Robert Gehrke: “This will probably come as a surprise to many, but sometimes I screw up. This piece is about just one of those times and trying to keep it from happening again.'
Constitutional Amendment A would remove a significant limitation on a Legislature that has eroded too many checks and balances already.This will probably come as a surprise to many, but sometimes I screw up.
Here’s the background: Back in 2017, the Legislature and then-Gov. Gary Herbert got into a squabble over the process that would be used to replaceBecause the law was unclear, the governor thought he could fill in the gaps on the replacement process. The Legislature wanted to convene a special session so it could give the more extremist delegates the power to pick the replacement, but under Utah’s Constitution, only the governor could call such a session and Herbert refused to do so.
That’s too constraining for their liking — never mind that they could convene a new special session every day until they had completely rewritten the entire budget —, and not count any federal funds spent or reductions toward that total.