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Senate committee advances cleanup bill adding library, history and arts provisions
Summary
Senate Bill 161, described by sponsors as a cleanup bill, was favorably recommended to the Senate floor after committee discussion about restoring grants to campus arts organizations, adding a Women's History Initiative at $150,000 a year, and adjustments to boards and the State Historic Preservation Office to avoid duplicate federal obligations.
A Utah Senate committee on Tuesday voted unanimously to recommend Senate Bill 161, a statutory cleanup measure for the Department of Cultural and Community Engagement, to the full Senate.
Senator Sando introduced the bill and turned the presentation over to Donna Lague, executive director of the Department of Cultural and Community Engagement. "It is indeed a cleanup bill," Lague told the committee, saying the review of code identified programs that should be added to statute and a few duplicative provisions to remove.
The bill adds two previously funded programs into statute: a Women's History Initiative funded at $150,000 a year, and the Community Library Enhancement Fund, a program the presenter said has existed since before 2010 but was not codified. Lague said the Utah State Library has a program that duplicates archives work, and the bill removes that duplicative statutory language so archives can continue the work without the redundancy.
SB 161 makes several other adjustments. It authorizes arts grants to organizations that operate within higher-education institutions — Lague cited the Southern Utah Museum of Art at Southern Utah University as an example of an arts organization previously excluded from grant eligibility. The bill also temporarily authorizes a tuition-only option for members of the 1 Utah service fellowship program under the Utah Commission on Service and Volunteerism; staff will review participation data and report back to the committee.
Lague told the committee that the state previously consolidated multiple arts and museums boards into a single board of nine members and is proposing to increase that body to 17 members to achieve broader representation for awarding arts dollars statewide. She also said technical corrections to the State Historic Preservation Office and antiquities sections are included to ensure state statute does not conflict with federal NAGPRA obligations.
Senator Pond asked whether a line about regulating unarmed combat sports created a new duty for the department; Lague replied that the reference is to the Pete Suazo Athletic Commission, which the department inherited from GOEO and is a two-person operation with one funded position that regulates hand-to-hand combat events.
No members of the public spoke on the bill during the committee hearing. Committee members voted to move SB 161 to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation; the motion passed unanimously.
The committee chair reminded members that two other bills scheduled for the agenda had been pulled by sponsors and would not be heard at this meeting.
