've never received a complaint from any of them. Another gentleman commented that if someone is going to be elected to be a delegate, having their contact information available is part of the job. One alternative to the non-disclosure agreement is to copyright the contact lists, which would make it illegal to sell them without permission. This seems like a good idea, and the party has decided to look into this and other options before taking and further action. Whew!

Resolution Regarding School Vouchers: We discussed a resolution to give official support to the School Voucher Referendum. Surprisingly, there wasn't much debate, and our own plucky Paul Skeen stepped forward to express some valid concerns about the bills' constitutionality. I shared his concern, but Carl Wimmer, one of the bill's sponsors, allayed this concern by mentioning how the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Cleveland voucher program. With a couple of good alterations, the resolution passed overwhelmingly, with only about 3 “nay” votes.

Lieutenant Governor Gary Herbert talked about how true Republicans support public education, and how the voucher bills support public ed. He mentioned how great it is that we live in a Republic. He said that Dan Jones is predicting close to a 50% turnout in Tuesday's election. Yeah, dismally low. Utah's Presidential Primary will be on February 5th.

Representative Rob Bishop spoke quite passionately about some of the amazing junk that is happening in Washington right now. Those now in charge of the House & Senate are “running fast and loose,” doing things that have never been done there before (because they shouldn't be done). Examples: Invoking Closed Rules, which prohibit amendments to bills, and having the Rules Committee ad taxes to the Farm Bill (the Rules Committee has no authority to do that). Every appropriation bill passed by this Democrat-controlled Congress has exceeded the White House's recommended spending amounts, except for one bill – national defense. Hmmm...I smell bacon.

Representative Chris Cannon talked about the ineffectiveness of the multitude of oversight hearings, which have found no administrative improprieties.

National Committeewoman Nancy Lord said that the Republican National Committee will discuss this week the party's penalty for state parties holding presidential primaries prior to the RNC's mandated dates. Two plans are being discussed: 1) the Delaware plan, which will have the primaries held first in the small states, and 2) the American Plan, which uses a lottery system to determine which states hold their primaries first.

The head of the Utah Federation of Republican Women told a great story about how President & Laura Bush both asked her to thank the Utah Republican Women for all their service and support. The Hispanic Assembly has new leadership and is having great success in registering more Latinos to vote. The Hispanic Assembly's national convention was recently held in Utah. The College Republicans have new leadership at most of the universities in Utah.

So that's it – a long report of a short meeting – we were done within an hour and a half.

Yours,

Ricky Hatch.