After legislators repealed and replaced two ballot initiatives passed by voters in November, a trio of bills designed to change the ballot initiative process is nearing the finish line.

The Senate Government Operations Committee approved three such House-passed bills on Friday, and sent them to the full Senate for final consideration. Two of them passed on close party-line votes.

The most controversial is HB133 — which passed 3-2, with Republicans favoring it and Democrats opposing. It would delay implementation of any initiative that includes a tax increase for more than a year so that a general session of the Legislature could review and tweak it if necessary.

“It gives us an opportunity to fix any funding issues, legal issues,” said Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem, the bill’s sponsor. “It would be much better to fix those issues in the course of a general session than try to do it in a special session.”

He noted the Legislature met in a special session to rework an initiative that passed last year to allow use of medical marijuana. The Legislature also passed a bill during the general session to override and replace an initiative on Medicaid expansion.

Sen. Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, opposed the bill saying, “Our public has this impression that we are changing the whole initiative process.”

Lauren Simpson with the progressive Alliance for a Better Utah said, “We know voters are already alarmed by some of the attitudes displayed by legislators towards the results of the ballot propositions in November. This bill will further erode voters’ trust.”

She added, “It’s an undemocratic bill, and it simply takes more power away from voters.”

But Keep My Voice — a conservative group that helped block from the ballot an initiative to ensure candidates can qualify for a primary election by gathering signatures — supported the bill as a good step to ensure tax hikes get extra scrutiny.

Another bill, HB145, also passed on a party-line vote, 4-2. It would allow an ongoing tally of signatures on initiative petitions submitted to county clerks, and a rolling deadline for individuals who may wish to remove their signatures or who claim someone else signed their name without their knowledge.

Its sponsor, Rep. Norm Thursday, R-Provo, said it would close loopholes that have allowed gamesmanship of the system. It comes after the Count My Vote initiative last year initially appeared to have enough signatures to go on the ballot, but critics waged a name-removal campaign that barely stopped its qualification.

The committee also passed HB195 unanimously to change signature thresholds to qualify initiatives from 10 percent of votes cast in the most recent presidential election to 8 percent of active voters.

It also moves up the window for initiatives to gather signatures — in order to allow more time after certification to prepare ballot materials and resolve any legal challenges.

Latter-day Saint filmmaker Sterling Van Wagenen — placed on leave by the University of Utah after the release of an audio recording of him admitting he molested a 13-year-old boy in 1993 — has resigned as a film professor at the school.

A spokeswoman for the College of Fine Arts confirmed that Van Wagenen “will not be returning to work at the university.”

A faculty member in the U.’s Department of Film and Media Arts, Van Wagenen was placed on administrative leave a month ago when the Truth & Transparency Foundation — the nonprofit behind the MormonLeaks website — released a recording that Van Wagenen’s victim secretly made during a conversation with the filmmaker last year. In it, Van Wagenen says he is “sorry I did that damage to you” when he fondled the then-13-year-old during a sleepover with Van Wagenen’s children, adding that “it was a really dark time for me” filled with personal and professional problems.

“That night, I was acting out sexually and that what was going on with me,” Van Wagenen says in the recording. “The pain was just so great. I was trying to find a way to make a connection, a way to stop the pain. You were the victim, I’m so sorry for that.”

Van Wagenen said he confessed in 1993 to police and to his lay leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leaders; he was never criminally charged but was disfellowshipped — a penalty less than excommunication — by the Utah-based faith, a penalty the victim told The Salt Lake Tribune was “unbelievably lenient. ... I’ve always wondered why I was not offered any support or counseling or therapy. Nothing.”

Also in 1993, Van Wagenen was hired as adjunct professor of film at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, a position he held for six years. Van Wagenen was director of content for BYU Broadcasting from 2007 to 2010, and, in 2013, he directed three films used in Latter-day Saint temple ceremonies.

In 1978, Van Wagenen co-founded what would become the Sundance Film Festival; he became the founding executive director of the Sundance Institute in 1981 and left the advisory board in 1993.

Van Wagenen was a producer of the 1985 film “The Trip to Bountiful,” for which Geraldine Page won a best-actress Oscar. His directing credits include “Alan & Naomi,” the second and third installments of “The Work and the Glory” — based on author Gerald N. Lund’s fictionalized accounts of early Mormonism — and an episode of the BYUtv series “Granite Flats.” He was executive producer of the 2018 film “Jane and Emma” about the friendship between Emma Smith, wife of church founder Joseph Smith, and African-American convert Jane Manning James.

Utahns heading home for the weekend may run into some traffic delays due to some big fat snow flakes as a white out has hit the Wasatch Front.

According to the National Weather Service, residents can expect 1-5 inches of snow Friday afternoon, with a bit more in the benches.

“When the snow gets heavier, you can see some slush accumulation, especially north of Salt Lake City," said Christine Kruse, a meteorologist with the weather service. “And then in the benches, you’ll be more likely to see those slush accumulations.”

A winter weather advisory from the weather service says commuters can expect slippery and occasionally snow packed road conditions.

In a tweet, the Utah Department of Transportation reported Provo Canyon is closed due to an avalanche.

Crews are in Provo Canyon working to clear an avalanche that came down near Bridal Veil Falls. The 30-foot-wide #avalanche covered the WB lanes. Get updates at https://t.co/36kuYY4Mei or the UDOT traffic app. #utsnow #utwx pic.twitter.com/LuRcK3tM2C

— Utah DOT (@UtahDOT) March 9, 2019

According to the UDOT website, Little Cottonwood Canyon is closed at milepost 4, right at the mouth of the canyon.

There will be a slow decrease in snow and rain across the valley as the night goes on, with the weather turning more showery. It’s expected to gradually diminish by Saturday morning.

Northern Utah can expect another relatively minor storm on Sunday and another one Wednesday.

For more information about weather forecasts, visit weather.gov/slc.

The Utah House of Representatives struck down a bill Friday that would have allowed communities to strike out and create their own county without a majority vote from the county they would leave behind.

Rep. Kim Coleman, the bill’s sponsor, argued the proposal was an important way to honor the ability for communities to self-direct. But her colleagues worried about the process by which HB93 would allow counties to split and raised concerns the bill would disenfranchise those in the community left behind.

“We as a Legislature need to be very, very careful when we decide where we’re going to allow voters of Utah to have a voice in a vote and where we’re not allowing people to have a vote in their own destiny,” said Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost, D-Salt Lake City. “Self determination is an important process, absolutely. But we can’t allow some people to self determine while leaving some people behind without any choice.”

A proposed secession must currently be approved countywide by voters on both sides of the split.

While Coleman said she was not advancing her bill to promote a particular break, she represents an area where leaders have expressed interest. Representatives from Herriman, Riverton, South Jordan, West Jordan and Copperton have said they don’t feel represented in Salt Lake County and are frustrated by what they see as a disproportionate lack of funding. They saw this bill as a tool that would help them negotiate for better treatment.

“We could spend a day talking about how we have experienced that nonresponsiveness,” Coleman told lawmakers on Friday. “So, should the people come together in the numbers enough to ask for a feasibility study, if that feasibility study shows that both newly created entities would be feasible, it lets the people decide. And we don’t have that right now.”

A Republican state lawmaker from San Juan County has also expressed support for the bill, following a landmark power shift that gave the southeastern Utah county its first majority Navajo and Democratic commission.

Coleman’s bill — which failed in the House on Friday by a 29-40 vote after receiving a favorable recommendation from a committee in early February — has been stalled on the floor since Feb. 12 as she made changes.

Among the amendments was a provision that residents would be required to first petition the Lieutenant Governor’s Office to conduct a feasibility study on a split — a response to concerns raised in the bill’s committee hearing that a break could economically cripple one or both counties. The feasibility study would be conducted by a third-party firm that would examine whether both the new county and the one that would be left behind are economically viable.

If the results of the study were positive, the bill would have next required a public process to inform residents of the results. Then, within a year from when the study was completed, residents would be able petition to get a secession question on the ballot after meeting a certain signature threshold.

“This is an amazing process,” Coleman argued, noting that it would be similar to the creation of new cities. “It probably forecloses the people in my area from actually executing what they’d like to do, but the process is good. And I feel if the process is good, that’s good public policy.”

But most of her colleagues disagreed, with some arguing that the issue would benefit from more interim study.

“The idea of splitting a county I think is a huge undertaking,” said Rep. Jeff Stenquist, R-Draper. “I think it would be a very ill-advised step if we were to try to look at that in a county like Salt Lake County. But in addition to that, I’m just not sure this is the right process.”

Stenquist said he was intimately involved with the process to break off a piece of Jordan School District to create Canyons School District in 2009 and said creating a process similar to that may be more successful.

One lawmaker spoke in support of the bill: Rep. Brady Brammer, R-Highland, who said it would provide a “very good framework” that could later be revised.

“One of the foundations of government is the ability to be responsive to voters in that government,” he said. “When there is a point where the interests are so diverse within a county and the population becomes so great, it does make sense to allow for the consideration” of a split.

With a population size of 1.2 million people, Coleman said Salt Lake County is 10 times larger than Utah’s average county and argued that growth has diluted its responsiveness to residents in her area.

“There is a disenfranchisement that is palpable in parts of my county,” she said.

The Utah Association of Counties formally opposed the bill. So did the Salt Lake County Council, whose chairman, Richard Snelgrove, told The Tribune a split would be “financially devastating” for both pieces.

Los Angeles • Veteran safety Eric Weddle agreed to a two-year deal with the Los Angeles Rams on Friday, returning to his native Southern California to join the defending NFC champions’ secondary.

The Rams also released starting linebacker Mark Barron, continuing a shuffle of veteran personnel after going 13-3 in the regular season and reaching the Super Bowl last month.

Weddle joins the Rams after a 12-year pro career with San Diego and Baltimore, where he spent the past three seasons. The six-time Pro Bowl selection was released Tuesday after starting all 16 games last year for the Ravens, who elected to get younger.

The 34-year-old Weddle is a year older than Rams coach Sean McVay, but he could be exactly what Los Angeles’ secondary needs. He is nearly certain to take the starting job held by Lamarcus Joyner, who is expected to leave as a free agent.

Joyner was a starter for the past two years, but Weddle is widely regarded as one of the NFL’s best free safeties. The heavily bearded veteran didn’t have an interception last season for just the second time in his career, but he made 68 tackles on the Ravens’ stellar defense and played an important leadership role in Baltimore, just as he did in San Diego.

Weddle is also durable, starting all 16 games in nine of the last 11 seasons for the Chargers and Ravens.

He adds even more experience to the Rams’ secondary alongside 33-year-old cornerback Aqib Talib and two-time Pro Bowl selection Marcus Peters. Talib is second among active players in career interceptions with 35, while Weddle is ninth with 29.

Promising two-year pro John Johnson is the Rams’ other starting safety.

Weddle grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, east of Los Angeles, before starring at Utah and joining the Chargers as a second-round pick.

Barron started 12 regular-season games and all three playoff games for the Rams last season, making 74 combined tackles. The seven-year pro was the seventh overall pick by Tampa Bay in 2012, and he joined the Rams in a trade during the 2014 season.

Barron has been a starter for the past four seasons for the Rams. He was about to enter the fourth season of a five-year, $45 million deal.

Defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, edge rusher Dante Fowler and cornerback Sam Shields also are expected to hit unrestricted free agency this month. The Rams haven’t ruled out bringing back all three veterans.

Salt Lake City • A teenager who authorities accused of trying to blow up a homemade backpack bomb at a southern Utah high school after watching Islamic State propaganda has taken a plea deal.

The Spectrum newspaper in St. George reports that that the 17-year-old boy pleaded guilty Friday to one felony count of having an incendiary device and will be sentenced in adult court. He had initially pleaded not guilty to felony attempted murder and using a weapon of mass destruction, but those charges were dropped as part of the agreement.

The Associated Press is not naming the defendant because he is a minor.

The teenager was arrested in March 2018 after the incident at Pine View High in St. George. He told police he wanted to cause fear in his community.

He will get a psychological evaluation as part of the plea deal.

The Salt Lake Stallions have sputtered out of the gate, largely because an inconsistent offense, but they’ll get a chance to turn things around on Saturday when they face the San Diego Fleet at SDCCU Stadium.

The Stallions (1-3) are coming off a 20-11 loss to Orlando last weekend, dropping Salt Lake to 1-3 for the season. The Stallions did get over 100 combined rushing yards from the running back duo of Joel Bouagnon and Branden Oliver, the third time in three games the two have done so. And quarterback Josh Woodrum is completing a decent 63.5 percent of his passes for the season.

But overall, production is lacking. For the season, the Stallions are averaging just over 16 points and 254 total yards per game, spoiling the work of a Salt Lake defense that held the Apollos to a season-low 20 points in the snowy home opener at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Stallions coach Dennis Erickson says the Stallions’ primary offensive culprit is first down, and the lack of production there. It was a killer in the red zone against Orlando.

“A couple times we ended up being second and long, or third and long, and then we’re fourth and one and we miss an assignment. A guy comes through and hits us for a loss. Just a lot of mental mistakes probably more than anything. We’ve got to look and see what we’re doing. I think we’re doing the right things, it’s just a matter of executing.”

The Stallions’ rushing defense is No. 1 in the Alliance with 96 rushing yards allowed per game, though they had pass rush and coverage issues against the Apollos.

Stallions linebacker Greer Martini was the brightest light in that effort, led the day with two quarterback hits, two tackles for loss, nine total tackles and one pass defended. For the season, Stallions defensive end Karter Schult is No. 1 in the Alliance in sacks (4) and has 13 total tackles.

The Fleet (2-2) are coming off of a 26-23 loss to the Memphis Express.

San Diego has turned the quarterback reins back over to Mike Bercovici after Philip Nelson broke his collarbone last week in Memphis. Bercovici last started in Week 1 against the San Antonio Commanders and struggled behind an offensive line that was still trying to find its footing, allowing six sacks.

Chicago • A grand jury in Chicago indicted “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts related to making a false report that he was attacked by two men who shouted racial and homophobic slurs.

The Cook County grand jury indictment filed Thursday says he made a false report about an offense.

The Cook County State's Attorney charged Smollett on Feb. 20 with one count of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report.

Smollett told police in late January that he was physically attacked by two men in downtown Chicago while out getting food from a Subway restaurant at 2 a.m. The actor said the men shouted at him, wrapped a rope around his neck and poured an "unknown substance" on him. Police said Smollett, who is black and gay, told detectives the attackers also yelled he was in "MAGA country," an apparent reference to President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan that some Trump critics have decried as racist and discriminatory.

After an investigation, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Smollett recruited two men to stage the attack because he was upset with his pay on the Fox show. Smollett has denied playing a role in the attack.

Memphis • It took the Jazz’s perimeter defenders awhile to figure out how to mostly contain Memphis’ dribble penetration. And so, it took awhile for the bigs to be spared from having to pick their poison in 2-on-1 forays into the paint. As a result, it took awhile for the Jazz to finally claw their way back against a Grizzlies team with the second-worst record in the Western Conference.

Yeah, all of that took awhile. As for finally getting over the hump and finishing things off … well, that never did actually happen.

And so, on Friday night at the FedEx Forum, the Jazz dropped a 114-104 decision against an opponent that, records aside, simply played better for longer.

Memphis shot 51.1 percent from the field and scored 60 points in the paint to easily shrug off Donovan Mitchell’s game-high 38 points.

When Granite School District’s leaders voted to close one of the worst-performing elementary schools in the state this year, many in the surrounding westside community were disheartened and resentful.

They didn’t think it was fair to the students. They said they felt the largely nonwhite population in their Kearns neighborhood was being targeted. They questioned whether it had anything to do with the low household incomes of the kids who attend classes there.

But their biggest frustration: They wished they had known what was happening sooner. “They didn’t tell parents,” alleged Cesar Reyes on the night the school board voted to close Oquirrh Hills Elementary School, which his two kids attend. “They didn’t do a good job.”

Now, a state senator is proposing a change that would require districts and boards of the lowest-performing schools — identified by Utah’s turnaround program as needing to improve their test scores or face possible closure — to inform their communities at least 120 days before a decision is made to shutter or change boundaries.

“They need to communicate,” said Sen. Karen Mayne, D-West Valley City, a former paraeducator whose district includes Oquirrh Hills. “There are no specific timetables in statute.”

SB245, made public this week, was one of the most anticipated education measures of the session, though it’s unclear how far it will get with four days left for it to pass. It gained initial approval in the Senate Education Committee on Friday with a 5-1 vote and and little discussion. It will move to the Senate floor next for consideration.

The bill would have all schools, including charters, provide initial notice to parents, teachers and residents when a school is designated as turnaround, as well as annual updates on how it is doing in the program. The district school board would also be required to hold at least two public meetings to discuss any proposed changes.

When the turnaround program was created in 2015, the failing status was applied to the 3 percent of Utah campuses with the lowest school grades. Once designated, schools have three years to either improve their standardized test scores and grades or face consequences, such as being required to shut down, redraw boundaries or purge faculty.

The law was amended in 2017 to make it slightly less harsh. Now, a school must be in the bottom 3 percent for two consecutive years.

Granite School District’s board of education voted to close Oquirrh Hills Elementary, which was named in the first cohort and didn’t improve in time, rather than face further sanctions. Another in Salt Lake City, Bennion Elementary, is also being discussed for closure.

Kearns Metro Township Mayor Kelly Bush, who criticized the Granite board for not better informing the community, said Friday that she believes the bill will add transparency to the process.

“I hope it helps prevent what happened in my community,” she told the committee. “It has caused a lot of backlash.”

Granite spokesman Ben Horsley said the district is aware of the bill and supports it. Already, he added, the administrators there want to do more to inform the public. There was a community meeting in December where parents could raise their concerns before the board decision; and notice went out with students 10 days before. Still, he said, it wasn’t enough.

Horsley noted: “We want to ensure that moving forward that all of our communications are enhanced.”

Memphis • With Ricky Rubio ruled out before Friday’s game against the Grizzlies due to left hip tightness, Raul Neto also out due to left hamstring tightness, and Dante Exum still on the shelf due to a left ankle sprain, the Jazz were once again forced to resort to their backup-of-a-backup-of-a-backup plan to use Donovan Mitchell and Joe Ingles as the team’s primary and secondary ballhandlers.

The good news, though, delivered about 45 minutes before the scheduled tipoff, is that they may not have to do that much more going forward, as Exum was officially cleared to return to practice.

The former lottery pick has been out since Jan. 5 when he sprained his ankle trying to defend a crossover during the second quarter of a game against Detroit. Since then, the sprain yielded a bone bruise, which further delayed his return. He has missed Utah’s last 25 games.

Coach Quin Snyder, speaking before the Exum announcement was made, discussed the constant adjustments his team has had to make this season to various players being out.

“It’s as much a part of the NBA season as anything else. That’s where other guys gotta be prepared to adjust, play more, play slightly different roles,” he said. “It’s something that we’ve ran into — we ran into it early with Donovan. We want everybody to be healthy, but that’s not always the case. The one thing I will say — our guys, as far as their training and their recovery process, we’re controlling abut as much as we can control with respect to those things. And sometimes there’s things that are out of your hands, and they happen, and you just have to adjust.”

Grizzlies coach JB Bickerstaff, meanwhile, addressed the differences in how the Jazz operate with Mitchell and Ingles running the show vs. the usual point guards, pointing out that while “they still try to accomplish the same things,” there becomes a discrepancy in how they go about it.

“Those guys, because of their want and ability to score the basketball, the initial action — there’s maybe more pressure there. With Donovan Mitchell handling the pick-and-roll, his ability to score and that threat he’s creating initially, you have to be on a little bit higher alert in that situation,” Bickerstaff said. “When Ricky has the ball in his hands, all the other guys become that much more of a threat because of his ability to playmaker and pass. So the point of attack becomes more important when [Mitchell and Ingles] have the ball in their hands.”

It’s been awhile

Friday’s matchup between the teams was their fourth meeting this season, but their first since Nov. 12. All three of the previous tilts came in Utah’s first 13 games of the season.

Given that, plus the big roster changes that Memphis made around the trade deadline, both teams acknowledged that general principles would carry over, but that there might not be a lot of similarities otherwise.

Snyder praised the Grizz for retaining their defensive intensity, while noting that on offense, “They’re probably pushing the ball a little bit more, because they’re playing a little bit smaller, and they’re playing Delon Wright and [Mike] Conley and those guys together some.”

Bickerstaff added that while Utah’s roster hadn’t changed much, its results certainly have since those early meetings.

“Utah’s playing better than they were at that point in the season. I think they’re firing from all angles now,” he said. “That defense, with those big guys in the middle of the floor, they make it difficult on you. So the ideas of trying to move those big guys, make extra passes, those types of things can be the same — we just got different personnel trying to get it done.”

A day after pulling the plug on tax reform, legislative leaders on Friday canceled a crucial budget meeting aimed at finalizing much of the state’s spending plan for next year.

Legislative leaders had little to say about the delay, but advocates were left to worry whether or not they would get their requested appropriations.

“When we have agreement between the two chambers we will meet,” Rep. Val Peterson, an Orem Republican who sits on the Executive Appropriations Committee, said Friday.

Sen. Jerry Stevenson, a Layton Republican who is co-chairperson of the spending committee, said in a text that “major changes” could come out of ongoing talks, but would not comment beyond that. And there were unconfirmed reports Friday that lawmakers were looking at passing a scaled-back budget that could be adjusted later on in a special session.

Budget discussions took a turn Thursday with the collapse of the major tax overhaul plans that state leaders had placed at the top of their to-do list this session. In a quickly arranged news conference, Gov. Gary Herbert, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, declared that they were still committed to tax reform — it would just take a little more time than they’d hoped.

After taking a few months to refine the proposal and build support among the business community, they plan to reconvene in a special session, possibly over the summer, to enact the tax reform.

But, for now, that leaves legislators to deal with the same budget problems that have been nagging at them for years. The state’s income tax revenues, dedicated to education funding, continue to grow at a rapid clip, while the sales tax revenues that support the rest of government are lagging behind. And Utah leaders are about to lose the budgetary flexibility they’ve long exercised by shifting higher education costs from the sales tax fund into the income tax fund.

Lawmakers were hoping by expanding the sales tax this session, they could right the ship. But now, they’re back to budgeting under a tax system they’ve said is broken.

“There’s fairly significant concerns as to the effect of not having tax reform in place,” Adams, R-Layton, said Friday.

Lawmakers involved in designing the budget were expecting to work over the weekend on their plan of action, Greg Hartley, chief of staff for the Utah House said.

House Minority Leader Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, said the cancellation of a key Executive Appropriations Committee meeting Friday is an indication that lawmakers are on different pages.

“Those meetings were canceled, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out just from an outside perspective that there is not agreement between the House and the Senate leadership teams,” King said.

Meanwhile, some interest groups were reading the worst into the meeting postponement.

Beth Noyce, executive director of the Utah Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and Utah Association for Home Care, said she was concerned about the fate of a proposed funding increase for home health care Medicaid rates. She said she worried that amid all the budgetary upset, this funding might not make it into the final spending plan.

Editor’s Note: Beth Noyce is the spouse of a Salt Lake Tribune editor.

Reporter Benjamin Wood contributed to this report.

The Utah-based sandwich shop Even Stevens has run into more money woes, as the property owner of its Sugarhouse location filed court documents Friday to evict the restaurant for allegedly not paying rent.

Brooks Pickering, Even Stevens chief restructuring officer, said the company paid past due rent to the property owners Friday and that the issue had been resolved. He said the restaurant isn’t in danger of closing.

Attorneys for the landlord, DRMH LLC., filed two verified complaints for evictions, alleging leasee and Even Stevens co-founder Steve Down (who is no longer involved with the company) hadn’t paid rent in months.

The property owners posted notices of eviction at the office Dec. 10 and the restaurant on Feb. 12. Both establishments are located at 2030 S. 900 East. The first notice asked for $7,844.75 in past rent and fees. The second said Even Stevens must pay $9,731.72, according to the orders.

If the company didn’t pay or vacate the property within three days, the notice threatened legal action. The property owner followed through on that Friday.

An attorney for the property owner didn’t return The Tribune’s request for comment Friday evening.

Pickering said he couldn’t elaborate on what led up to the restaurant being threatened with eviction — he doesn’t deal with the real estate side of operations — except to say it was a result of “extenuating circumstances that aren’t related to just plain old rent.”

The sandwich shop has been struggling with finances recently, prompting a restructuring effort that closed restaurants in Arizona, Texas and Colorado. The restaurant, which advertised a “buy one sandwich, give one to charity” model, stopped its charitable giving in August 2018 to improve its finances.

While Pickering said at the time that the company would resume donations after 60 days, former employees told The Tribune last month that charitable giving remained suspended. Pickering responded saying the company will revive donations once it becomes profitable. He predicted that would happen in the second quarter of 2019, which begins in April.

The company’s money problems have been attributed to its fast expansion. Company co-founder Down has also faced legal trouble.

He was accused in a May 2018 lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of making misrepresentations by building and operations event centers in five states by using high-interest loans from private investigators.

He resolved the lawsuit by paying a $150,000 fine and did not admit to or deny the allegations.

The mother of a 6-year-old who was found unresponsive with multiple injuries in his Sandy home, and who died two days later, was charged Thursday with murder.

Sandy police initially investigated 31-year-old Reyna Elizabeth Flores-Rosales for child abuse after they found her son unresponsive in their home on Feb. 25. (Court documents first listed the child’s age as 7, but his age was 6.)

When the child never woke up and died at the hospital two days later, detectives shifted to build a murder case.

According to court documents, the 6-year-old died because of a blow to the right side of his head. It caused the child’s brain to bleed and swell. That swelling displaced his brain and killed him.

Yet, medics found the child was covered in other injuries, including burns on his buttocks, scars, bruises and swelling and open sores.

A doctor told police “there is not an accidental explanation for all of the above injuries," according to charging documents.

Investigators have said Flores-Rosales was previously reported to the Department of Child and Family Services because of suspected abuse. Flores-Rosales and her 10-month-old child were the only other people who lived in the Sandy home before her arrest.

Flores-Rosales has been in jail since Feb. 26 and has not been granted bail. She has been charged with aggravated murder and aggravated sexual abuse of a child, first-degree felonies. She is also facing two second-degree felony charges of child abuse.

Jail records show federal authorities have also placed an immigration hold on Flores-Rosales, who is from Honduras.

Three thoughts on the Jazz’s 114-104 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Where’s the Jazz’s defense?

The Grizzlies are the worst offensive team in the league. They’re 30th in points per game, 30th in offensive rating, and 30th in pace. So the Jazz, usually an elite defensive team, should have made life even tougher on the Grizzlies.

They did not. Memphis had a 120 offensive rating tonight, scoring 114 points in 95 possessions. That’s simply not good enough from the Jazz’s defense.

We’ll start with the perimeter defenders, who had a rough game.

Ingles struggled badly. Some of that was because he had to guard Mike Conley at times because the Jazz are out of healthy point guards. This is just a blowby out of nothing, then Ingles compounds his mistake by committing a foul.

.@mconley11's too legit. Too legit to quit ❗️

📺: @GrizzliesOnFSSE pic.twitter.com/t7uEeMSQ0B

— Memphis Grizzlies (@memgrizz) March 9, 2019

This is a slightly more nuanced failure: he expects a screen, so because the pick-and-roll is on the side of the floor, the Jazz are going to try to “ice” it. That means Ingles is going to try to prevent Avery Bradley from using the screen, while Gobert will stay in front and be scary. No screen ever comes, and Ingles is off to the side (as he should be!) so Bradley attacks. But Ingles neither stays connected to Bradley, nor does he prevent the bounce pass to Jonas Valanciunas. The result is a pretty easy open shot for JV.

Royce O’Neale probably stayed in front better, but it’s so strange how up-and-down he is with screen navigation. He didn’t only die on this pick, but there was a funeral and everything. He did a good job recovering to contest anyway, but Conley punishes the mistake.

Donovan Mitchell had a very nice offensive night, but his defense left a lot to be desired, something he admitted after the game. He just loses track of Conley here.

That’s just one of the backcuts the Jazz got beat on tonight. They were numerous.

“We didn’t do a good enough job defensively. They got by us too easily.,” Quin Snyder said. "We weren’t as urgent and as alert as we needed to be. It can’t be that easy to get in the paint.”

2. The big men weren’t good enough defensively either, though

It’s hard to say “Oh, Rudy Gobert wasn’t impactful defensively." He had five blocks, that’s a pretty good number. But because I have high standards for him — and for Derrick Favors — I know that he’s capable of doing more for the Jazz defensively than what we saw tonight.

Like, what’s up with this?

I get that Grayson Allen played bad defense here too. But Gobert, shouldn’t you contest that shot? Or jump at it? Or have your arms up? And if you’re prioritizing the rebound, shouldn’t you... get the rebound? (Okay, the rebound part is mostly Jae Crowder’s fault. But still not great, Rudy!)

And I understand that the Jazz want opponents to take midrange jump shots, but they also want them to be contested. Why is Gobert playing so far back off Valanciunas here? It’s not like he’s going to go by him with a quick burst of speed.

Favors is in kind of the same boat: he had three steals and two blocks. That’s great! But Ivan Rabb found a lot of success rolling to the rim off him, though I’m not sure how much of that is his fault, given that he had to serve as primary defensive cover on the ballhandler so often. In the third quarter, I thought he committed a couple of fouls that he didn’t need to when he had an opponent pretty locked up.

I get that these are supposed to be the easy games. But Mike Conley is good: stay in front of him. Jonas Valanciunas can shoot: guard it. That’s twice in the last week now that the Jazz have lost a game they should have won because their defense wasn’t anywhere close to adequate.

3. The 3-point attempts weren’t the problem

The Jazz set a franchise record with 48 3-point attempts tonight. They made 18 of them, or 37.5 percent.

I saw some frustration that the Jazz were taking so many threes, but honestly, it was the right approach. What else are you supposed to do when the Grizzlies are willing to leave Kyle Korver and Thabo Sefolosha in order to stop Gobert and Favors from rolling to the rim? If you’re facing a 2-on-3, you’re supposed to find the open guy, right?

Korver was 3-11 from three tonight. In most games, if you give him those same 11 shots, most of which were wide open, I think he hits six of them.

Now, there are players who I’d rather have attack that closeout than take the three. Royce O’Neale is one of those guys, and he did that once.

Snyder said the Jazz’s spacing wasn’t great tonight, and I think one reason why is that they didn’t always have the driving lanes to attack those closeouts. Overall, though, the Jazz had a 110 offensive rating without a PG against a good defense. That’s fine. It’s the other end that cost them dearly.

For the first time, a Catholic pope and a Latter-day Saint prophet met — faith to faith and face to face.

Pope Francis and Russell M. Nelson, top leaders of separate global Christian religions, sat down together Saturday at the Vatican for a 33-minute exchange a day before the American-born faith dedicates its first temple in Rome, the cradle of Catholicism.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the meeting between the 82-year-old Francis and the 94-year-old Nelson, early Saturday morning. M. Russell Ballard, the 90-year-old acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, attended as well.

While the historic encounter may not be as significant for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics — popes frequently give audiences to foremost religious figures — the spiritual calculus adds up to watershed recognition for the globe’s 16 million Latter-day Saints.

After their private meeting with the pope, Nelson and Ballard emerged, arms linked, at the Vatican.

President Russell M. Nelson and President M. Russell Ballard have just finished their meeting with Pope Francis. @NelsonRussellM @BallardMRussell @Pontifex pic.twitter.com/PFCTWQEWwx

— The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (@ChurchNewsroom) March 9, 2019

“We had a most cordial, unforgettable experience with His Holiness," Nelson said in a news release. "He was most gracious and warm and welcoming to President Ballard and me.

“What a sweet, wonderful man he is,” the Latter-day Saint president added, "and how fortunate the Catholic people are to have such a gracious, concerned, loving and capable leader.”

So what did the religious leaders discuss? Global relief, for starters, and the two religions’ mutual efforts to relieve human suffering.

“We explained to His Holiness that we work side by side, that we have projects with Catholic Relief Services all over the world, in over 43 countries," Ballard said in the release. "[We’ve] been shoulder to shoulder as partners in trying to relieve suffering. He was very interested in that.”

Nelson said they also talked about the "importance of religious liberty, the importance of the family, our mutual concern for the youth of the church, for the secularization of the world, and the need for people to come to God, and worship him, pray to him and have the stability that faith in Jesus Christ will bring in their lives.”

And they chatted about the new Rome Temple, with its role in connecting families eternally in Mormon theology.

The visiting Latter-day Saint delegation presented the pontiff with a Christus figurine and a framed copy of the faith’s family proclamation in Italian. In return, Francis gave his guests a copy of his apostolic exhortation on the family.

Francis and Nelson concluded their meeting with a hug.

The Vatican offered no details of Francis’ Saturday audience with the Latter-day Saint delegation, The Associated Press reported.

The importance of the weekend events for Mormonism is evident in the fact that, for the first time in Latter-day Saint history, all 15 top male Latter-day Saint leaders (though none of its high-ranking female officers) will be present in the same location on foreign soil. It represents another marker that the Utah-based faith is ready to take its place in a spot where many biblical events occurred.

“Rome is Rome,” said Latter-day Saint historian Matthew Bowman, “a symbol of political authority and religious authority, a city that symbolizes the heart of Christianity.”

The Francis-Nelson meeting “indicates the relatively ecumenical nature of modern Roman Catholicism (and particularly this pope’s instincts toward public magnanimity),” Bowman said. “It also signals something about the politics of modern temple building — that they are as much a sign of material legitimacy as they are intended for ritual use.”

The existence of temples in key locations “shows the church’s intentions to be a serious global religion,” said Bowman, author of “The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith," “one whose presence on the landscape is to be noted.”

The church is “still growing up in a lot of ways,” the historian said. “It’s trying to assert that it is a global faith with global aspirations and global ambitions.”

Ugo A. Perego, director of the LDS Institute of Religion in Rome, was at the temple there when the meeting of the leaders took place.

He was thrilled by the high-powered conversation.

“It is an exciting and historical time for everyone,” Perego wrote in an email. “I was born Catholic, and I can see a lot of good from a meeting like this one. Private closed-door meetings with the pope are not very common and not just anyone can ask for one.”

The institute director speculated that Francis might be more familiar with the American church than most would think.

“Being from Argentina and with a large membership in that country [of more than 450,000 Latter-day Saints], he surely knows about us,” Perego said. “Now we are definitely on his radar.”

Some, however, were troubled by the absence of top female leadership.

Catholic scholar Colleen McDannell, a University of Utah religious history professor and author of “Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy,” said in a message: “It saddens me that on such an important day for Mormons, women’s leadership is not visible” and that high-ranking women “were not invited to participate in the [temple] celebration.”

Theological gap

Both churches — the largest on the planet and a much smaller one — claim to be the true church of Jesus Christ.

They have deep theological differences, so great that the Vatican does not recognize Mormonism as Christian, citing the Latter-day Saint rejection of the Trinity as one of the reasons. Neither recognizes the other church’s baptism, requiring converts to be rebaptized into their respective new faith.

The conflict between the two even extends beyond theology to the question of divine authority, Bowman noted. “Each side claims ‘we have priesthood authority that nobody else has.’ That makes them rivals on multiple levels.”

In the 19th century and much of the 20th, many Latter-day Saints viewed the Roman Catholic Church as “the great and abominable” church described in Mormon scripture.

Recently, though, the two have collaborated on social issues (opposing same-sex marriage and defending religious freedom) and on humanitarian efforts (feeding the hungry, offering disaster relief, and building up resources for a sustainable living).

In 2014, two Latter-day Saint officials — Henry B. Eyring of the governing First Presidency and the late apostle L. Tom Perry — joined religious leaders and scholars from 14 faiths and 23 countries in Rome for a three-day Vatican-sponsored "colloquium" titled "An International Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman."

At that time, the pontiff shook Eyring’s hand, a gesture believed to be the first such exchange between a pope and a leading Latter-day Saint authority.

Other high-ranking Latter-day Saints previously have met or greeted a pope, but not in any official religious capacity.

Jon Huntsman Sr., who died last year, visited Pope John Paul II and counted the late pontiff and the late Latter-day Saint President Gordon B. Hinckley as two men he most admired.

Such connections might have seemed unthinkable when Joseph Smith Jr. launched his little church in upstate New York in 1830 — or to the Latter-day Saints who trekked across the continent to set up their own Beehive State.

Warming trend

At first, those hardy Mormon pioneers who settled the Salt Lake Valley and the Catholics who began joining them in the 1860s generally had a live-and-let-live relationship, Catholic historian Gary Topping told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2009 during the centennial celebration for the downtown landmark Cathedral of the Madeleine.

"Catholics and Mormons were operating on two separate tracks pretty much," Topping, archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, explained.

Still, he added, “there was always a little sniping going on."

The state’s predominant church was building what they hoped would be Zion, while the Catholics planted parishes, schools and Holy Cross Hospital.

Salt Lake City’s first Catholic bishop, Lawrence Scanlan, had hoped the schools he started would lead to conversions among Latter-day Saint children, Topping said. "He was disabused of that pretty quickly."

There continued to be some cooperation but also barbs between the two churches in Utah.

The low point for relations came in 1958. when Latter-day Saint general authority Bruce R. McConkie wrote an encyclopedic volume, “Mormon Doctrine,” which identified the Catholic Church as the “church of the devil” and the “most abominable above all other churches.”

Then-Catholic Bishop Duane Hunt apparently took the matter to Latter-day Saint President David O. McKay, and McConkie's book was revised in the next edition.

"He never said it directly, but I think McKay was so upset by the negative impact of McConkie’s book that it jolted him into believing he had been part of the problem,” McKay biographer Gregory Prince said in a 2009 interview. "He quietly reversed field. After that, he never again was negative to Catholics, privately or publicly."

Building a partnership

In the past few decades, Utah’s Catholic bishops and Latter-day Saint leaders have formed strong bonds over common values and visions.

Catholics run homeless shelters; Latter-day Saints fund meals and volunteer to help.

In 2008, former Utah Catholic Bishop George H. Niederauer had moved to San Francisco as archbishop and asked his Latter-day Saint buddy, then-President Thomas S. Monson, to help drum up support for California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Monson enlisted his church members and statewide volunteers in the effort, ultimately taking the lead against same-sex marriage.

Latter-day Saint presidents and apostles grew to respect and value their association with Catholic bishops and priests. They worshipped together, sang together, dined together, golfed together, laughed together and wept together.

“Over the years we have collaborated with the Latter-day Saints for the common good,” Monsignor Terrence Fizgerald said. “We support common values, we share the common conviction that we are all children of God and deserve respect.”

From time to time, Utah Catholic bishops have aided LDS efforts “to obtain permits to build their temples, as in the case with Bishop [John] Wester and the LDS temple in Paris,” Fitzgerald said, just as Monson encouraged Latter-day Saints in Draper “to support our efforts to build the Skaggs Catholic Center.”

Two churches buttressing each other helps “build decency in the community. … [It’s] collaborating in the best way possible,” the monsignor said. “That is what is expected of Christians and others of good faith.”

A testament to these multifaith ties was on display in June 2015 at a reception honoring Wester before his departure to head up the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

Ballard, the Latter-day Saint apostle, expressed his sadness at seeing Wester leave Utah.

"You are losing your wonderful bishop," he told the crowd gathered in a Salt Lake City hotel ballroom, "and I am losing one of my very dear friends."

Wester and Ballard, along with Ivory Homes founder Ellis Ivory, had become regular golfing buddies.

Besides sharing a few jokes and laughs, “we talked about community issues and concerns over values,” Ballard said. “It was a marvelous experience for me."

The three, he said, committed to playing golf again in Utah.

Until then, “I asked Heavenly Father to watch over you and protect you,” the apostle said, adding that he was sure the people of Santa Fe “would fall in love with you as we have.”

Utah’s current Catholic bishop, Oscar A. Solis, congratulated the Latter-day Saints on building a temple in Rome.

“We are pleased that the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a religious facility convenient for their members in Rome,” Solis wrote in an email. “We all benefit when people of every faith have the ability to worship as they wish and can receive the support they need for meaningful lives.”

Given the Rome temple and papal audience, it could be a new day for the two faiths — at least in Latter-day Saint eyes.

Editor’s note • Paul Huntsman, owner and publisher of The Tribune, is a son of the late Jon Huntsman Sr.

Vatican City • The conviction of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin for failing to report a known pedophile priest to police deepens the crisis confronting an already discredited Catholic Church hierarchy.

The verdict handed down by magistrates Thursday shows the church’s once-untouchable “princes” increasingly are judged accountable for priests who abuse children and the superiors who allowed the abuse to continue.

After centuries of impunity, cardinals from Chile to Australia and points in between are facing justice in the Vatican and government courts for their own sexual misdeeds or for having shielded abusers under their watch..

Here is a look at cases implicating Catholic cardinals, members of the exclusive club of prelates that advises the pope and eventually elects his successor.

AUSTRALIA — CARDINAL GEORGE PELL

In December, the Vatican’s former finance minister was convicted in his native Australia of sexually abusing two boys in the 1990s.

Pell was convicted of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and indecently dealing with the boy and his 13-year-old friend in 1996 and 1997, months after the 77-year-old cardinal became archbishop of Melbourne.

Pell has denied wrongdoing and planned to appeal. He is scheduled to be sentenced next week.

Each of his five convictions carries a potential 10-year maximum sentence.

After his conviction, the Vatican said its sex crimes office had opened an investigation and confirmed the Sydney archbishop restricted Pell’s ministry after the cardinal returned to Australia to face trial.

U.S. — EX-CARDINAL THEODORE McCARRICK

Francis last month defrocked the onetime leader of the U.S. church after an internal investigation determined McCarrick sexually molested children and adult men; some of the molestation took place during confession. It was the first time a cardinal had been defrocked over the scandal.

One of McCarrick’s victims has filed a police report and spoken to prosecutors in New York City, but it is unclear if any criminal charges can be brought given so much time has passed since the abuse occurred.

The McCarrick scandal has implicated high-ranking churchmen in both the United States and at the Vatican since it was apparently an open secret he slept with adult seminarians.

CHILE — CARDINALS JAVIER ERRAZURIZ AND RICCARDO EZZATI

The current and former archbishops of Santiago are under investigation by Chilean prosecutors for allegedly covering up for abusive priests.

Errazuriz, who retired as Santiago archbishop in 2010, was recently forced to resign from Francis’ kitchen cabinet after the depth of his cover-up was exposed last year.

His successor, Ezzati, was sued this week by a man who accused him of protecting a priest who allegedly drugged and raped him in the Santiago cathedral. The victim first filed a complaint with Ezzati in 2015. Ezzati issued a church sentence against the priest last year.

Prosecutors have overseen raids of church offices around the country. Ezzati and Errazuriz have so far refused to answer questions in the investigation.

Francis secured offers of resignation from every active Chilean bishop last year as part of Vatican efforts to clean up the Chilean church.

SCOTLAND — CARDINAL KEITH O’BRIEN

O’Brien, once the highest-ranking Catholic leader in Britain, recused himself from the 2013 conclave that elected Francis pope after unidentified priests alleged in British newspaper reports that he acted inappropriately toward them.

The priests said they had complained to church authorities about O’Brien’s conduct but never received a response. None of the men were thought to have been minors when the alleged inappropriate behavior took place.

In 2015, Francis accepted O’Brien’s resignation after he relinquished the rights and privileges of being a cardinal. The decision was reached after the Vatican sent its top sex crimes investigator to Scotland to look into the allegations.

O’Brien was allowed to retain the title of cardinal and he died a cardinal in 2018.

BELGIUM — CARDINAL GODFRIED DANNEELS

The retired head of Belgium’s Catholic Church has been under fire since 2010, when he was caught on tape suggesting that a victim of a serial predator bishop keep quiet until the man retired.

Two weeks after Danneels met with the victim, Bishop Roger Vangheluwe of Bruges resigned and expressed sorrow for having long abused his nephew, both as a priest and after becoming a bishop.

Danneels had told the victim it would do him no good going public, and he urged him to forgive his uncle.

Francis has been criticized for having included Danneels, considered a key supporter in his 2013 election, in important church meetings since the scandal.

U.S. — CARDINAL BERNARD LAW

Law resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston in 2002 following revelations he hid clergy abuse involving dozens of priests who raped and sexually molested children, the scandal chronicled by The Boston Globe that led to the reckoning in the U.S. church.

More than any other prelate, he epitomized the Catholic Church’s failure to protect children from pedophile priests and its arrogance in safeguarding its own reputation at all costs.

St. John Paul II’s decision to promote Law to head St. Mary Major basilica in 2004 reinforced the impression the Vatican still hadn’t grasped the scale of the child abuse problem, the trauma it caused its victims, and the moral credibility the church had lost as a result.

At Law’s Vatican funeral last year, Francis prayed for a merciful final judgment.

AUSTRIA — CARDINAL HANS HERMANN GROER

Groer was allowed to retire on schedule as archbishop of Vienna in 1995 despite multiple allegations he sexually abused young boys at a seminary. He died in 2003 without ever facing civil or canonical justice.

His successor as Vienna archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, in 2010 accused the Vatican secretary of state at the time of the scandal, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of being behind a cover-up and blocking a Vatican investigation of Groer’s crimes.

The same year, the Vatican gave Schoenborn a rare dressing down for his comments about Sodano, reminding him that only the pope can level accusations against a cardinal.

VATICAN — CARDINAL ANGELO SODANO

As the powerful Vatican secretary of state under John Paul, Sodano has long been held in part responsible for the Vatican’s refusal to take action against pedophile priests.

More than anyone, he has been blamed for blocking a church investigation into the 20th century Catholic Church’s most notorious predator, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ religious order.

Francis recently referred to how then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — initially failed to secure a sanction against Maciel, a veiled reference to the weight Cardinal Sodano wielded on the decisions of Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“He [Ratzinger] went with all his files. And when he returned he told his secretary, ‘Put them in the archive. The other side won,’” Francis said. “But then, once he became pope, the first thing he said was ‘Bring me the files from the archive,’ and he started.”

Eventually, the Vatican under Benedict sanctioned Maciel to a lifetime of penance and prayer for his crimes.

Washington • Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney of Utah were not fans of President Donald Trump declaring a national emergency, though neither will say yet whether they will vote to override his action that would siphon funds from the Pentagon to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lee and Romney, both Republicans, are two of a handful of Republican senators who have not said if they'll vote with Democrats on a resolution to cancel the national emergency, which many experts have said is legally dubious and already the subject of several lawsuits.

Four GOP senators have already said they will join 45 Democrats and two independents in the Senate to vote for the House-led resolution. About eight, including Lee and Romney, are undecided.

Even so, the resolution has enough votes now to win in the Senate and be sent to the president's desk where Trump is expected to issue his first veto. The House, which has 235 Democrats to 197 Republicans, is likely unable to garner a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

Still, the vote puts Lee and Romney in a tough spot. They both support a physical border barrier. Yet, they may not like the president’s emergency order. Opposing it, though, would mean thumbing their noses at their party’s leader.

“Utah senators are working through a potential lose-lose situation when it comes to the president’s national emergency declaration,” said Jason Perry, the director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics. “Utahns are divided in their support of President Trump just as they are on the border wall. Our senators risk angering half their constituency no matter how they vote and then they risk a Twitter backlash from the president if they vote against him.”

And there could be a reason neither Lee or Romney are saying how they'll vote ahead of casting a ballot, Perry said.

“The best strategy for any elected official is to represent their constituency the best they can while mitigating backlash from the White House by not signaling their vote too early,” he said.

Lee has worked to brand himself as a constitutional authority who wants Congress to live up to its role as designed by the Founding Fathers. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse strings, not the president, meaning the White House can’t unilaterally take money from one pot to pay for something else without statuary authority.

When Trump announced his order, Lee said his initial assessment was that it was legal, though that wasn’t the issue.

“Congress has been ceding far too much power to the [executive branch] for decades,” Lee said. “We should use this moment as an opportunity to start taking that power back.”

The resolution could be one such opportunity, but Lee’s office says he’s still weighing his vote.

Romney, a freshman and former presidential candidate who has had an on-again-off-again relationship with Trump, has previously said that he did not want to see Trump declare a national emergency.

“I think that’s an action that would be taken in the most extreme circumstances, and, hopefully, we don’t reach that,” Romney told MSNBC before Trump took action.

After the designation, Romney’s spokeswoman Liz Johnson pointed out he wasn’t happy with the move.

“As Senator Romney expressed yesterday, he has concerns with this approach,” Johnson said. “This is a serious and complex issue that requires careful review, and he’ll be studying this in depth in the coming days and weeks.”

The Washington Post ranked the seven Republican senators most likely to buck the president on the emergency declaration and Romney came in at No. 5 most likely and Lee at the No. 4 spot.

“This could be Romney’s big moment to take a stand against the president, but, despite his critiques of the move, he has been fairly neutral in his condemnations of it,” wrote the Washington Post’s Colby Itkowitz.

Lee, as noted, dislikes federal overreach as does his colleague, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has already said he will vote for the resolution against Trump’s order.

“Lee could really go either way, but if he sticks with his convictions, he will vote against the president,” Itkowitz wrote. “Lee also likens himself a constitutional purist.”

The No. 1 GOP senator likely to defect, The Post story suggests, could be Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who isn't seeking re-election.

The vote is expected next week as required under a rare, if ever-used move that forced the Senate to take action after House passage.

The Utah Senate passed a bill Friday that would create a permanent funding stream for a seven-county consortium’s efforts to develop major projects for moving minerals extracted in eastern Utah to market.

Over the objections of state Treasurer David Damschen earlier in the day, a Senate panel advanced SB152, which would divert up to $750,000 in Utah’s federal mineral revenues from the state’s Community Impact Board, or CIB, to the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition. The bill is among two that would blunt the CIB’s oversight of how these federal revenues are spent in an apparent effort to fast-track this money into costly “throughput” projects needed to move Utah coal, oil and other mineral commodities

For the past four years the CIB has been supporting the seven-county group with a $3 million grant that is currently up for renewal. The bill sponsored by Sen. Ron Winterton, R-Roosevelt, would short-circuit the CIB’s oversight role, argued Damschen and Jonathan Hardy, who heads that board and is director of housing and community development for the state.

“This bill is problematic,” Damschen said in the single minute he was allowed to testify against the bill Friday, calling it “fiscally imprudent.”

As state treasurer, Damschen holds a seat on the CIB which distributes millions in grants and loans to rural counties to address impacts arising from mineral development on public land.

“The coalition has something of a checkered history in terms of their compliance with the Public and Open Meetings Act, execution of appropriate procurement practices and other issues,” Damschen told the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee, which passed out the bill on a 4-1 vote. “It’s an organization that needs strong oversight and accountability.”

Winterton’s bill, which hours later passed the full Senate, would divert 1 percent of the CIB’s annual revenue to the infrastructure coalition, whose active projects include developing roads, rail and pipelines that would move Uinta Basin crude out of Utah, establishing a nuclear research lab in Emery County, and developing a processing plant tailored to handle the basin’s waxy crude.

“If we don’t get a way to move oil out of the Uinta Basin, the basin will fail,” energy-industry lobbyist Jeff Hartley said in support of the bill. “It’s expensive and it needs funding.”

But such “throughput” facilities are not the sort of projects CIB money is supposed to fund, critics argue. Traditionally this money fixes streets, upgrades water and sewer systems and builds community centers and public safety facilities.

Sevier County Commissioner Garth “Tooter” Ogden supported the bill, saying the coalition has a new board, which he serves on.

“I think we’re going to try to make sure there’s some accountability to what’s going on with these funds going forward,” he said.

Damschen has long raised concerns about the seven-county group’s reliance on CIB money and how it conducts business.

Winterton, a former Duchesne County commissioner who served on the seven-county coalition’s board, originally sought to boot Damschen off the CIB. The initial version of his SB152 would have filled the state treasurer and the Department of Environmental Quality’s seats on the Community Impact Board with representatives from top energy-producing counties and the school trust lands office.

A second bill that would reduce CIB oversight is sponsored by the coalition’s former executive director, Sen. Ralph Okerlund, R-Monroe. To be heard in committee Monday, SB248 would funnel the entire $53 million balance of the CIB’s new so-called throughput infrastructure fund to an unnamed “bulk commodities ocean terminal.”

With the attorney general’s help, the CIB set up a vetting process for making loans out of the fund, intended to support commodity-moving projects, most famously a proposed coal-loading terminal in Oakland, Calif. SB248 would throw that out the window and hand the fund’s oversight to the Office of Energy Development with a mandate that that office grant the money to an unnamed interlocal agency to invest in an out-of-state export terminal.

A likely impetus for the bill is to facilitate a pathway for Utah coal to cross the Pacific Ocean from a West Coast port. The Utah Office of Energy Development has recently opened a dialogue with Mexican economic development officials to develop a bulk loading terminal for coal at the Port of Ensenada 65 miles south of San Diego.

Jesus invited disciples to put down their fishing nets and start hauling in believers. The catch was a motley crew of outcasts and sinners: tax collectors, prostitutes, cowards and doubters. Yet he was willing to die for them.

This lesson is lost on many of today’s Christian churches. Instead, they slam their doors in the faces of would-be members. The issue is sex. A loudly assertive minority of Christians has shrunk the grandeur of God to the narrow space between navel and knee. No 13-year-old boy was ever half as fixated on sex as the God of modern Christian conservatives — be they the United Methodist leaders who have voted to crack down on same-sex marriage, or the traditional Catholics battling at the crumbling ramparts of a discredited hierarchy.

The good news from Kansas City is that some Christians still read Chapter 8 of the Book of John. That’s where Jesus met a crowd of first-century bedroom police as they were preparing to stone a woman to death for violating scriptural laws against adultery.

“He that is without sin among you,” Jesus said, “let him cast the first stone.”

That’s the sort of humility I encountered here one frosty Sunday night at the Church of the Resurrection, the world’s largest United Methodist congregation. COR is an example of the churches succeeding at Christian evangelism while steering away from right-wing politics. Founded in 1990 in a funeral home chapel, the church now has more than 20,000 members, with average weekly attendance above 10,000 at four locations in and around Kansas City.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton, the soft-spoken, bespectacled founder, reminded more than 1,000 of those members who had braved the cold that night that their mission is to show a welcoming face of Christianity — not the narrowly judgmental version he encountered as a conservative college student. COR’s phenomenal growth proves that a lot of people continue to seek such a welcome.

Some of those seekers are homosexual; most of the others almost certainly have friends, relatives or neighbors who are gay or lesbian. COR’s membership includes at least 20, and as many as 100, same-sex couples, Hamilton said, and over the years the pastor said he has “baptized their kids, I gave them their third-grade Bibles, and I’ve confirmed them.” These families, legally formed under the U.S. Constitution, will be condemned under the strict discipline embraced at the recent United Methodist General Conference. A pastor who celebrates even one same-sex marriage will be subject to a year’s suspension without pay — a punishment more severe, Hamilton noted, than he would receive if he cheated on his wife.

To single out monogamous, loving homosexuals for condemnation is cruel, Hamilton observed. “I am not going to be a pastor in a church that treats gay and lesbian people this way.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

A few miles away, more than 1,200 signatures have been collected from local Catholics by parishioners at St. Ann’s church in Prairie Village, Kan. They’re questioning their archdiocese’s decision to block a same-sex couple seeking to enroll their aspiring kindergartner at St. Ann’s school.

The petitioners politely point out that “the decision to deny a child of God” in this way “lacks the compassion and mercy of Christ’s message.” In response, the archdiocese issued a statement regretting that “same sex parents cannot model behaviors and attitudes regarding marriage and sexual morality consistent with essential components of the Church’s teachings.”

Model behaviors of sexual morality . . . how long after the pope’s emergency meeting to address the worldwide scandal of child abuse by priests was this statement crafted? A few years back in Kansas City, Bishop Robert Finn became the first church leader criminally convicted for failing to report a child-molesting priest. Finn covered up for a man whose computer was loaded with pornographic pictures of parish schoolchildren. Put down those stones, padres, for heaven’s sake.

It’s not as if the faith is teeming with recruits. The share of Christians in the U.S. population, which has been sagging for some 50 years, plunged nearly 10 percent just between 2007 and 2014, according to the Pew Research Center.

Other than success stories such as COR, the rare signs of growth today are mainly among Christians no longer aligned with traditional denominations, and those who define themselves as “spiritual,” but not “religious.” Doctrinal religion is in bad odor; finger-pointing bedroom police are a distraction from the simple but challenging work of loving God, showing gratitude and caring for one’s neighbors.

Christians have been too willing to surrender control of church treasuries, pulpits, broadcasts and publishing houses to sexual obsessives and hypocrites. So it’s heartening to see this principled rejection by Protestants and Catholics alike of false prophets sowing hatred and division. Community and equality, joy and forgiveness are as urgent and attractive today as on those distant shores of Galilee.