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- House Speaker Mike Schultz plans to revert ballot question writing to legislative attorneys.
- Schultz acknowledges the previous change may have been a mistake and is sponsoring HB563.
- The bill aims for swift passage before the session ends next Friday.
SALT LAKE CITY — When the Utah Supreme Court scrapped the proposed constitutional Amendment D last fall, it did so in part by ruling that top Republican leaders in the Utah Legislature misled voters with the text of the question they were asked.
It was the first year the House speaker and Senate president wrote the ballot question instead of legislative attorneys after lawmakers made the seemingly unimportant change earlier in the year. Now, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, is planning to roll back that change and hand the responsibility back to legislative attorneys.
The speaker admitted that the change last year may not have been the best move, and his bill, HB563, aims to return the process to the way it was.
"We made a mistake in changing that last year," he told reporters Thursday. "Again, we changed it before we even knew about Amendment D, so it had nothing to do with any of that. But going through that process, sometimes you see that it might not have been the best idea. ... I feel like we want to take it back to the way it was before, based on the way it played out over the past year."
Asked if his bill will give top lawmakers any say in how the ballot question reads, Schultz said: "No, we're not going to be able to control what is said, so it just takes it back to the way it was before."
HB563 is poised to fly through the Legislature before lawmakers adjourn at midnight on March 7, and a House committee unanimously voted to advance the proposal Friday, sending it to the full chamber for a further vote. House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said during the hearing that the bill is the same as one introduced last year by herself and the top Democrat in the Senate, signaling broad, bipartisan support for the measure.
"As you all know, I'm the minority leader, and myself and the speaker and the (Senate) president and the other minority leader in the Senate have to write a response to any amendment we have on the ballot," she told the House Government Operations Committee. "I think it's really important that it's a neutral person drafting the language for that so we can address our concerns through our response."
Two members of the public spoke in favor of the bill during the short hearing, including Kael Weston, a former diplomat and Democratic congressional and Senate candidate. Weston said he volunteered as a poll worker during the recent election and encountered voters who were "very confused and perhaps misled by the prior language" on Amendment D — which appeared on the ballot even though the Supreme Court ordered that votes for it would not count.
"Thank you, Speaker Schultz, for what I think this is a very important bill and reestablishing what is critical in our government trust," Weston said.
Adams was asked about the proposal Thursday and said he and Schultz "have the ability to write with valid language, and maybe we could have done a better job last time."
Schultz's proposal "may be a better way to go," the president added.
