Coalition works Hill to help Utah's poor

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb 7, 2004 | by Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News

A lot of people up on the Hill know her as The Church Lady. But don't expect her to be some pursed-lipped woman (or, conversely, some ironic guy dressed up like a pursed-lipped woman). Linda Hilton, coordinator of the Coalition of Religious Communities, is funny and bold -- and passionate about what religious people can do to make the world a more just place.

During January and February she spends her days at the Capitol, lobbying for issues like the payday lending bill and hate-crimes legislation. Twice a week she also acts as a guide for faith communities trying to navigate the choppy waters of the Utah Legislature.

CORC, founded in 1995, is a coalition of 20 denominations -- from Baptist to Unitarian -- interested in issues that affect low-income Utahns. During the legislative session, Hilton invites members of those faiths to come up to the hill to learn how to be advocates for social change.

CORC shies away from such hot-button issues as abortion and school prayer, which may surprise some people who think that people of faith get involved in politics only when there's a moral issue at stake. She guesses, too, that Utah's mostly LDS legislature might think that when other religions get involved in politics they have either far- left or far-right views. "We're trying to be a different voice," she says.

"We're trying to show that we're people of conscience on basic justice issues" such as affordable housing, she says. All religions urge their faithful to take care of the poor, the sick and the elderly. And much social change, she notes, "has come about because of people of faith."

Earlier this week, in a conference room in the State Office Building, she stood in front of a couple dozen Presbyterians and Catholics from the Wasatch Front and northern Utah. In an hour she would turn them loose -- as citizen lobbyists -- on legislators next door in the Capitol, but first she wanted to give them a primer on several pieces of legislation that were big on CORC's radar.

Sometimes CORC itself initiates a bill and finds a legislator to sponsor it; sometimes it simply supports bills that a legislator has already set in motion; sometimes it joins forces to fight a bill it thinks will hurt low-income Utahns. All this lobbying is done by the kind of folks who attend church at places like Brigham City Community Presbyterian and St. Martin's Parish.

"A lot of legislators up here are out of touch," Hilton tells the Presbyterians and Catholics gathered in front of her. They have no idea, she says, how much a $10 increase in a utility bill can hurt a family living in poverty. Hilton, on the other hand, has her office at the Crossroads Urban Center, where she comes face to face with poverty every day.

The three bills that CORC members tackled earlier this week dealt with hate crimes, payday lending and the insurance industry's use of credit ratings to determine eligibility for car or other personal property insurance. Poor people, Hilton says, often have bad credit ratings. But if they can't get car insurance, for example, they can't drive, and if they can't drive they might not be able to get to their jobs. Credit ratings are also used as a justification for charging higher insurance rates.

CORC has been pushing for regulation of payday lenders for several years, with some success in 1999 and 2003. But it has never been able to legislate a cap on annual interest rates, which currently are in the upper 700 percent range, she says. Senate Bill 37, sponsored by Sen. Ron Allen, would cap those rates at a still astonishing 525 percent.

"This is legalized loan sharking," Hilton tells her audience. "Al Capone charged 200 percent interest. Do you see a disconnect there?"

Military personnel are often payday loan customers, Hilton notes. That ought to get the legislators' attention, comments a Presbyterian woman. "I'm just going to let that float," responds Hilton, who has a hard time hiding her exasperation with the collective Legislature. Later she notes: "If they keep hearing the same messages over and over from the different groups of people who come up here, some of them even start to get it."

CORC is in favor of Rep. David Litvack's "Criminal Penalty Amendments" bill that adds enhancement penalties for hate crimes. It is against a second hate-crimes bill sponsored by Sen. James Evans, which is so broad, says Hilton, that it is meaningless and likely to be ruled unconstitutional.

But she has bad news for the Presbyterians and Catholics in attendance this day. "The head of rules has already told me to tell my troops -- everything up here is either sports or military -- that Litvack's bill won't see the light of day. 'So tell your troops to never mind about that,' " Hilton quotes the rules chairman, then grimaces.

Hilton reminds her audience that it's important to be polite when they buttonhole their representatives and senators later that morning.

"No matter how mad you get, maintain your decorum," she says. "If you get too mad, just walk away." You never know when a legislator who opposes you on one bill will sponsor a good bill down the road, she says. Evans, for example, is behind a bill to establish a multicultural health center.