Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Rep. Wallis Town Meeting / Gay Rights Vote

Today was an eventful day for District 10's esteemed Representative.  His day ended with a Town Hall meeting here in South Ogden.  But he made headlines at the capital being the only republican to vote for HB267.  The measure would have protected transgender and gay Utahns from employment and housing discrimination.  Wallis has jumped party lines and voted to yes to help push it through committee and into the legislature.  Unfortunately the bill failed to get the votes needed and died in committee. 

During tonight's Town Hall meeting, Rep. Wallis shared with us his reasoning for voting for HB267.  If you remember from my post on January 9th 2009 (See Here), Rep. Wallis sent out a legislative survey asking his constituents what there top priorities are for the 2009 legislative session.  The response rate was nearly 40 percent, which by marketing standards is huge.  From the survey he found 55 percent of District 10 supported expanded civil rights for gay and lesbians.  Therefore he felt obligated to vote for it and push it onto formal debate in the legislature.  He did point out he wasn't sure how he would have voted if it had made it to the legislature, but it did deserve debate.  I agree with his decision and hope we can expand these rights to everyone; however this is a post for another day.

Some more of the survey results are as follows:
  • 22 percent said economic development and health care were top priorities
  • 28 percent said we should do nothing on transportation projects and wait for the economy to improve.
  • 25 percent said we should use money to stimulate the economy by recruiting news business to Utah. - Rep. Wallis is working on legislation to help with this.
  • 38 percent said we should ban gifts to legislators and 27 percent felt they should ban personal uses of campaign contributions. On Hotels Reimbursement Wallis said, "If you need it, use it. If you don't, you lose it"
  • 69 percent said they support measures to combat illegal immigration (Like last years SB81)
  • On health care it was about neutral when it came to who should pay and health care access.
  • 72 percent support changing Utah liquor laws
  • 73 percent support property tax assessment changes
We spent a lot of time talking about health care access, economic development and stimulus packages.  Mr. Wallis explained he is working on legislation to create in incentives for companies to invest in Utah, not just relocate.  This will probably be ready for the next legislative session.  

A number of great questions were asked and we had our resident conspiracy theorist try to tell us the government is evil.  But in the end, Rep. Wallis handled himself well and scored some big points with all those in attendance.  Many people mentioned they were really impressed and were glad he would go out of his way to hold this meeting.

Great meeting and look forward to the next one. 

2 comments:

G'n'R lives said...

Great meeting and an impressive crowd especially with the weather conditions. Survey results were very interesting. Good to see he votes with his people of district 10.

BenJoeM said...

I think we have a good Rep.