SB0144 “Immigration Consultants”: a Much Needed Bill by Jonathan Soto

Our government is meant to protect all people that are its main responsibility. But up to this day, some of the people that currently reside in Utah are left vulnerable to predators who want to cheat them into surrendering their money to them. Immigrants are currently vulnerable to people who know that they can outsmart them by translating legal documents wrongfully or by deceiving them. One of the problems is that the credentials and qualifications for becoming a notario in many Spanish-speaking countries are more stringent than the requirements to become a notary in the U.S. so many people who are unaware of the differences trust that a notary in the U.S can do more than they are actually eligible to do.

Senator Luz Robles has recently presented a bill to the senate, that will help protect the immigrants that currently reside in this country, the bill is known as SB0144: "Immigration Consultants." This bill will require people that translate documents and help immigrants with all types of their paper work, ranging from citizenship papers or mortgaging a home. This bill will require the person offering certain professional services to obtain a license in order to provide this services.

An example of why these consultants are needed is in a case that a friend of mine had to witness. This crime took place in Phoenix, Arizona but I’m sure there are many people that have been put through the same situation. In this case my friends parents who chose to remain anonymous, said that they felt "cheated “and "ignorant" the criminal had advised them to stop paying their mortgage, so that eventually they would obtain a deal with the home owner that would bring the price of the house to what it would currently be priced at by a bank. Well this person in the end took about ten thousand dollars from them, and the main factor in them falling for this scam was because they did not know the complete meaning of the papers that had been presented to them.

This is a prime example of why the people who provide these services should be licensed. We must protect all people in the United States, the immigrant. The main purpose of this bill is to make people who are already consulting immigrants, have to obtain a license before they go out and help them. The reason for needing to get this license is to provide some protection for these immigrants, just like there are laws that protect people from false advice from lawyers there should be some cushion that protects immigrants from being hustled out of their money.

According to the fiscal notice that is located on the legislative website, this bill will bring in a revenue of 200 dollars, which is not a big number, but according to representative David Litvack (D) who is the minority leader in the House of Representatives, “Regardless of the impact financially, I think it’s consistence, no matter what someone’s personal view is about government, which is what’s debated up here. It sounds, to me that it is very consistent in terms with what government should be doing, in protecting Utah and Utah residents.” Our government’s job is still mainly to protect its people and not worry about the financial issue if it is going to protect the people.

Representative Litvack made a clear point that the government’s job is to protect the people of Utah, whether you were born here or you migrated here. This bill will help protect many immigrants in the state of Utah and will also help improve the living conditions of the many immigrants in Utah. That is why SB0144 “Immigration Consultants” should pass in this year’s legislative session.

Affirmative Action: Where'd it Go?

It’s hard to believe that we all have the same opportunity to succeed in society, especially when some may be dirt poor and many obstacles get in the way, such as money, education, institutional racism, gender, and race.

However there are some individuals who believe that we all have the same opportunities and we should do away with any and all affirmative actions. Representative Curtis Oda, chief sponsor of the 2010 resolution HJR 24: Joint Resolution on Equal Treatment by Government, believes that our government should prohibit discrimination and preferential treatment as stated in the description of the resolution. This resolution would have made it possible to amend the state constitution to end any and all programs that are part of the national affirmative action programs.

The implementation of affirmative action programs in the USA began in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, additions were made in 1965 and gender was added in 1968. The purpose of action programs is to provide equal opportunity employment regardless of race, gender, religion, and national origin.

Affirmative action has increased to not just workplaces, but also to universities who want to have a diversity of students attending their school. However, this is sometimes referred to as reversed racism. Jennifer Gratz who sued the University of Michigan after being denied admission based on their affirmative action policy and Ward Connerly, former member of the University of California Board of Regents have been fighting against affirmative action since the 1990s. They have succeeded in creating initiatives to repeal affirmative action in California, Washington, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona. They found their way to Utah in 2010 and tried to pass HJR 24 in the last days of the legislative session without much public input. Rep. Oda brought the resolution up for discussion in a House Committee just the morning after the full text of the resolution had been released and in a party line vote the committee members passed it right away. Luckily, the resolution was circled, or put on hold, until the very last day of the legislative session that year. The legislation decided to defeat the resolution without any vote on it. This may have been because of way the resolution was brought up, or possibly because Congressmen decided that a change to the state Constitution was a delicate topic that needed more than one session to make a decision. It may also have been that heavy-handed lobbying that was pushed on the fence-sitting legislators.

Of course, this might just be a matter of how you see yourself in this society. Are you the poor brown kid with a slim chance of getting away from the stereotypes and making it or the lucky person to have the right color of skin, within the right economic status, the strong dominant gender, and whose ancestors have been making it big since the roots of what we now call America. Unfortunately for some of us, like myself, we are a minority, female, and expected to have children by now, with little or no chance of even finishing college. And I’m really suppose to make it to the top with all this institutional racism and sexism involved? I think I’d rather have a little help even in this perfect post-racial society.

Fortunately for now the anti-affirmative action movement seems to have died down in Utah, possibly because Utah legislation has other things to worry about like immigration, education, or repealing daylight savings time. It may also be because Ward Connerly was recently accused of mishandling his non-profit organization money and receiving an exorbitant salary by non other than his sidekick Jennifer Gratz. You can read the story in the New York Times Article. Such controversy may not go well with a person who has said he worked hard for his money, regardless of his race.

Prescription Drug Access In Rural Areas (HB 54)

by Bekah Jung

Imagine you are on anti-seizure medications and you run low. You only have two pills left and ordering online, although considerably cheaper, would take your pills five to ten days to get to your home. You have no option, but to pay a higher copay and get your pills because to not take your pills for a couple of days is too much of a risk. That particular situation happened to my roommate, who, like most college students, has difficulty choosing the more expensive route, even if it is a life or death decision. Now imagine a world where drugs online and drugs at your local pharmacy cost the same. You now have an option to either have your prescription drugs delivered to your door and filled by an out-of-state mail-order pharmacy or to support your local pharmacy and get your prescription filled there.

House Bill 54 “Prescription Drug Access in Rural Areas” sponsored by Representative Dixon M. Pitcher, will, as the National Legislative Association on Prescription Drug Prices says, “prohibit Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM) from charging higher copayments for prescription drugs if patients” choose to “buy locally rather than out-of-state mail-order pharmacy.” The bill will also require that PBMs be required to reimburse local pharmacists fairly for all prescription drugs they refill.

Not only are patients required to pay more copay for their prescriptions if they decide to buy locally, but local pharmacies are loosing money as well due to the lack of reimbursement from PBMs. As stated by Representative Dixon M. Pitcher in the Salt Lake Tribune, “[PBMs] control how much pharmacies get reimbursed for the prescription drugs they dispense… It can be a loosing proposition for both the patient and local pharmacists.” The patients lose because PBMs choose where to buy their prescription drugs by only covering drugs bought at certain big, online pharmacy companies. The local pharmacies are loosing because their costumers are buying online and when costumers do come in to buy prescription drugs, PBMs do not reimburse them fully, thus causing a loss in revenue.

For now, HB 54 will only apply to rural areas in Utah, but Pitcher is hopeful that it will soon become a statewide law. He also hopes that the bill will allow for better competition between big prescription filling companies and local pharmacies as well as lessen the influence of PBMs, which restricts and controls where patients should get their prescriptions and medications filled and where they should not. Because the PBMs rise to power has been gradual, HB 54 was mainly made to make an amendment to the Pharmacy Practice Act Rule, particularly to section R156-17b titled “Operating Standards for Third Party Payors” by stating that third party payers have to cover all prescription drugs the same amount no matter where the drugs are being bought.

Overall, HB 54, although presented by Pitcher as a pro-competition bill, allows for patients to choose where they get their prescription drugs. The bill also gives local pharmacists the chance to compete with bigger pharmaceutical companies and suppresses the power of PBMs. Prospects for the bill passing looks good. From a Democrat’s point of view, it is pushing for more insurance coverage so that insurance coverage is equal no matter where patients decide to get their prescription drugs. From a Republican’s point of view, HB 54 is pushing for boosting small businesses thus creating more competition in the pharmaceutical business world. From a patient’s point of view, HB 54 will allow for them to make a choice where to get their drugs, which could allow for more convenience on the patient’s part.

HB 70: What is the Utah Legislature doing about the air quality in the Salt Lake Valley? By: Enrique Jimenez

HB 70 will create an Air Quality Task Force. These efforts will suggest changes to state laws and regulations that could improve air quality in Utah.

"Air quality is an issue that impacts all Utahns," said sponsoring Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Holladay, who had told members of the committee she’s receiving many calls about Utah’s air pollution problems these days. "But this issue has never been an issue before the Legislature before," she said.

The bill will create a 13 member task force made up of five senators and eight House members, both Republicans and Democrats. The job will be to look what’s already being done to improve air quality with an eye on finding ways to make Utah a better place to live and work.

With a budget of $45,900, the bill passed 9-1, with Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, casting the "no" vote.

Rep. Noel, who came late to the meeting, missed some of the testimony from the Salt Lake Chamber, the city-chartered body that attracts new business to Utah, in which they expressed their support for the bill.

Rep. Fred C. Cox, Rep. Ryan D. Wilcox just to name a few, felt it is important to support the business community, including the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, and a long list of environmental and health advocacy groups, such as the Utah Moms for Clean Air and the Audubon Society, as well as become better educated on air quality issues.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we’re just sick of it, and we need to take more action to get the air quality better,” said Utah resident John Boyd.

I agree with the bill because Salt Lake County has horrible air quality and it needs to be fixed to meet the EPA standards of air quality. The urban areas along Utah's Wasatch Front often have the worst or near the worst air quality in the nation. Not only is the Salt Lake Valley affected but rural counties such as Box Elder, Cache, Carbon and Uinta experience air pollution problems too.

What I’ve done in my community is help encourage more carpooling and using more efficient ways to get to places as needed.

HB 70 is intended to give the legislature an opportunity to become better educated on air quality issues, but if they can support the task force they can help pass bills to help regulate the air in Utah.

H.B70 A Bigger Deal Than Most Thought: By Guadalupe Rivera

The air quality in Utah is without a doubt the worst in the winter, which affects our daily lives more than we know. The poor air quality will negatively affect our health in the long term. People with asthma suffer from the effects of polluted air faster than others, since whenever the pollution in the air is high they have a hard time breathing.

Salt Lake City’s particle pollution in a 24 hour period is an average of 22 parts per million. This number is just two less than Los Angeles, California which has a particle pollution of 24 ppm.

The bill H.B.70 would create a task force to look at with Utah’s poor air quality. It is much like the already existing one that deals with water issues. The bill would create a 13 member committee, which would be made up of five Utah senators and eight representatives. The members of the task force will be appointed by the speaker and the majority president, and would review laws so that they can suggest changes that need to be made to improve the air quality in Utah.

The bill will be having its 3^rd reading in the House of Representatives sometime next week, where the representatives are to vote whether to pass it on to the Senate. The task force will suggest changes or improvements that need to be done on existing laws to help clean our air. This does not mean that the laws will be changed by the task force, but that they will be giving suggestions and opinions and then the House will decide whether or not to apply the changes. Representative Patrice Arent, the main sponsor for this bill, is unsure of what laws will be changed or fixed.

“It is premature to determine what the outcome of the study might be,” Arent said.

The bill has many supporters, including Questar, Utah Moms for Clean Air, Breathe Utah, Wasatch Clean Air Coalition, and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, Overstock.com, and the Utah Medical Association.

Besides these, there are also the citizens who wish to be able to breath clean air.

The big question is: what can be done about the poor air quality? Some people think that it is out of our hands, but others think that we can all help a little bit at a time.

Sol Maria Diaz-Vera, a sophomore at West High School, was asked what could be done to help clean our air, and she answered “Maybe if each person told themselves, ‘today I’m going to reduce pollution,' it’d be better.”

I completely agree with her. If we all help a little then there will be a huge difference.

Another major question on this matter is whether or not this is a moral or political issue. For some it may seem like it’s more of a moral issue, since it’s depending on whether or not we care about the planet that all of us live on, but for others it is a political matter. Tony Yapias is a Utah activist and a columnist at the weekly newspaper El Estandar. He sees this issue as being both a political and a moral matter: “I think it’s a moral issue, first because we have to be good stewards of this land so that your kids and the future generations can enjoy the land. Everything is political because that is the only way to protect it.”

Governor Gary R. Herbert recently said that he had a plan to get Utah’s air clean up called U-CAIR. The plan would consist of running campaigns to get the citizens of Utah involved in cleaning the air. This plan will not make it a requirement to help improve the air quality. In my opinion if it's not mandatory then people will not participate. There needs to be a better solution if our air quality is to improve.

Protecting our environment is a big deal, whether it’s our water, land, or air. We all need to start doing something to clean our air and not just leave it to the people with power. It will be best if the task force does strengthen some existing laws since it’s in all of our interest to have clean air, at whatever the cost.

Two Bills Concerning Applied Technology Colleges

By Van Le

“Beginning with the 2011-12 school year, a student served under this section in a regional applied technology college shall continue to be counted in the average daily membership of the sending school district or charter school.” (House bill 258)

In the starting of the current Legislative Session, two bills contest against each other in the effort to affect Utah's funding and enrollment for applied technology colleges. If passed, Curriculum Options for Secondary School Students (HB 206) will increase student enrollment in trade and technical colleges while the Education Funding Amendments (HB 258) works to decrease funding for these vocational programs. The passing of one or both of these bills will no doubt have an impact on not only the funding for applied technology colleges, but also the students enrolling in these programs.

Sponsored by Representative John Dougall, Curriculum Options for Secondary School Students (HB 206) proposes to allow secondary school students to fulfill their high school CTE (Career and Technical Education) requirement at a regional applied technology college. As of right now, Utah law states that only school districts can decide where a student may fulfill his CTE requirements. In an interview, Representative Dougall stated that the motivation for sponsoring HB 206 comes from his belief that the parents, not the school districts, are in charge of their children's education, “I come from the perspective of where do you expand the choice for students, . . . and I don't like the concept that a school district can hold that kid hostage.” In its introduced form, HB206 gave the authority to decide to the students or their parents. Later, the bill was amended by the House Education Committee to state that the parents must always be involved in the decision-making process.

Each year, the state appropriates fundings for a school based on the number of students currently enrolled at the school. Education Funding Amendments (HB 258), sponsored by Representative Kraig Powell, modifies the provisions for education state funding.

Representative Powell's bill lets secondary schools that currently send its students to applied technology colleges retain those students in the schools' head counts, which means they will also get to keep the funding allocated based on that head count. When asked of his opinion on HB 258, Representative Dougall (the sponsor of HB 206) responded that, although he was not originally aware of the bill, “From my perspective, we should be counting the students that are actually attending the school. We should not be counting kids that are not attending the school.”

It is clear that these two bills are in conflict with each other. The proposals of both bills center around one key commonality: the Utah statute that gives school districts the sole authority to regulate where a student might go to fulfill his CTE requirements. This state law is a key component central to the future enactment of HB 258 if the bill were to pass. If HB 206 were to be successful in transferring the authority from the school districts to the parents, HB 258 will become obsolete, and its language need to be re-drafted because school districts no longer have the power to send its students to applied technology college. Currently, either bills meets little opposition in the House. If one or both bill passes, however, the state will need to think beyond the legal language and seriously consider future funding for vocational programs. Last year alone, funding for programs that let high school students enroll in applied technology colleges experienced a five million dollar decrease. With the passage of HB 206, applied technology colleges will surely encounter a surge in enrollment. Without more funding to accommodate the influx of new students, it is hard to say that these institution will be able to maintain the same quality of education. HB 206's purpose toward providing better CTE options for students is then defeated. While HB 258 will have less of a direct effect on trade school enrollment, its retaining state funding from applied technology colleges will no doubt leave the same negative impact on the quality of education that these career and technical institutions offer.

A Shift in Utah Adoption Laws

by Emmylou Manwill & Tillie McInnis

Is it safe to assume that only a married couple can properly raise a child? If so, Utah’s current adoption laws are flawless. Yet Senator Ross Romero sees a big issue with this outdated perception; he frames his new Adoption by a Co-Parent Bill as a means of expanding all parental rights, but it's apparent that it would benefit the LGBTQ community. Romero’s proposed alterations would allow any couples that are co-habitating but either choose not to marry, or are unable to marry (i.e. a lesbian couple living together or even two brothers living together), the right to designate a partner as a “co-parent"--giving this person the right to legally adopt and help raise the child.

So far, Fox 13 stated that this bill will “allow gay couples, or any unmarried couple living together, to adopt.” Statements like this are misleading to the public because the bill clearly has stringent requirements. First off, the un-married, co-habitant spouse of a parent may not adopt a child unless the child has only one legal parent, who must also willingly join the petition for the person to adopt the child. In addition, the adopter must prove they have previously developed a parental relationship with the child and contributed to the “emotional or financial well-being” of the child, and of course, the decision must be in the best interest of the child.

This causes one to wonder why the media is framing the story in such a way? It could be due to a simple misunderstanding of the bill or a belief that this bill is of little importance due to a similar bill’s failure to pass in previous legislative sessions. Or it could be an attempt at stirring up opposition to any possibility of advancement in gay rights.

Ultimately, S.B. 126 will not allow any co-habitating couple to adopt any child; the child would have to already belong to one member of the couple without another active parent engaged in the child’s life. This would be one small, bittersweet step for the LGBTQ community, though the bill lacks the means to allow a gay couple to apply for adoption through an adoption agency.

In practicality, this bill would be more beneficial to female couples in that one could give birth and the spouse could adopt said child. For male couples, it would prove slightly more difficult by bringing in the legality of surrogates, if they were to choose such a route. Nonetheless, this bill is perfect for all single parents in co-habitating relationships.

Although Romero is not convinced S.B. 126 will pass this year, he says it is important to keep the dialogue going in hopes that one day it will pass. With a continual effort from the Utah Legislature, there’s a chance that within the next few years gay couples will be able to adopt without such strict limitations. This is a step in the right direction for LGBTQ rights, but this bill is nowhere near as extensive as it needs to be.