This year’s Legislature saw a different kind of political player driving much of the agenda: Utah’s 1.5 million voters.
Six ballot initiatives threatened to convert those voters into a super-Legislature that could enact proposals popular in polls, but which have languished on Capitol Hill.
Those proposals loomed over lawmakers the entire session and prodded them to act, even if it was to offer weaker alternatives, seek replacements or, at times, to create obstacles.
“Sometimes we are a little tone deaf, I think, in listening to the will of the people. That spawns initiatives. And when you get that kind of a loud roar, people pay attention,” Gov.