The Spectrum
Local illegal immigration opponents joined a statewide effort Tuesday to toughen Utah’s illegal immigration laws through a 2012 ballot initiative. If passed by voters, the initiative would require Utah businesses to perform an E-Verify check of immigration status on all applicants and increase the penalties for those that hire illegal immigrants.
Utah state legislators are expected to move soon on a proposed five-bill ethics reform package that would create an ethics commission, limit campaign donations and seek to improve transparency, but supporters of a pair of independent ethics reform initiatives are skeptical. “They want to be the fox over the hen house,” said Carmen Snow, a member of Utahns for Ethical Government, who is working to gather petitions in Washington County for a grass-roots ethics initiative that backers say forced legislators to consider their own reform.
A group of Washington County residents, accusing the Utah Legislature of gerrymandering Utah’s congressional and legislative districts, are meeting this afternoon in an effort to get an independent commission to redraw district boundaries after the 2010 census. The Fair Boundaries Initiative needs 95,000 signatures by April 15 to get on the ballot in November, and 6,500 of those need to come from Washington County. So far petitioners have gathered more than 1,300 signatures locally, and about 13 percent of the total needed statewide.