UPDATE: In which George gets what he wants (a new Utah AG) and doesn't (SLC-Vegas passenger rail)...

...Sean Reyes says he won't run again, but the feds turn down UDOT's [weak] rail study grant application

Dec 13, 2023

a silver train car with palm trees in the reflection — Photo by Daphne Fecheyr on Unsplash

You can’t always get what you want. But if you try some times, you just might find, you get what you need.

On the positive side, The Salt Lake Tribune’s Nov. 12 editorial said that Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes should resign his office, or, at the very least, announce that he would not run for another term next year.

Utah A.G. Sean Reyes has become an embarrassment, the editorial board writes, and should find something else to do - Salt Lake Tribune editorial, November 12, 2023

…Every few days seems to bring a new report of how Reyes takes time and energy — and honor — away from his duties as the state’s chief law enforcement officer to play slavish lapdog — and guard dog — to a self-appointed, freelance anti-child trafficking cop who increasingly looks like a phony, if not a sex criminal….
…It would be so much easier for everyone if Reyes would give up the job that apparently doesn’t interest him that much, resigning now or announcing that he won’t run again in 2024….

Well, I can’t claim that it is cause and effect. In fact, Reyes and most Utah office-holders would probably rather die a thousand deaths than take advice from The Tribune.

But…

A.G. Sean Reyes won’t run for reelection after questionable spending and Ballard friendship - Robert Gehrke, The Salt Lake Tribune, December 7, 2023

…In stepping away, Reyes — who was appointed attorney general in 2013 on the heels of a scandal that saw his two predecessors charged with, but never convicted of, multiple felonies — becomes the third consecutive Utah attorney general to leave office tarnished by scandal….

The answer to that, of course, is, Hell, yes. After three consecutive elected attorneys general who left office under a cloud, state lawmakers need to get a handle on what’s going on in that department and what they might do to stop it from happening again.

Up to and possibly including a state constitutional amendment that would make the office a governor’s appointment rather than an independently elected post1. As The Tribune’s editorial said:

…The litany of accusations has gotten so long and troubling that some members of the Utah Legislature, controlled by Reyes’ fellow Republicans, are seriously considering whether having an attorney general elected by the people is a luxury we can’t afford. That we’d be better off having that worthy be an appointive member of the governor’s cabinet.
There are some good arguments for that. But to go that way would be an admission that, in this one-party state, democracy doesn’t work very well.
Which, given the last three attorneys general we elected, it might not….

UPDATE:

Judge blasts the office of Attorney General Sean Reyes for ‘haphazard’ record keeping - Eric Peterson, Utah Investigative Journalism Project/Salt Lake Tribune, December 14, 2023

…in a scathing ruling in January, 3rd District Court Judge Randall Skanchy said the way Reyes’ office stores and searches for records remains “haphazard” — leaving him with “no expectation that a ‘reasonable search’ could ever be conducted in any” request for records….

Further indication, I’d say, that Reyes ought to give up this job sooner rather than later. He really isn’t all that into it.

No high-speed passenger rail for you…

Now for the bad news.

Salt Lake City train to Las Vegas, Boise: Feds deny funding to study project - Jordan Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune, December 8, 2023

Utah transportation officials hoped to receive a pile of federal dollars to study the possibility of connecting Salt Lake City to both Las Vegas and Boise through passenger rail.
But that funding isn’t coming, according to a Friday announcement from the Federal Railroad Administration….

There was a ton of money out there, part of Joe Biden’s (and Mitt Romney’s) federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Backers of the idea of connecting Boise, Ogden, Salt Lake City (maybe St. George) and Las Vegas by rail said they were not altogether surprised by the rejection, as the application could not demonstrate enthusiastic backing from Utah officials outside of the Utah Department of Transportation and the Utah Transit Authority.

…Curtis Haring, executive director of the Utah Transit Riders Union, said the organization felt the funding rejection was disappointing but not surprising…
“Policymakers missed the mark by not advocating for a more efficient use of land for our transportation needs — content to simply spend our money to add lane after lane of highway and road,” Haring wrote in an email….

It wasn’t specifically mentioned in The Tribune article, but I’d also wonder if the feds thought that even the Utah agencies that filed the grant application weren’t really serious about the project, as they didn’t specifically envision it to be a modern, high-speed system that would significantly reduce SLC-LV travel time.

Without that feature, as I wrote previously2, what’s the point?

France shows that train travel can work, George Pyle argues, if it’s fast and tied into local transit - The Salt Lake Tribune, June 30, 2023

…For passenger rail service to work, it has to overcome the natural habit Americans have to hop in their cars. The UDOT report already failed on one key part of that.
UDOT put the rail travel time from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas at seven to nine hours one way.
That’s not going to cut it.
Not when it takes six hours to drive yourself. (I know people who say they do it in five.) Go whenever you want, stop wherever you want and have your car to get around in once you are there.
But if a new American passenger rail system were to be a high-speed operation like those in Europe, Japan and China, the SLC to Vegas run could be as little as 2.5 hours. So could the Boise-Ogden-Salt Lake trip.
If those proved to be reliable timetables, and they ran, say, four times a day, that could be a game-changer. Well worth it for quick trips to the casinos or Raiders and A’s games.

Utah could apply again next year. If it does, it should:

Round up a lot of local support and make it clear that the plan is for 21st century high-speed service.
Note that the federal program did pledge $3 billion for a Las Vegas-Los Angeles line, which would make a line on to Salt Lake and Boise even more useful.
Mention the 2034 Winter Olympics3. That’s the kind of thing that should attract infrastructure grants from the feds.

UPDATE:

Is a rail line connecting Salt Lake City to Boise and Las Vegas still possible? Here’s what Gov. Cox says. - Emily Anderson Stern, The Salt Lake Tribune, December 14, 2023

…When one viewer asked whether FrontRunner — a Utah Transit Authority commuter train that extends along the Wasatch Front — might ever extend to St. George in the southwestern corner of the state, Cox replied, “I would love nothing more than for a train from Salt Lake to St. George. I’m a huge believer in high-speed rail.”…

As I said, if high-speed rail is what we want — and it is — then our application for federal money should have said so, rather than ask for money to study a slo-poke line that would take longer to go from SLC to Vegas than it already takes to drive a car. Otherwise, there’s no point.