April 2002

There are a certain number, I think, of legislators who I think have had an appetite to use their override power simply to exercise it in a way that would demonstrate its existence, and there's nothing illegitimate about that.

Reporters (in order of appearance):

KEN VERDOIA, KUED
ROD DECKER, KUTV
JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW
DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS
RICH PIATT, KSL-TV
BRYAN SCHOTT, KSL-RADIO
AMY BRYSON, DESERET NEWS

Transcript:

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, thanks for joining us today. The state legislature has called itself into special session, with an intent of studying the possible override of your veto of a bill related to the judicial conduct commission. Beyond that immediate bill, a couple of legislators seemed to indicate there was an abuse of power on your part in exercising the veto, that you were somehow too subjective in the process. Not speaking to the instance bill necessarily, the Judicial Conduct Commission, but generally how do you view your exercise of the veto power, and have you, in fact, abused it in this case?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well the constitution is very clear on the role of a Governor in exercising a veto, and it is, in terms of my own use of it, I have found that vetoes generally fall into two or three categories.

The first would be technical mistakes that I discover, and quite often I will find technical mistakes that are made as they go through the bills, so there's a quality control in terms of the technical aspect of bills. For example, there was a bill this time that was passed but not funded. And what that would mean is that the budget would not be balanced, and therefore the bill would have been out of play, in my mind, and so I vetoed it.

Second, there are times when I just have a fundamental disagreement with the policy, and that is a case where the Governor provides a check and balance.

The third instance is in situations where the Governor believes, for one reason or another, that something requires more discussion. There could be infinite other numbers of reasons, but the system of check and balances provide for the Governor to be able to make a veto, and it also provides for the legislature to be able to override the veto with a two-thirds vote.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: This seems to me to be something that has been coming on, perhaps ever since 1992. You began on a honeymoon with the republican legislature, and now it has been reduced to a squabbling marriage where they may even override your veto. Is that a fair characterization? Has restiveness grown as you have occupied the Governor's chair?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: There are a certain number, I think, of legislators who I think have had an appetite to use their override power simply to exercise it in a way that would demonstrate its existence, and there's nothing illegitimate about that. It does exist, and I acknowledge that. I think there are others who would see it as an opportunity simply to discuss the policies.

I feel very good about the vetoes I rendered this year, there were nine of them, there were more of them than typical, but this was a legislative session that was abbreviated and I think that in many cases the discussion was abbreviated.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Go ahead.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: So I don't think- - I think this is a very natural process, and I don't have any reticence for them to have one. If we have a discussion of the merits of bills, and two-thirds of them disagree with my position, that's fine. I don't think it's reasonable to simply have- - I say reasonable, I guess it's reasonable. I don't necessarily think it's the proper thing to do, to do it on the basis of emotion. So if we can have a policy discussion and they disagree, that's fine. And my guess is that may well be such an occurrence this time.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: What do you plan to do with respect to a policy discussion? How do you plan to get your views over to the legislature so that they will understand why you made your vetoes and be able to take those views into account?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I volunteered to come and address their caucuses, and not for the sake of anything other than just debating the issues. I think it would be helpful to them for me to at least put my point of view on the table, and if they choose to override my vetoes, then that's the constitutional system.

JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW: Governor, another on the veto list, so-called Legacy Highway bill, Senate 183, I believe, which sought to punish citizens who sue the state and then lose. And last time we spoke it didn't sound like you were going to veto that bill if passed. What changed your mind?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, some perspective. I get 368 bills, or some number--that's what the number was this year--on my desk within a period of three or four days, and I have to sort through them in fairly rapid succession, and therefore I'm not able to focus on them in terms of the policy until I've sorted through them and then been able to determine which ones I need to spend more time with.

This was one of them. But as I read the bill, when I finally got to the point of being able to read the final version of it, it became clear to me that this was far too broad. It created a means by which state government could have crushed anyone with the potential threat of damages, and that it denied access to citizens.

Now, I must tell you that a lot of people think this is about the legacy parkway, and it was a retaliation. No one feels more passionately than I do that the suits that have been brought against that highway are ill-conceived and improper. But government isn't always right. And I could see, as I read the bill, that there were many instances where public projects, or matters that were even licensed by the state government, or where there was any state money, where private citizens could have their rights rolled over in a way that would be unfair to them, and I- - so I vetoed the bill. And I think that, in retrospect, as legislators read the bill, and as they get a chance to ponder and think about them, that they may see some of the value of my reasoning.

Now one of the things that all of you who cover Capitol Hill understand, these bills come up in rapid succession. And legislators are forced in many situations to sit in their seat and listen to a discussion, and they don't ever get a chance to really read the bill. Now I'm persuaded that in many cases if people sit down and read the bill and think through the longer-term impact, that they would act differently, and that's one of the reasons we have a check and a balance, it's because in some cases I'm able to give a bill that kind of scrutiny that they simply weren't because of the press of time.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, it sounds like you're speaking in a larger context about the ability of a legislative body in our current session setup to thoughtfully consider bills, that they're forced because of limitations of time to move too rapidly through an agenda. Is that your central concern?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well I think it's a circumstance of any legislative body, be it Congress that meets year round, or any legislature that meets on a limited basis. I'm just suggesting that's part of the value of a check and balance.

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Governor, let me follow up on Rod's question, though. It seems, especially lately, that the Legislature more and more wants to exert powers which you believe have rightly belonged to the Executive Branch, calling itself into special session, putting limits on your ability to adjust for budget shortfalls. Do you not sense that there is an increasing tension between those two branches of government, and that in a sense maybe the gubernatorial Teflon is starting to flake a bit?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I was listening to Paul Harvey today on my way to the news conference, and he was talking about the tension between the President and the Congress, and how the president had feelings that they were, that they were fouling up legislation that he had sent up that was well-designed, well-conceived, and well-thought out, and the Congress was saying, "The President isn't conferring with us enough."

This is a natural tension that exists between any legislative body and the executive branch, and it is precisely the reason that we have a check-and-balance system. It's the reason there's a veto, it's the reason there's an override. It's a healthy tension, it's a colorful tension at times, and I'm not in any way offended by it, nor should I think they should be.

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Can it get to the point where it is unhealthy, though? It seems to be increasing, would you agree with that?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well I think that there are people in the Legislature who feel that it's important that the institution exercise that right, and that's something that they will have to reconcile themselves. And there are many things that go into this. I mean we're in the midst of legislative leadership races that have undertaken, and so there's all kinds of dynamics that go on inside the legislative bodies. And I've just come to understand that that's part of the field of play, and that none of this is to be unexpected, and it's just part of what you factor into negotiating your way through this kind of a system with checks and balances.

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: So some political posturing is part of this?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, some political posturing is always part of a political system, and we shouldn't see it as either surprising or, for that matter, hurtful unless it goes to an extreme.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS: The Ritalin bill, it seems to me to be--which you of course vetoed--seems to me to be a particularly anti-republican sort of bill philosophically because it is big government micromanaging the private lives of individuals by of course telling teachers what they can and can't talk about. Do you see this as just a matter of policy, or is this a fundamental philosophical problem?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well I vetoed that bill really for both reasons. One, it seemed to me that this was, in fact, government, again, limiting the interaction between a teacher and a parent. Teachers are often in a position to observe things about children that a parent might not see, because a parent might not see a child in that particular situation very often or at all.

I've had this experience. And I have found the advice of teachers to be extraordinarily helpful in the development of our children, and I would hate to think that teachers would see that limited.

I don't believe that teachers ought to be prescribing or doing anything that would be considered the practice of medicine, and that was the basis on which I think this law was passed. We have laws to prevent that. So I think it was a good veto on the specifics, but I also think there's an important ideology here, and that is that government ought to play a limited role in people's lives.

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Governor, the legislature has enough votes in their poll to override a veto on one bill, but they say that the fact that they will convene an override session then gives them the ability to consider all of the vetoed bills. Do you agree with that interpretation?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I, at this point, don't have any reason to disagree with it. I think the reality is that if two-thirds of the legislature choose to override a veto, it will be overridden in one form or another, and that's the system. And the bill that seems to be the subject of most of their concern is the Judicial Conduct Commission.

I vetoed that bill because I believe strongly in an independent judiciary, and it appears to me that this takes us down a track where we could provide in the judicial conduct commission more than the capacity, which I believe was the original intent, for a group to screen complaints before they go to the supreme court, who ultimately need to be the party that will have jurisdiction over them. It gives them very broad investigatory powers, and could ultimately result, again, in the hands of the wrong people, in government playing an expanded role in a way that could stifle the courts and cause people to be abused.

And I think that larger issue needs to be discussed. If they discuss it, and if they are persuaded that they have looked at that angle, and if two-thirds of them believe that the Governor's concern is not proper, then they have the capacity to override it, and I'm confident they would do so.

But I'd just like to make certain that they had thought about that when they did it, and I worry that maybe some of them hadn't completely read it. Maybe there are those who hadn't thought through all of the longer-term issues. And by using the veto I've assured that that will happen, and I'm still hopeful that they'll see my point of view. If they don't I can rest assured that it was at least discussed.

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: But you agree that the door's open for all the other bills that were vetoed for them to override.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I know that that's being discussed, but I don't know the current state of play. I think in the long term you could say that there's two-thirds, they'll find a way to do it.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Governor, we may have the smallest snow pack ever. Have you thought about state water conservation measures, or about some state reaction to try and get us over the summer?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Yes, we're worrying actively about that right now. I have ordered state agencies not to water between ten o'clock in the morning and six o'clock at night. I have renewed my call for citizens not to water their lawns until may. I have also instigated a process under which we'll have a water conservation campaign that will begin to play fairly shortly.

We have serious water shortages. They build upon significant shortages from last year, and unless we see substantial precipitation over the course of the next month and a half or two months we will see serious problems by summer's end.

RICH PIATT, KSL-TV: So Governor, at what point do we become really serious about reinforcing these, this, to the public? The public turns on the tap, the water's there, they don't see a problem. There's no real repercussions for people whose sprinklers are running at two o'clock in the morning. Do you advocate some kind of, I don't know, maybe a more penalizing approach to enforcing water conservation?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Enforcement of water regulations is not the role of the state at this point, except on state properties, and I've indicated to you that our policy now, which is being enforced, is not watering between 10:00 and 2:00. Each, then, jurisdiction locally will have to determine how they deal with that. Now, I'll have to ratchet up to some extent both our discussion of it and any actions that are available to us if the water situation becomes even more dire. But all of us are in this together. Unless every one of us begin to conserve water and to recognize that there is going to be a shortage this summer, we could get to the end of the summer and end up with very serious ramifications.

JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW: Governor, on Monday we saw some strange bedfellows at the NRC hearings. Is there any reason why Utah seems to accept more than its fair share of the nation's nuclear waste here, and does so at a really cheap price, ten cents per metric ton versus $220 in other states that do accept it?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, our most poignant and immediately evident problem is that a group of public utilities from around the country would like to use Utah as the place where they would deposit, in the open, in concrete casks, lethally hot, high-level nuclear fuel rods. That would multiply, not just in the intensity, but in the amount, by a geometric number that is so large in terms of the radioactivity that we could potentially be exposed to, that it's unthinkable. And so I joined with many others on Monday in both a public display and a direct public statement of our continued opposition to high-level nuclear waste.

As I said before, and I'll say again, we don't want it here, we have not in any way contributed to its use, we've not benefited from it, and there are other solutions available, and we'll continue to take that position until such time as there's no alternative.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS: When the- - in terms of that opposition, there are statistics which say it's possible by the time Yucca Mountain is fully operational that it could already be running out of space, and we are the obvious next choice for much of the country because we appear to be a wasteland the way Nevada is sort of. Shouldn't we be opposing Yucca Mountain just as energetically as Nevada is? Because sooner or later it's going to be our problem, and shouldn't we be looking for better solutions than simply saying, "Well, let's take it out to the states that don't have as much pull"?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well the focus of our attention is to prohibit PFS from being licensed, or for any of the waste to be stored there. That's our highest priority. Ultimately this nation will have to have a permanent solution. And the problem grows. It is not diminishing, it grows. Any amount of high-level nuclear waste stored in our desert, in my mind, is unacceptable, and until we're able to find ways of prohibiting the permit being issued, we're at risk of receiving it.

JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW: The Governor of Colorado this week said no to metric tons on its way from new jersey, which is now on its way here. Why can the Governor of Colorado say no and you can't?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: It's my understanding that, just from reading the newspaper, from the AP report, that he didn't say no. What he said is, "before it happens I want to have some hearings," and that the people who were sending the waste said, "I don't want to go through that process, we'll take it someplace where we can do it." and from what I understand, which is limited, it falls within the category of materials that have been stored there and have been easily disposed of, and that therefore it's not a violation of any of our protocols or our laws.

BRYAN SCHOTT, KSL-RADIO: Governor, can you talk about the request to hold a special session to move the primary elections to September? Where does that stand?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: This is a complex problem. It's a problem we'd like to have, I might add, and would only be triggered if we're successful in the supreme court. But there is some discussion now about what would happen if it were to be awarded us, as a state.

The dilemma is that we don't know how the court will act or when. If they act soon, and act in the affirmative toward Utah, then we could use our existing primary system. If they act sometime, I would say, after the 25th of April, then our existing primary system would not work for that seat. Then it leads one to a discussion of, if it were to occur after our primary, or after our primary could be adjusted, does that mean that all four of the congressional seats would be back into play, or would it just be the fourth congressional seat? If that were the case, that all four were in play, it creates the prospect that candidates in the first, second, and third district could go all the way through a campaign, could have a vote of the people, could win the nomination, and then find themselves with all of the cards being thrown in the air again, and have to start again. And that just seems untenable to me.

So we have to begin thinking through the process of how we transition. Now there are a number of options. One of the options would be to put the primary election off to a date further in the future. We have many times held the primary in August, many times held it in September, and that would give the court a little longer to act. That's pretty clear to me that the court will act before the end of this term, which is June the 30th. It takes about 45 days to create and do the preparation for an election, so that would put you into mid-August, so one of the ideas would be to do it sometime in mid-August.

Another option would be to have the seats decided by the parties through an internal party mechanism. Another one would be to pass a law that would say the first, second, and the third will be as it is, and then we'll only sort through the fourth. There are those who believe that causes some constitutional problems, but there are those who believe fervently it doesn't, and it's more disruptive. You can see this is not without its various side canyons. But it would be a problem we'd love to have, and one I hope we have.

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Governor, you mentioned one option is the parties to choose the seats, as you said. What do you mean by that?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, the Supreme Court of the United States have made clear that states have limited roles in elections. The states can set the dates, and we can set the filing dates, but the parties are left basically to their own device for the purpose of selecting their nominees.

The primary election is actually offered as a convenience to the parties. There is no statutory requirement that a party use the primary as a means of being able to pick their candidates. So it's conceivable that one solution might be, rather than to try to hold a primary, that in a transitional way we would have the parties do it. I don't think that will be the best choice, and I don't think it's one that- -

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Choose the nominees?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: To choose the nominee, yes, and then they would run in a general election, the date of which would be set by the state.

AMY BRYSON, DESERET NEWS: Governor, I mean you've named a number of options that appear viable that the state could choose to get out in front of this problem. Why don't you think they will? Or do you think they will, rather than just waiting to see what happens, and having to deal with it, should the court rule in our favor?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, one of the problems here is that the actual solution is, the best solution is defined by when the court acts. And obviously what the court does. And so if they act late, then one solution may not be the best solution. It wouldn't surprise me to see us come up with a transition proposal that could be acted upon during the same time that they come in to consider overrides. There's no certainty of that, but it wouldn't be surprising, and obviously that would need to be decided in the next few days.

DAN HARRIE, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: What's your preference?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: My first preference is we get the seat and have the problem. I'm confident we could work it out. I think it would be better to have as close to the traditional system as possible. It seems quite untenable to me to have everyone go through the existing system, win the nominations, and then be left to start again. So I'm more than anything defining the things that are not acceptable to me, and then we'll narrow down, given the nature of the time and place, what's the best solution.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: And on that note, Governor, we are out of time for this edition of the Governor's Monthly News Conference on KUED. We invite you to join us again next time for this unedited exchange, and remind you that a transcript of this and previous Governor's news conferences are available on line courtesy of the Utah Education Network, at www.uen.org. Until the next time we meet, good evening.

Return to home page