Legislative Review

The 45-day Utah Legislative session ended at midnight last night. For those of you who don't know, I am an unpaid lobbyist for Utah PTA, advocating on children's health issues.

Here are my highlights (and lowlights):

• Free Fat Boys provided for all legislators, lobbyists, and anyone else who wanted one (or five) every day of the Legislature except the last two days, which was when everyone really needed them.
• I needed to look professional. This meant I got a whole new wardrobe. Cool.
• I got to hang out with the governor a couple of times. Unfortunately, my dislike of him grew exponentially with (and between) each meeting. It could be worse. His lieutenant is a complete moron, and I never even had to shake his hand.
• I kicked butt on a couple of bills. Some of my efforts were too little, too late, but I learned a lot, and will be poised for victory next year.
• The stress finally got to me (along with the long hours). I ate almost nothing but junk food for the last week of the session and am going home with my health broken. I think it will take about three weeks to get it back. The mere mention of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or Peanut M&Ms makes me want to puke.

The top three bills I successfully worked on:

• Kids who have severe allergies and need to carry epinephrine with them in case of a reaction are now legally allowed to do that at school. This will potentially save some lives.
• Women and girls will now be educated on the causes of cervical cancer and methods of prevention, including immunization for HPV.
• Minors will no longer be able to access public tanning beds without in-person permission from a parent or guardian. This permission will include limiting the number of visits a minor may make to a tanning salon during a one-year period.

Best story of the session (or story least related to anything I was doing up there):

Last night there was a group of animal rights activists gathered at the Capitol to promote a bill they've been working on. As I walked through their press conference earlier in the day, I could swear I heard someone saying that this bill would allow animals to have a restraining order against abusive owners. That wasn't a bill I was following, for obvious reasons, but that little snippet of the speech cracked me up. So I was kind of watching these people, because they seemed well-intentioned but a little kooky to me. One of the women had a dog with her all day long. It seems like I heard the dog had been abused by a previous owner, so he was kind of the poster dog for the movement.

Anyway, the bill was read on the floor, and all the activists (and their TV crews) began to file into the gallery. As they did, the woman with the dog stepped on it and it yelped. I thought that was ironic--that the animal rights activist was abusing her animal in front of the Legislature. So naturally, I laughed out loud. At that moment, one of the TV cameras decided to get right in my face. I couldn't stop laughing. And now everyone who watches Channel 4 news has seen me cracking up about the poor abused dog.

Sadly, the bill did not pass. Some of the legislators who were trying to slow things down so that time would run out before a heinous education bill was read kind of abused the system and used that bill to stall. I'm grateful to them for that reason, but I did feel kind of bad for the little dog that can't get a restraining order this year.

And that's my legislative recap. I hope you enjoyed it as much as Rod Decker's.