from Wikipedia
In yesterday’s meeting of the Political Subdivisions Interim Committee (listen here), legislators sought to get a deeper understanding of what the Macquarie deal is and how it works. Unfortunately, most of the meeting consisted of the Utah Taxpayers Association spewing out fear, uncertainty, and doubt while the Utah League of Cities and Towns corrected the many, many mistakes they made. West Valley City Mayor Ron Bigelow also spoke and did a great job of detailing how cities are putting an extraordinary amount of effort to solve this problem on their own without state assistance.
Worth noting is that the UTA made many very thinly veiled threats to sue to stop the Macquarie deal. It felt like they were using that potential legal morass as a justification for seeking more legal restrictions. HB60 proponent Rep Curt Webb (who co-chairs the committee) also spoke against UTOPIA and seemed to have learned nothing from the massive amount of national negative press he garnered for his efforts earlier this year. Fortunately, the committee shut down an attempt to work on a bill to hamstring the Macquarie deal. They were directed to speak directly to Macquarie to get answers to some of their questions.
Overall, it seems like the committee is content to watch things play out for now and is truly interested in learning the details of the deal. Since I’m sure they’re already getting plenty of misinformation from the CenturyLink-funded Utah Taxpayers Association, it’s probably time for you as citizens to email them and let them know that you’d prefer they take the hands off approach as well. Click here to email all of the members of the committee at once and let them know how you feel.
