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House adopts conference committee report on Senate Bill 3002; final passage set amid calls for members to see the bill
Summary
The Utah House adopted a joint conference committee report on Senate Bill 3002, which narrows access to State Tax Commission return information by requiring sanitized data and prohibiting release of a single return; the first substitute was placed for final passage but at least one member said they were not comfortable voting before seeing a distributed copy.
The Utah House on May 24 adopted a joint conference committee report on Senate Bill 3002, which addresses access to information obtained by the State Tax Commission from tax returns. The adoption cleared the way to take the first substitute up for final passage, but at least one member said they were not comfortable voting before the bill was placed in front of members.
Representative Harper moved to adopt the conference committee report and described the committee’s changes. Harper said the changes require that any office requesting information from the State Tax Commission receive a sanitized version and that "it cannot be a single return." Harper added the bill clarifies permissible uses of the information and retains Senate amendments (referred to in the record as the Goldenrod amendments).
The reading clerk had reported that the Senate refused to recede from its amendments and appointed a conference committee of Senators Bramble, Stevenson, and Goodfellow to meet with House conferees. The joint report recommended replacing the original bill with the recognized first substitute.
The presiding officer called for a voice vote to adopt the conference committee report; members answered in the affirmative and the motion passed. The presiding officer then announced that the first substitute of Senate Bill 3,002 was up for final passage.
Before taking the final vote, a member expressed procedural concern, saying, "I'm not comfortable in voting a bill before it's distributed in front of you," and indicated a reluctance to vote without a printed or distributed copy available to members. The record provided does not show a subsequent vote on the first substitute in this excerpt.
The bill, as discussed on the floor, centers on the State Tax Commission’s handling of return information and includes language about sanitization, limits on single-return disclosure, and penalties for misuse. The conference committee report is dated May 24 and identifies Senators Bramble, Stevenson and Goodfellow and Representatives Harper, Christiansen, and Jones as conferees.
