Carter Williams is a reporter for KSL. He covers Salt Lake City, statewide transportation issues, outdoors, the environment and weather. He is a graduate of Southern Utah University.
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 l
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