January 2002

I think that everyone has a sensitivity to this right now, and that includes Utahns and Americans and people who live around the world. All that is humanly reasonable to do to protect the games has been done, or will be done.

Reporters (in order of appearance):

KEN VERDOIA, KUED
JENNIFER TOOMER-COOK, DESERET NEWS
CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX
JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW
PATTY HENETZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROD DECKER, KUTV
GREG BURTON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
LEE AUSTIN, UTAH PUBLIC RADIO
TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS

Transcript:

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, thanks for joining us today. On Wednesday of this week, legislative leaders announced a budget settlement for the shortfall affecting the current spending year. They say they've largely been able to protect public education. From what you've seen, from all the discussions you've had, are you comfortable with this settlement? Are you going to be able to sign off on it?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I am comfortable with it. We were involved in negotiations. I had three objectives, one was to maintain the momentum of education. They were persuaded to not cut the basic school fund, which I was advocating, and they also were able to give higher education more money. Not as much as I'd like. We got about $5 million of the eight that I felt that they needed. The second objective was to protect the integrity of our homeland security. For the most part we got that done, there's still $300,000 that I think we need there, that I'll go back in the general session as we go into the '03 budget and see if I can't persuade them on that. But all in all- - And the third objective was to minimize the use of the rainy day fund. And I laid out several different options for them that could include using the rainy day fund or not, they chose not to. That was fine with me. They used some of the same ideas that I had recommended. All in all we came together and I feel like it's a good solution to a difficult problem.

JENNIFER TOOMER-COOK, DESERET NEWS: Governor, there are some leaders in the house and senate who expressed a little bit of concern whether or not the state is actually out of the woods in this one. Some say there could be additional revenue shortfalls in upcoming projections. Do you share those concerns, and if so, do you have a plan to address them?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: That's true. We may see additional shortfalls. At this point we don't have information that would lead us to believe that will occur. We'll have additional revenue estimates in the middle part of February, and we'll have to respond at that time. If we do, we'll simply have to trim more. I hope that's not the case.

CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX: Governor, according to a new poll printed in the USA Today, as many as one out of three Americans think some sort of terrorist attack is likely during the 2002 games. I'm curious, your reaction to that, and also whether you think that says more about the actual threat, or about people's fears, or both?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I think that everyone has a sensitivity to this right now, and that includes Utahns and Americans and people who live around the world. All that is humanly reasonable to do to protect the games has been done, or will be done. I believe when the games are past and we look back on them, assuming that we're able to successfully navigate with no problem at all, I think there will be those who say, well, that might have been overkill. But I don't think we have any choice but to do everything that's humanly reasonable, and we are.

JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW: Governor, the legislators decided not to tap into the rainy day fund, something you said you agreed with. If this wasn't a rainy day, what is a rainy day?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I was prepared to use the rainy day fund. I think this is the kind of situation that rainy days, or the rainy day funds are developed for. They were not designed for long-term budget problems. They were designed and are in place for short-term situations to get you to the next year. But I felt fine about what they did. It's nice that we had the option. Essentially what they did was take money from the savings of I-15, which is always fun to remind people that we were ahead of schedule and under budget and we had $32 million, and it helped us solve a problem. I thought it was an appropriate way to do it.

PATTY HENETZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Governor, I have a follow-up question regarding that poll, the AP poll, that said that 63 percent of the people who responded did not believe tax money should have been used for the games. Do you ever see a possibility of the Olympic games being conducted without the use of tax money?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, the Olympic games were not conducted, the games themselves, with tax dollars. They have all been paid for out of available Olympic revenues. But if the American Bowlers Association comes to Utah, we provide them with security and protection. That's just part of the public sector's job. Now, we received, or will have received in our state, about $65 million more in additional tax revenues because of the games than we will have expended because of the protections that we had to provide. Now, the federal government clearly has put a sizable investment. They have stepped up in ways that we can only express appreciation for. But the reason for that is that this is not just a Utah event, it's an international event. A show case for the country, an opportunity for us to host the world. And it would be inappropriate, I think, for them not to have, and they've been quite willing to do so.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Is this a victory for you, the budget deal? They were considerably apart, you said you'd fight, you threatened to veto, and they moved in your direction. Is that a fair description of what happened?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: The best description is that we came together and compromised and came up with a good budget.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Did this involve behind-the-scenes argument?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, it always involves behind-the-scenes discussion, but for the most part it was conducted in, the conversations we had behind the scenes were the same ones we had in front of the curtain.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: What persuaded them to back off their original budget, which cut much deeper?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I think that they felt a sense of the public's desire for education not to lose its momentum. I suspect that they knew they needed to get a budget passed, and that this was a way to get it done, and to be able to move into the other rather weighty purposes of the session.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Did the word "veto" occur in any of the discussions you had with them?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I made public statements, that all of you are aware, and that's about the extent to which they were made.

JENNIFER TOOMER-COOK, DESERET NEWS: Governor earlier this month there were practitioners of Falun Gong in town. At the time they had hoped that you would sign a proclamation in support of them, which you declined to do. There are some conservative Republicans in the house that are carrying a resolution that will offer support to the cause. Do you fear this will have political fallout when the world converges on Utah?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I just don't see it as an issue that we need to be involved at this time. The legislature obviously is free to do what they would choose. We want to be gracious hosts. I don't think there's a reason for us to engage in matters that would engender controversy just for that purpose. But that will be their decision.

JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW: Governor, business leaders are already talking about their fears about an Olympic hangover once the Olympics move out of town, and ski resorts are one of the biggest industries in Utah are saying that they're going to take a huge hit this year in, downward of attendance. And given the state budget shortfall this year, projected some numbers into next, can the state afford that Olympic hangover? And how, what will you do to kind of address the concerns beforehand?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: On the 28th, next Monday, I will spend my State of the State talking about that very subject. Not so much in the context of a hangover, but in the context of an opportunity. We'll have the world focused on us for seventeen days. The question I will ask, and propose solutions for, is what can we do to make that seventeen days of attention seventeen days of opportunity? Or a thousand days, rather, of opportunity? Going from seventeen days to a thousand will require everyone, I think, to have a fairly well-developed idea of what to do, and do from the very beginning. I think the most important thing is that we don't spend too much time recovering our energy. We need to move rapidly to capture the assets that we will create during the games. And then we need to be looking during the games at building long-term relationships and putting into place ways of capturing that benefit and moving forward. I'm convinced that this is an opportunity of a lifetime. I mean it has the capacity to catapult us economically, and I think it will.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, we're going to skip back and forth here, I can tell this will be the pattern, between the Olympics and the legislature. Let me turn to the legislature. On Wednesday a house committee approved a bill that would redefine the extent to which a chief executive could independently make midyear spending adjustments now. Although they say this isn't directly targeted to your actions in budget management in the interim during this budget crunch, it's very clearly tied to the notion of, how far can the governor go in making spending adjustments? Your staff actually testified against that bill. What are your greatest concerns?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I've tried to understand this, and the best I can, what Representative Holdaway is proposing that if it doesn't appear like the money that the state anticipated would be there, that the governor is prohibited from telling the department heads in state government not to spend money. I don't think so. I don't think that makes much sense, and I don't think there's really any practical way it can be done. The state needs to respond quickly. We started off the beginning of the year realizing that we likely wouldn't have the money that we anticipated, or that the legislature appropriated. And I began managing state budgets immediately to a $50 million shortfall. Within about three weeks it looked like it was going to be more, and so I had to act quickly again. Then we had September 11th, and I had to act again. During the course of July the 1st through November the 15th, had we acted every time the state was $25 million off its budget, we would have had four special sessions of the legislature. I don't think the people of this state, and I know the bond holders of this state don't want a system where you have to call people into session and debate whether to not spend money or not when you're going to be short. This is an old fight between governors and legislatures, and it would be a mistake for the legislature to take out of the hands of the chief executive officer the capacity not to spend money.

GREG BURTON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Even more than that specific bill, there's several Constitutional provisions that would extend the authority to the legislature to call itself in, rather than just leaving that up to the governor. Sort of the same idea. So whether that bill passes or not, it appears that the legislature's going to try and circumvent even a veto by you and put the issue right before the people.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: That's actually where it ought to be, because this isn't between the legislature and the governor. This is between the legislature and the people. Basically the legislature is proposing to the people that they be allowed to meet any time for however long they would like and talk about anything they'd like during that period. It's really a question of, do we want to move away from our strategy of limited government or not? This is about a full-time legislature. This is the way full-time legislatures begin to come about. This is a very significant change in the way our government's structured. The governor's capacity to call a special session is not the ability to compel the legislature to do anything. The governor calls a special session and they come in and don't want to do anything, they just go home. The governor's capacity, or the power of special session is a limit on the legislature. Now I understand that they may not like that limit, but that's what limited government's about. That's why we have a part-time legislature. So that's what this debate will be about. I've made a decision that I'm not going to be up wrangling with the legislature about the Constitution on this issue. I did ask the members of the leadership of the house and the Senate for the privilege of coming up and making my beliefs known on the floor of the house and the senate, and they've turned that down. But no, I sent them a letter and said I'd like to, this is perhaps the most significant Constitutional change since 1896, because you're proposing basically to have the legislature have the power to be a full-time legislature. That's a very fundamental change. And I don't intend to be lobbying legislators, because this is between them and the people. But I do want to be on the record in the future so that the people know where I stood, and know this is about a special session. I received correspondence today saying they didn't think that would be appropriate. I'll make my thoughts known other ways, but this is a conversation that will likely be held as we get toward November, and it's not one that I think people are going to be very pleased about when they get to, come to the understanding that this is really about a full-time legislature. We've never had a full-time legislature.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, we may return to that subject in just a few minutes, but let's right now turn to Logan for a question from Lee Austin of Utah Public Radio. Lee?

LEE AUSTIN, UTAH PUBLIC RADIO: Thank you. Governor, as someone with a professional background in the insurance industry, I'm wondering how you feel about an issue that's developing in the legislature around something, I think, called credit scoring, or the linking of insurance rates to a person's credit history. You have bad credit your insurance rates go up or you lose car insurance and a proposal specifically to restrict that practice.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I haven't studied that specifically for some time, but I do believe that it's reasonable for underwriters of risk, whether it be in loans or in accidents, to have the capacity to look at the predictors so that they can price according to the likelihood that that person will contribute to the pool of losses. And if credit is one of them that a private company chooses to use, I don't see any reason. It's certainly within the control of that person who would be applying for insurance.

JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW: Governor, back to the earlier issue of the special session, you sounded before we went to Lee Austin, as if you think it's a fait accompli. You sound very almost defeatist in how the legislature debate will go. Are you?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I mean there seems to be quite an appetite to ask the people to have the capacity to serve full time. I think there's a lot of legislators who probably don't agree with that. We'll see what happens. But I don't think it's becoming, at this moment in time, for the governor to be up twisting arms one at a time on legislators. This isn't between the governor and the legislature. You know, take the current governor out of the picture, take the current legislature out of the picture, this is a request that some in the legislature want to make to the people that they be allowed to meet any time, for any length of time, and that would be a huge change. We have always had a limited legislature, with citizen legislators. In many states you end up starting with that capacity, they may not meet 365 days a year but they may meet five days a month soon, or ten days a month. I mean there's lots of different patterns around the country. But very clearly this is a move to a full-time legislature. It may not happen in five years or ten years, but you don't change the Constitution with five or ten years involved. You think of the Constitution as a 100-year document. And at some point in time they're setting up an entirely different form of legislative process than what we've had in the past. Frankly, I don't think people are going to support it when they understand it.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS: Governor, there's a budget issue that I haven't seen much on that seems to me to be a very large issue looming in the future. There's a reasonable chance in March that we may, the state may lose in the federal appeals court on the Legacy Highway project, which could take us back to square one on permitting. We've got $450 million or so committed to that at the moment. Do you have a contingency plan if the state loses in March? Because there's got to be a lot more money committed at that point.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I hope we don't lose, I don't think we will. We would not have moved forward if we didn't think we'd followed every part of this process. And we did. If we were to lose, we'd simply have to go back and repeat the process, and we'd undoubtedly ask for the Corps of Engineers and others to expedite it so that we could mitigate the damages. I mean, the paper reported a couple of days ago, that the I guess it was the department reported it's $102,000 a day. For what? That road's going to be built. And some large percentage already built. All of the damage that they seem to be concerned about, if there is damage, will have already been done. There's not damage out there. We're creating value. We're creating a parkway that will preserve that area of wetlands. I mean this is- - This is really about the fact that they don't want to have a road. And they say, well, we want to have rail built first. I mean we just, as a state, made a commitment on $185 million worth of right of way through that precise corridor to have commuter rail and more light rail. This isn't a matter of rail or roads. We're going to do rail and roads and trails, and we'll have to in order to meet the transportation needs of this state.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: If I understood what you just said, if you lose it at the appellate court level, even if the Supreme Court turns you down, if you lose this round, this isn't the end of the Legacy Highway.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Oh, no. All this is about is whether or not they followed all of the procedures. We just have to go back and do more procedures.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Okay, now, the environmentalists that say, "we think that road ought not to be built. We think that's a bad idea. We think it's illegal." And if the courts say it's illegal you're still going to go ahead and build it, is that what I'm hearing?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: No, what you're hearing is we'd go back and redo the process and get the permit again. And frankly, if that didn't work I'd go to Congress and say, "you've got to fix this problem. Because we followed every process," and now they're not suing us, they're suing the federal government. This isn't about the state of Utah, it's about they're suing a federal agency saying, "You didn't hold them to every standard. ' Well they did hold us to every standard, it took us five years to jump through every hoop. This is just the way those in an obstructionist environmental group have desired to create their agenda. And in large measure it's about their fund raising as much as it is anything else.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Is it when you say it's their agenda, is it conceivable that in some sense they're right, that it's illegal to build that road in any reasonable way? They point to a law that says no, you can't destroy an inch of wetland, or as they interpret the law. No wetland may be destroyed. Or that at least you have to go where, if you find another route. Is it conceivable that a court would say, "You don't get an inch of wetland, and you just can't build it there"?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't think that's going to happen. If that were the case, there'd never be another road, another railroad, another power line, another gas pipeline, another water project, another street or cul-de-sac, another 7-Eleven, built in America.

JENNIFER JORDAN, KCPW: But aren't they saying that it comes down to wait to build the road, don't turn this into L.A. valley? Let's see if the rails work, let's see if bus or commuter work before we commit to another road, another street, another highway in our valley, when we can barely breathe the air on some days?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: That's what they're saying. But the people of this state, in large majority, disagreed. And we followed the process, got the permits, and began the process of building the road, issued a contract for $461 million. They brought a lawsuit, and we're now going to court. We're following the law, we'll keep the law. Ultimately, if we win we'll proceed with the contract. If we lose we'll go back and redo the process until we get it the way the court says we need to, and then we'll build the road. In the meantime we'll spend $102,000 a day on interest and penalties that ought to be going into schools or other roads, just to satisfy their political agenda.

PATTY HENETZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Governor, what do you think about the federal government's decision to appeal the ruling in the Olympic bribery case?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: You know, I'm a spectator in that like everyone else, and I was a little surprised they did. Like everyone else, I'd just like to have it over.

GREG BURTON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Part of the yearly exercise at the legislature is tinkering with the gun laws. Two particular bills I'm curious to hear your perspective on. One in the house would eliminate the fees for concealed weapons applications, one in the Senate would eliminate the classes that are necessary in order to allow somebody to apply for a permit.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't think either of those will pass.

GREG BURTON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Can you repeat that?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't think either of them will pass.

GREG BURTON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: There's another bill, hate crimes, there's two different versions floating around, haven't actually been numbered, they might have been numbered today, I don't know. Last year your office took a pretty, you know, proactive stance in favor of the legislation. This year you're more standoffish. I'm curious why. And secondly, I'm curious, if one of these bills comes out with a laundry list of protected classes, for instance gays and lesbians, would you support that legislation?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: It would depend on the bill. I haven't seen the bill, they can vary a great deal. I've indicated a willingness to sign a bill if it was correctly constructed. I don't, I prefer and would support a bill that would protect all groups from hate crimes. I don't think it's a particularly good idea to begin trying to segment groups. I don't think it's good law.

GREG BURTON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Texas enacted a measure last year, last session, that had a laundry list, out of fairly conservative legislature, that had gays and lesbians, that had African Americans, that had different classes that was sort of hailed there as a final solution of their problem. Would you support a similar bill?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't know anything about the Texas law.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: There are a number of bills that would change child welfare. A number of legislators that say our child welfare laws and practices aren't aimed enough at preserving families and don't give enough due process to people accused of mistreating children. Do you believe that our child welfare laws need changes in this direction?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: When I first became governor it was clear to me that we were not doing enough to protect children. We passed a lot of laws. We've now dealt with them for nine years, and it's included litigation and lots of hand wringing and difficult management problems. We're still not out of the woods on any of it, I don't think. It's certainly not a perfect system. Do I worry that there are times that we go too far? Yeah, I do. I can't give you specifics, and I'm not certain that we need to do it with more laws. It may be that we need to recalibrate the regulations, but I've seen circumstances in the last eight or nine years where I believe the state went too far. We try to correct those. The age-old problem is, do you put children at risk if you do that? And we've got to be very careful not to go- - We've got to find the balance.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, on that note we must conclude our time together today. A reminder that a transcript of this and every Governor's News Conference is available online, http://www.uen.org courtesy of the Utah Education Network.

 

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