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- Utah's HB491 proposes a six-member committee to streamline state highway renaming.
- The bill aims to reduce road-naming bills while ensuring designations honor people with significant ties to Utah.
SALT LAKE CITY — A dozen bills have been introduced this year that seek to rename roads all over Utah, which is a record in itself among the record number of total bills considered this year.
Bills have been introduced this year to recognize mostly veterans and fallen law enforcement officers, such as the "Berlin Candy Bomber," Gail S. Halvorsen, and Joseph Shinners, a Provo police officer who was gunned down in the line of duty.
One sought to honor the late legendary actor and Utah resident Robert Redford, and another has sought to rename a road in Salt Lake City to honor the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was killed during a speaking event in Utah last year.
All of these are currently stuck in the House Rules Committee or have stalled there because, well, the Utah Legislature has had enough. Instead, another legislative committee is backing a new bill that seeks to change the process for how most state highways are honorarily renamed.
Members of the House Transportation Committee voted unanimously to favorably recommend HB491 on Wednesday, which would create a six-person committee that can approve or reject proposed state highway designations. It also seeks to outline new criteria by which someone or a group of people are honored with a highway designation.
"We have a lot of bills that are not really critical policy issues, but are important. And if we can find a way of handling those in a way that doesn't gum up the works ... I'm all in favor of taking care of these important issues through administrative action," said Rep. Norm Thurtson, R-Provo, a member of the transportation committee.
HB491 ironically originated as the bill to rename a portion of state Route 92 to honor Redford, who owned Sundance Mountain Resort along the route for many decades, and lived there up until his death last year.
However, it went through drastic changes to become a process-changing bill after going nowhere. The House of Representatives and Senate agreed that something needed to be done to reduce the number of road-naming bills, said Rep. David Shallenberger, R-Orem, the bill's sponsor.
"Leadership on both sides has tried to come up with a way to sort of filter this process and come up with a methodical approach to this to still recognize important people that are important to our state ... but also not create the problems that come up as we continue to get road designations and these requests," he said.
If approved, the bill would create a legislative committee that considers road-naming requests on state highways. It would be composed of three members of the House of Representatives and three more from the Senate, including at least two members from a minority party. They would meet during the interim to consider road-naming proposals from other legislators.
The committee would be given clear guidelines for what types of proposals are acceptable, which Shallenberger says are loosely based on the rules that most sports halls of fame abide by.
A person must be dead for at least five years before they can be considered for a candidate highway renaming designation. This person must have exemplified "exceptional bravery in the line of duty," which includes police officers, firefighters, emergency responders or members of the military, or has other significant ties to the state or region.
This gives legislators enough time to consider the weight of a person's credentials before naming a highway section after them. That's an issue that's complicated this year's processes, according to Shallenberger.
"Sometimes they're made off political reasoning and can be used to take digs at other parties, and this gums up our legislative process ... so then it causes contention," he said, adding that he believes permanent decisions should not be made on "temporary emotion."
The bill would also clarify that only one name can remain on a section of a highway to eliminate confusion. It would limit the number of signs on a highway with the individual's name to reduce costs, as well. Those would be paid for by donors behind a request.
Members of the transportation committee asked to add this same principle to groups of people, since some designations honor more than one person, leading to an amendment that was included on Wednesday.
HB491 wouldn't prevent legislators from running future road-naming bills, but could push most ideas to the new committee, Shallenberger added. The proposed natural highway designation committee would select one proposal to designate every year.
The bill gained the support of the Utah Department of Transportation. It also had the glowing reviews from members of the transportation committee, who said they've dealt with constituents unhappy with certain road naming proposals that have been made throughout the years.
"I love this bill. I think it's phenomenal," said Rep. Ariel Defay, R-Kaysville.
The bill now heads to the full House floor for consideration. The change would go into effect in May if approved by the House and Senate by the end of March 6.
