Salt Lake County | featured news

Gov. Gary Herbert holds his monthly news conference Thursday — with crime, addiction and homelessness in Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande district expected to be a hot topic.
Herbert and House Speaker Greg Hughes joined other state and local leaders Wednesday for a closed-door “frank” discussion of the problem that has been punctuated in recent days with homicides and assaults.

South Salt Lake • After fracturing her neck in a car crash 15 years ago, Pamela Cabagnolo began what she called a downward spiral of opioid use.
She took the drugs to get up in the morning, to go to work. She popped pills for her pain until she went to bed at night. Cabagnolo said she took her pills to exist — a circumstance she decided to remedy last year with a trip to Colorado to try medical marijuana and treat her pain.
“I have a right to feel good. I don’t want to be a drug addict,” said th...

Utah legislative leaders are proposing to hire the top lobbyist for the LDS Church to head their Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel (OLRGC), which provides legal and policy review for proposed legislation.
They are proposing to hire John Cannon to replace Michael Christensen, who is retiring after leading OLRGC since 2000.
Cannon has been a lobbyist for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 2012 — with the title of director of community and government affairs — an...

<iframe src="http://www.sltrib.com/csp/mediapool/sites/sltrib/pages/garss.csp"

The West Jordan City Council appointed city attorney David R. Brickey to serve as interim city manager in a unanimous vote Wednesday evening.
Brickey, who had worked for West Jordan as city attorney, takes over for Mark Palesh, who announced his retirement July 14.
Palesh will take an advisory role for a few months during the transition, according to a news release.

A man is dead after a crash in St. George on Wednesday morning.
Tyler Charles, 32, was driving a truck on State Route 7 between St. George and Hurricane just before 7 a.m., according to the Utah Highway Patrol. The truck driver swerved and overcorrected before it crashed off the road and landed upside down.
Charles, from Fredonia, Ariz., was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the truck. He was declared dead at the scene.

Washington • The House passed an amendment Wednesday proposed by Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, that would allow members of Congress to use their office funds to provide security at their personal homes.
Love’s move comes after the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and threats against members, including Love.
The Utah Republican also noted on the House floor that someone had posted her address on social media with the statement, “We’ve signed your death certificate.

Washington • Senate Republicans lost round two of their efforts to gut Obamacare on Wednesday and now may look to what Washington is calling a “skinny repeal” that would toss out mandates that Americans buy health insurance and that businesses with more than 50 employees provide insurance plans.
The legislation would leave intact most of the remaining provisions of Obamacare, formally called the Affordable Care Act.
Sens. Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch of Utah both voted Wednesday to repeal Obamacare ...

For the second time in recent years, the University of Utah was not ranked among the top 79 U.S.

One person was dead after a high-speed chase ended with a pickup truck crashing into a semitrailer near the mouth of Sardine Canyon in Cache County on Wednesday.
Utah Highway Patrol had started chasing the pickup driver at 1:30 p.m., and the truck crashed one minute later, at 6200 South on U.S. Route 89 in Wellsville, according to Logan police Chief Gary Jensen, whose department was investigating the crash.
Jensen said he did not immediately know why UHP was chasing the pickup driver.
The pickup...

For 20 years, Sue Robbins and Angie Rice served their country in silence.
Robbins was a tank gunner and satellite communications specialist in the U.S. Army; Rice a Navy pilot.
Neither was able to live or serve openly as a transgender woman, as both do now.
On Wednesday, the two women said they were left stunned by the news that President Donald Trump had ordered the reinstatement of policies that had barred transgender people from serving openly in all branches of the military.
“I am in mourni...