State Representative Lee Perry, who lives in Perry, and whose district covers the far south end of Box Elder County, and the western, mostly-rural part of Weber County, introduced 11 separate original bills (according to the State Legislative website) during the regular session of the State of Utah legislature in 2013. According to the president of the Freedom Coalition, four of those were clearly for freedom while three were not. The remaining four were mixed or unclear. Representative Perry also opened 4 bill files that were abandoned. Some of his bills were passed and signed by the Governor in original form while others were not passed, or were significantly modified before being passed, and signed. None of Representative Perry’s chiefly-sponsored bills were vetoed by the Governor.
One of the first proposed laws for freedom that Representative Perry introduced this year was HB 111 to amend Eminent Domain rules. The law would have provided increased protection for private property holders when faced with eminent domain proceedings. The law was amended by the legislature such that many of those protections were stripped from the legislation and ended up simply changing some of the terms the State Private Property Ombudsmen deal with. HB 235 restricts those who serve legal documents such that sex offenders and those with restraining orders against them could not serve legal documents – a clear protection for those receiving those papers. HB 361, Domestic Violence Statistics Reporting requires that the appropriate State agency actually needs to report these statistics to the State legislature – not avoid it as apparently happened using a loophole in the law. Finally, HB 391, was a law to nullify Obamacare in Utah. It would have made the federal law null and void in Utah on Constitutional grounds using the tenth amendment. For almost all intents and purposes it was changed several times to the point that it holds little to no sway in that Constitutional regard.
Representative Perry also opened 4 bill files that were eventually abandoned (did not actually go to the legislature). One of those was for Utah to have the ability to conduct recall elections. Representative Perry says that the State Legislative Counsel suggested (and he agreed) that the recall election issue needed to be considered carefully, and so it will be part of a legislative interim study this year with hopeful passage by the legislature in early 2014. Then it would be a proposed as a Constitutional amendment to be put before the voters in the Fall of 2014.
