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April 13, 2005

What's Good For the Goose, I Mean Texas . . .

When President Bush was Governor Bush, Texas developed a state school accountability program. What a great idea! It was so great, in fact, that Utah modeled an accountability program—called UPASS—after the Texas standard.

Fast forward. Here we are in 2005 with the U-PASS program and a new federal education accountability program called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Many have said that NCLB has good goals but goes about accomplishing them in the wrong way. In an effort to measure schools' progress toward reading and math goals and not "leave anyone behind," NCLB makes it harder to really educate Utah children.

So in 2004, the Utah Legislature considered legislation that would have opted Utah out of No Child Left Behind. The Bush Administration didn't like that. Officials came out to Utah and asked us to hold off on our action until after the election. After the election they said they would be happy to address Utah's concerns with NCLB. We held off. Nothing happened.

During the 2005 General Session, the Legislature considered a bill (HB 135) that would have given priority to the state's U-PASS program (the one modeled after Texas) over the federal NCLB. Again, the feds said "Wait, let's negotiate!" We agreed and shelved HB 135 to give room for negotiations—with the understanding that we'd take HB 135 back up during a special session depending upon what concessions Utah won from the feds.

The special session is going to be next week. I want the U-PASS preference bill on the call and I want to pass it. Not enough concessions have been made to Utah under NCLB. We need to keep pushing. We cannot rely on the federal government to move unless we help them along. Education is a state issue. When he was governor, I don't think that President Bush would have stood by and let the federal government run over his state accountability standards.

And hey, if U-PASS is good enough for Texas . . .

Posted by Jeff at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2005

I-15 in Utah County

Utah County had some great news this week when it was announced that the transportation commission had approved construction for I-15 in Utah County. Now, this will not be reconstruction like we saw in Salt Lake before the Olympics, but it will be adding one lane going north and one lane going south between the Alpine and UVSC exits. That is great news and it should bring some relief to anybody traveling through Utah County.

I would like to stress that this should only be looked at as temporary relief until a plan can be put in place to rebuild I-15. That project will take some time to design and fund. But it is still a major step for Utah County.

Unfortunately, that's not good enough for the Daily Herald.

In a Herald editorial on March 30th they accused the Legislature of being afraid of risking the state's triple-A credit rating by bonding for road construction. At this point if the state decided to borrow to build these roads that would be like any of us deciding to buy a new and bigger house without any idea how we would pay it off. As legislators we know we will need to bond to help cash flow any one of these major transportation projects. But, I would hope we have enough sense not to bond until we have a plan in place to pay the bond back.

Borrowing money to build roads isn't the solution, but it is part of the solution and will happen if we can get the Governor to support putting HB 18 on the call for the special session in April. This legislation could allow the legislature to continue to allocate sales tax dollars from automobile related sales to building roads. It would also provide a process for prioritizing projects for construction.

Thank goodness Utah County will see some relief on I-15 this year. But, before we jump the gun, there are many things that need to be accomplished before we can focus on major highway reconstruction in the state.

Posted by Jeff at 10:31 AM | Comments (2)