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Senate moves dozens of House bills through concurrence and third reading; SB1 and several consent items pass
Summary
On Feb. 29, 2000, the Utah Senate moved a long concurrence/consent calendar and passed a broad set of House and Senate measures, including Senate Bill 1 (appropriations as amended), several technical and policy bills, and consent calendar items after mostly brief floor explanations and recorded roll-call tallies.
The Utah Senate spent much of its Feb. 29 floor session processing a long concurrence and third-reading calendar, signing and returning dozens of House bills and passing Senate measures, including key appropriations and policy items.
Early in the morning the body received formal communications from the House listing many bills sent for the president’s signature and transmitting additional House-passed measures for consideration and first reading. The Senate proceeded through concurrence items, adopting House amendments to multiple bills and returning them for enrolling and signature.
Notable floor actions included passage of third substitute Senate Bill 35 (government tort liability amendment) after the House changed the bond amount on line 66 from "600" to "300" (as stated on the floor); Senate sponsors said the change was to reconcile language between the chambers. Substitute Senate Bill 61 (nonprofit corporation act clarifications), Senate Bill 146 (school fee waivers amendment), and numerous other bills on the concurrence calendar were explained briefly by sponsors and passed by recorded votes.
Senate Bill 1 — the appropriations-related bill — was brought up under suspension of the rules after the House added amendments. Senator Steele described three principal House changes: a Nov. 15, 2000 timeline for commuter-rail negotiations, an internal reallocation of College of Eastern Utah distance-learning funds back to the Price campus if unused at the San Juan campus, and technical updates concerning the Utah Transit Authority. The Senate accepted the House changes and passed S.B. 1 as amended.
On the consent calendar the Senate approved measures such as House Bill 115 (condominium privacy) and House Bill 303 (disclosure of prior school employment) by unanimous or near-unanimous voice votes.
Several third‑reading bills advanced on recorded roll calls with tallies given on the floor, including HB153 (UDOT maintenance sheds), HB227 (community and economic development loan fund with a $15,000 loan cap for small businesses), HB161 (background checks for weapon purchases; narrow opening of juvenile violent-offense records for BCI checks) and others. HB161 was taken from the third-reading table under suspension of the rules and passed with a recorded tally (26–1 in the suspension vote and final passage as recorded).
The Senate recessed for a lunch caucus and reconvened for further business, and it also paused to adopt a resolution honoring Chief Wayne D. Shepherd for 38 years of service to law enforcement.
What this means: The session moved a large number of technical and policy bills forward with relatively brief floor debate on most items, while devoting more time to those bills that drew substantial concern (see separate coverage of House Bill 199). Vote tallies and passage or defeat were recorded on the floor for each item.
