IRON COUNTY – Two different legislative initiative petitions are circulating the state, one online and one door-to-door.

Volunteers from Utahns for Ethical Government may be knocking on many Iron County residents’ doors in the next couple of months trying to get signatures for their petition, while the Fair Boundaries initiative has gone high-tech, offering an online petition.

The volunteers from UEG will be asking for registered voters to sign a petition for the Utahns for Ethical Government initiative. The group wants to get enough signatures so the non-partisan initiative may be put on the November 2010 ballot.

“The initiative petition must be signed by 10 percent of registered voters that voted in the last governors election,” Iron County petition Co-Chair Doug Hall said. “The percentage is tallied by state senate district, but the petitions must be submitted by county. For Iron County this will require approximately 1,534 valid signatures.”

In the past four years, state legislators have introduced about 70 ethics reform bills, though none have been passed, Hall said.

There is a five-part bill being discussed at the current legislative session that Hall says is a “watered-down version” of the UEG initiative.

The UEG initiative would ban gifts by lobbyists to legislators, ban legislators and candidates from using campaign money for personal expenditures, ban a candidate from giving his own campaign money to other candidates, ban corporations from giving directly to candidates, ban legislators from being paid lobbyists while serving in the legislature and for two years thereafter and place caps on personal and PAC donations to candidates, Hall said.

The initiative would create an Ethics Commission that would hear complaints of ethical violations and create and apply an ethical code to state legislators.

“The legislature is going to keep talking about (ethics reform), but not do anything about it,” Hall said. “(The UEG initiative) is a way to pull the state Legislature into the 21st century as far as accountability goes.”

State Sen. Dennis Stowell, of Senate District 28, cautioned residents to make sure to read the UEG petition before signing it.

“As I read the petition, it appears we are setting up an unelected ethics commission who is accountable to no one,” Stowell said. “The petition excludes the courts (judicial branch), the governor (executive branch) or the legislature from having authority over them.”

Stowell said he wants to make sure people understand what they are signing and what the consequences may be if the initiative is passed.

“I am always in favor of elected public officials over unelected,” he said. “They are accountable to the voters.”

Hall said he has a few volunteers going door-to-door right now, but will be setting up some tables around the county soon where residents can sign the petition as well. Anyone who would like to volunteer to get signatures or anyone who is interested in signing the petition can contact Hall or his fellow co-chair, Melanie Hirschi, by sending an email to info@icatutah.org or calling 867-4544 or 586-8856.

The Fair Boundaries initiative and corresponding petition addresses the redrawing of Utah’s congressional and legislative boundaries that will occur this year.

Initiative leaders want to prevent legislators from creating their own boundaries, and thus “choosing their own voters,” the Fair Boundaries website reported. They plan to create an 11-member independent redistricting commission to eliminate what they believe to be conflicts of interest and possible gerrymandering.

There will be no door-to-door volunteers for the Fair Boundaries Initiative petition, as the petition is available online for signatures. Those interested in signing the Fair Boundaries petition can visit www.fairboundaries.org. Also, call 867-4544 or email info@icatutah.org for more information.