March 21, 2003

This is a different war in three different ways. First, as you mentioned, we're now dealing with the potential of a terrorist attack anywhere in the United States. It's worthy, I think, of consideration that we were vulnerable to that on September the 10th, not September 11th.

Reporters (in order of appearance):

KEN VERDOIA, KUED
DAN BAMMES, KUER
TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS
CATHERINE BLAKE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
JENNIFER NAPIER-PEARCE, KCPW
KIRSTEN STEWART, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
DONNA KEMP SPANGLER, DESERET NEWS

Transcript:

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, thanks for joining us today. The outbreak of hostilities with Iraq reminds us that we're in a completely different era when we talk about the home front. And Utah largely considers itself that home front. We've had warnings from the federal government that American public needs to be mindful of their own potential involvement through terror attacks. What advice do you, as the chief executive, give the people of Utah to be prepared for this new definition of a home front?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: This is a different war in three different ways. First, as you mentioned, we're now dealing with the potential of a terrorist attack anywhere in the United States. It's worthy, I think, of consideration that we were vulnerable to that on September the 10th, not September 11th. Things have not changed dramatically. In some respects, we've always been vulnerable to this, we're just more knowledgeable of it. But the heightened tensions with Iraq, quite clearly, make us, I think, have to sit up and recognize that we're dealing with that.

We're on a level orange in our terror threat. We've opened up emergency management operations. We have begun to put more security on particular pieces of infrastructure. And the people of our state, I think, are having to deal with the second difference, and that is it's playing out in our front rooms. In wars past there have been television reports, there's always been correspondents, but we're seeing it literally play out live. And I think there's a certain anxiety that comes with that. I think it creates a different emotional impact.

Yesterday I spoke with the school children of our state, and explained to them that the war is going to occupy a lot of our thoughts and our minds, and it's going to make us feel anxious. And that's natural. And encouraged them to speak with their parent or a teacher or a counselor, and to feel, and to talk about it openly. I think that's true of adults as well.

Now, there is the possibility, I suppose, that we could have a terrorist event. It's unlikely, in my judgment. We have no specific intelligence to lead us to believe that we would be the target of a specific terrorist event. But should we, we're prepared. We're prepared to act and respond. Much of that preparation is the result of the Olympics. I don't suppose there are many communities that are as well prepared or as knowledgeable about how to deal with this kind of thing, but that that's one of the legacy pieces of the games.

Individual families can also make preparations, but they ought to be making preparations, not just for a terrorist event, but for natural disasters as well. That's just good judgment. It would be my assessment that there's more likelihood of an earthquake or some natural disaster affecting us as a community than a direct terrorist event. That may not be true of some of the larger cities and some of the places that would be higher profile, but I believe that is true of Utah. So, a 48-hour kit, some water, flashlight, a means of being able to communicate with your family, a plan, all of those things are good judgment, not just for terrorist events, but also for natural disasters.

DAN BAMMES, KUER: Governor, the federal strategy for homeland security relies to a large extent on local and state first responders, city police, highway patrol. Is the federal government providing enough help to states and cities to meet those responsibilities?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I would say that we can always use more help, but the reality is we're in this together, and we're making do. This morning I calculated the number of Utahns that have been called into active duty, and have either been deployed in the United States to take someone's place, or are actually on Iraqi or Kuwaiti soil. And it's a remarkable number. Over 6,100 people. Many of them are guardsmen or air guardsmen, or reservists. Some of them have been deployed out of Hill Field. That's a very large deployment, and I think it's clear that it's disproportionate to our size in terms of the total.

We're bearing a heavy burden, here. Family members, employers, husbands, wives, uncles, aunts, cousins, we're all affected. We all know someone. I was in Cedar City late last week where I saw my former unit, the 222nd field artillery deployed over 500 men and women out of those small towns in southern Utah. It leaves a gaping hole, both economically, culturally, and families. War is difficult, and it takes, it exacts a high price emotionally and humanitarian and financially.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORK: You've had a trade mission off hitting the Olympic post cities. Have you heard anything negative in the way of feedback, fallout, results of the USposition as opposed to the European position? Do you think anything that would affect our trade missions?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: We recently had a trade mission return from Greece and Italy. And I got mixed reactions from those who were on. Some had a lot of conversations, others had few. We made a deliberate decision to cancel our trade mission to China, because of the war and the uncertainties of war, and also the dilemmas related to disease right now in China. I don't think there's any question that right now American relationships in certain countries are stressed some. But we need each other economically, and there are lots of other aspects of our relationships, and I feel confident that once this conflict is over, those will return to normal.

CATHERINE BLAKE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: On a completely separate topic, do you, have you had a chance to look at any of the legislative bills, and do you anticipate signing them or rejecting any?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I have signed, I think 253 is the number. I could be getting these numbers wrong. But I know I have 103 left. And I will act on them, likely before Saturday. My guess is that, like always, there will be a few vetoes, but I'm not seeing them in areas that would cause any shock waves. Mostly things that need to be cleaned up or looked at again, items that I just think, if one piece of information or another were known they might act differently. I anticipate--this is not an announcement of certainty--but I anticipate there'll be a special session sometime in the June range, June-July range, to work on the remaining discussions of worker compensation and how we handle that fund, and it's possible that a couple of the items would come up then. But all in all it's a surprisingly, it's gone surprisingly- - It's been a surprisingly smooth signing period.

JENNIFER NAPIER-PEARCE, KCPW: One little bump. SB-108, which you signed earlier this week, education officials were imploring you to veto that. Can you describe the reasons why you did not?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: As you are aware, I am an opponent of having guns in schools. I concluded, after careful study of this bill, that if I vetoed the bill, guns would still be allowed in schools. That the bill didn't change the policy, it simply clarified the law. It also provided some flexibility for churches who wish to not have guns in their buildings or synagogues or temples to be able to achieve that. And so on balance, I concluded I would sign the bill.

JENNIFER NAPIER-PEARCE, KCPW: But the clarification was not just for- - It was for everybody, not just for the police officers who were concerned. Is that still something that you'd like to pursue with the legislators in the hope that they would limit the concealed weapons holders to security officers?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: This is a discussion that's gone on for a long time in our state, and I've got a very clear position, and I've advanced legislation before and it's not been successful. We have a clear policy. Right now it's a clearer policy than it was two months ago, and that's good because it will limit the amount of litigation. I expect it'll be visited again and again and again, and at some point in time it may change, but it hasn't this year. The policy has simply been clarified, and I thought on balance that was the right thing to do.

KIRSTEN STEWART, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Governor, you're also looking at signing, I assume, the education reform bill. Any changes to that, or do you see any problems with that?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I'm pleased that we got a bill. It moved us in an important direction with competency measurement. Meaning that we're going to start valuing learning as opposed to time. Right now our system measures how much time students spend in school, and not how much progress they make academically in certain areas. I thought that was a huge step, and will be just the beginning of many, many changes, actions, rethinking, steps of rethinking. There are parts of the bill that I do think need to be cleaned up. The way the school board, for example, is elected, is unacceptable. And it needs to be changed, and I have the assurance of the legislature and the proponents of the amendment that changed it, that we'll be able to do it in a special session. Likely, when we come back on the worker compensation.

DAN BAMMES, KUER: Are you concerned about the amount of time the legislature spent with one specific special interest issue, the banks-credit unions thing, the neglect of other important issues during the session?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, the legislature is a body that's made up of 104 people, and dynamic political issues, and it's- - I would say that there are lots of bills I think could have used more debate. But all in all, as I go through all 350-plus of them, I'm not finding too many that I'd be a serious critic of. There are some that I wish I had the power to just go through and rewrite a bunch of them, but I don't. When they come to me I sign them or I don't. And that's the only power I have. I don't have a chance to dictate the floor debate, and my guess is there's a lot of them that would have liked to have spent more time on other bills, but there's just an ebb and flow about politics and legislation that sometimes dictates it. It doesn't make much sense, I don't think it's particularly defendable, I don't think they would either. But things just happen that way sometimes.

DONNA KEMP SPANGLER, DESERET NEWS: Governor, what about representative Dave Ure's waste fee increase bill? Do you plan to sign that? I understand that you met with some executives at Clean Harbor, and they were concerned about it.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I'm hearing some concerns about it, both from those who would be affected. Frankly, I'm hearing some from legislative staff as to its workability. That's one I'm still a little unclear on. Right at this moment I had planned to sign it. But it may be that there are technical problems in it that will have to be dealt with. I've told various parties that if they can make a compelling case to me or to the legislature that this would, in fact, create negative economics. Meaning if we would very clearly lose 200 jobs because of what we've done, I don't think anyone would feel good about that. It wouldn't be a smart move. And if they're right, then we ought to reconsider it. But they haven't made that compelling case to me yet, and it's not unusual for someone who has been affected adversely by a piece of legislation to view it in the least favorable light. So we'll see how that one sorts out.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, one of the greatest concerns in state government in the past 18 months/two years is the budget bleeding red at times. And it seems we got indications during the legislative session that that bleeding had been stopped, but we don't want to be too overly optimistic. Can you give us an assessment of how we're doing from a fiscal standpoint?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: My assessment is that we have flattened out finally. And we've been going, we've been sinking economically for a time, and now we are at least flat, we've at least flattened out, and I think we're beginning to see the early stages of a turnaround. Now the war, how much of that's already been factored in, we don't know. But I think there's reason to be optimistic. We track it month to month, and we track our cash receipts on a week-to-week basis, and there are reasons to believe that we are holding our own and starting, and starting the early indications of a turnaround. It's too early to say recovery has arrived, but I think it isn't too soon to suggest that the decline has ceased.

KIRSTEN STEWART, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Assuming, then, by the next general session, that we do see more tax revenue coming in, what's your first priority for the use of that money? To back the one-time money, or fund education reform?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, the first priority has to be using the ongoing money to cover expenses that we've paid with one-time money. That's a technical thing that most people would have to sort through in their minds, but that's the first priority. After that, we clearly have to put education first, in my mind, and then our law enforcement and corrections, and then our, the making certain we've plugged holes in places that we've allowed to exist in our human service areas. We have lots of needs that are not being met. We're having to get along in certain ways that hopefully, in the long run, we won't need to.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS: Now Michigan just had its bond rating reduced. How close are we to that problem?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, we've made a priority out of maintaining our status as a triple A state. Our objectives this year were, first of all to reduce the amount of one-time money that's used in ongoing programs we just spoke of, and we did. We reduced it from nearly $170 million down into I think the range of $40 million, which is good progress. The second was to create money going into the rainy day fund, and we have indicated that we'll allocate by statute a percentage of any surplus we have into the rainy day fund, and that will help with the bond rating agencies. And lastly, we need to cure any structural deficit.

Now, a structural deficit is when we are actually, we're setting our system up structurally in a way that it won't cover certain expenditures. For example, roads. In the past we have tried to maintain the policy of paying for roads out of highway taxes, highway user taxes, or by fees. We still have some problems there. But on balance, I think that we're still considered, if not the best managed state in America, one of the top two or three, and we have maintained our bond rating. We'll go back to New York in May, and I think we'll continue to do so. This is a matter that has millions of dollars of impact. If we were to be downgraded on our bond rating, the cost of our debt would go up, and it would cost us millions of dollars.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, the licensing board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about ten days ago issued a decision that recognized Hill Air Force Base overflights posing a credible danger to the proposed storage of high-level nuclear waste on the tribal lands of the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Indian Tribe in Tooele County. Now, this is obviously good news to you. Some people hailed it as the death knell of this proposed project yet you've stopped one step short of doing a victory dance. Why?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission now has the option of taking this up. If you think of the NRC as the city council, the licensing board is like the zoning board. The ultimate authority lies with the NRC, not the licensing board. But the fact that the licensing board, made up of technical experts, would declare this site unsafe puts a serious burden on the NRC, and in my mind, it is a burden that should not and cannot be overcome, technically. It's possible it could be politically, and I'm concerned that we not assume that they won't. The NRC can either uphold it, they can deny it, or they can change it. I think, given the fact that we have this very clear indication from a panel of experts on the licensing board, we would challenge any effort to change it, or to deny it in court, and so it's clearly good news for us. But I don't think it's the end of this challenge, and we'll continue to not only fight it on the grounds that we've just spoken of, but also several other ways in which we're challenging, and some that will be linked and some that will be independent of this.

CATHERINE BLAKE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Governor, I'm wondering if you have a position on Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's decision, or push to have a probe of the Salt Lake City police department in regard to the Elizabeth Smart case?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't have a position on that. I'm not fully aware of all the circumstances. I will say that I don't think there's anyone in the world that wanted to resolve the Elizabeth Smart case more than the Salt Lake law enforcement. They put a huge amount of effort into it, they were clearly committed to it, and I think they should be acknowledged for the effort they put in. And it's easy to second guess, but the important thing is Elizabeth has been returned, and we all rejoice in that, and I am among those.

JENNIFER NAPIER-PEARCE, KCPW: Back to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, what's the time line?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't know the answer to that question. They have a period of time that I'm not able to specify, because I don't know, in which they could take any of those three actions. And we'll just have to respond from there.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, the Elizabeth Smart case has prompted a couple of calls, some poignant, some rather scathing calls for a national Amber Alert, to create this network of awareness when children are abducted. Your position on that? Is it time for us to have a comprehensive national response to these issues?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: This is- - The answer is I think it would be great to have it as a tool, as long as we have the ability to, policy makers, to do it surgically, and not generally. Because I think it could be overused in that respect. But this is a great example of the way systems in our homeland defense have to become interoperable. We have lots of systems that, and every state has some kind of system. It makes great sense for them to be interoperable, where we can use one system to provide information to another when it's appropriate. So I think the answer is yes, it would be desirable. We still have a lot to learn about how to use them, what the policies ought to be as to when to use them, and who has access to them. But very clearly that's one example of how we can become better protected as a country.

DAN BAMMES, KUER: Governor, this has less to do with serious issues than just enjoying basketball, but what does placing seven college teams in the NCAA tournament do for the state of Utah?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, it does a lot for the ratings of those covering it, and it also gives us a lift. Was it a year ago we didn't have any? At least in the men's, and I don't remember what we had with the women's last year. Can anybody remember? Anyway- -

DAN BAMMES, KUER: It must have been real important.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: We didn't win, I guess.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: We'll start assigning sports reporters to cover this news conference in the future.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: But it's fun, isn't it? I mean watching Utah State make a run at Kansas, that was two shots at the buzzer. Who knows? We could have pulled up one of the great upsets. I don't know how it is around your house, but I've got a whole series of charts from my sons that have got their forecasts all the way to the final four, and it's a great national celebration, really. And it's nice to have that kind of a diversion during a time when we have so many other serious things happening.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS: Speaking of other serious things, the senate the other day voted down drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This was a centerpiece of the Bush energy policy. Do you see a shift that's likely to be taking place because of a defeat like that in terms of the way energy policy is going to affect Utah and public lands?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: That's a really good question, Tom. I'm not sure that it reflects a shift or a change as much as it does an ongoing process, an ongoing dispute. That dispute's become sort of a symbol that's oversimplified. It's a complex issue, and my guess is that it's just part of an ongoing debate. I don't think it'll be the last time you'll see that before the congress.

JENNIFER NAPIER-PEARCE, KCPW: Back to pending legislation awaiting your signature. The initiative reforms, the Supreme Court of course last summer said it's a citizen's right to put measures on the ballot. This puts some pretty strict, stringent requirements the people have to meet before something gets on the ballot. Are you concerned about that?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, this is another one of those that I wish I had a pen to rewrite them. I don't. It comes to me, I think I will sign the bill. It's better than having no law at all, which is basically what we ended up with after the Supreme Court acted. So I'll sign it. My guess is it may be challenged again, and if it is and it's successful then they'll have to modify it in some way. But I think there are things that I'd have done a little differently, but I'll sign the bill because on balance it's a better way to go.

JENNIFER NAPIER-PEARCE, KCPW: And what about term limits? As you're contemplating a fourth run.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well I guess I could say that now I'm able to contemplate even more than one more term.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: And on that note, we are out of time for this edition of the Governor's Monthly News Conference. I will note that it is recorded on Friday morning, because of the turn of events, we will be presenting it Friday evening. That's our expected scheduling. We do want to remind you that a transcript of this and every edition of the Governor's News Conference is available online at www.uen.org courtesy of the Utah Education Network. Until the next time we get together, thanks for joining us and good evening.

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