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With three weeks to go until the Republican primary, Provo Mayor John Curtis has tightened his grip on the lead in the special election to replace former Rep. Jason Chaffetz.
The latest Salt Lake Tribune-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll shows Curtis trouncing his competitors by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
“When the voters go into the ballot box, you want them to be able to look at the names and recognize one of them,” said Jason Perry, the institute’s director.

I am a Utah man, sir, so it was troubling to see my alma mater, the University of Utah, becoming the latest American university climbing into bed with the Koch Empire.
The Charles Koch Foundation joined the Eccles family last week to announce a combined $20 million donation to establish the Marriner S. Eccles Institute for Economics and Quantitative Analysis. It was hailed by U.

Heavy rain overwhelmed storm drains along the Wasatch Front early Wednesday, flooding and closing down numerous low-lying intersections and reducing much of the morning commute into a crawl.
Public safety dispatchers were swamped, too, mobilizing police from Draper north through South Salt Lake, Murray, Milcreek, and Salt Lake City proper to answer calls for help from motorists stranded or stuck in water a foot deep or more.

As Riverton City looks to take the next step toward creating its own service district area for police protection, it may trigger a bigger exodus from the taxing district set up to fund the Unified Police Department as a regional law-enforcement agency.
The Salt Lake Valley Law Enforcement Service Area (SLVLESA) was formed a decade ago and includes unincorporated Salt Lake County and its various townships, along with the cities of Riverton, Herriman and Millcreek.

Where state Sen. Jim Dabakis was viewed as a willing watchdog with little experience to inform his bark, the Salt Lake City Council decided that Alex Cragun checks both boxes.
Cragun received the council’s unanimous approval Tuesday to represent the city on the Utah Transit Authority’s board of trustees — after about four years of appealing to that group to more seriously consider their customers.
Cragun traces his advocacy to a single night.

At a yellow kiosk on Gallivan Plaza, visitors scrawled their favorite Utah memories on postcards and stuck them to a large map of Utah.
“It’s kind of sad,” one visitor said as he completed his card and added it to the “Letter to Utah” on Tuesday night at the final annual Outsiders Ball in Salt Lake City before the Outdoor Retail convention relocates to Denver after more than 20 years in Utah.

A 61-year-old Taylorsville man was charged Tuesday with starting the 71,000-acre Brian Head Fire that destroyed 13 residences and cost about $34 million to fight.
Robert Ray Lyman was charged in 5th District Court with a count of reckless burning, a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

A state ethics commission dismissed a complaint filed against a candidate in one of Salt Lake County’s hottest municipal races on Tuesday after commissioners found the complaint to be “political.”
The Utah Political Subdivisions Ethics Review Commission moved to dismiss a complaint filed against Michele Weeks, a Draper City councilwoman who is challenging incumbent Mayor Troy Walker, according to Brooke Harkness, executive director of the commission.
“One today got dismissed,” said Harkness, ref...

Washington • Sens. Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch joined fellow Republicans Tuesday in voting to proceed to debate a health-care overhaul, though the two Utah Republicans disagree on a replacement for Obamacare.
And they’re not alone.
With Vice President Mike Pence breaking a tie in favor of debating health care, the Senate will now take up several options to jettison Obamacare — formally known as the Affordable Care Act — and possibly replacing it now with a new GOP-written law or postponing any rep...

A 12th case of E. Coli has been reported in Hildale, as officials ask those who have had diarrhea recently to contact the Southwest Utah Public Health Department.
The department reported last week that another E. Coli case was confirmed in the small Utah-Arizona border community.
The outbreak began last month, and has killed two children. Health officials previously said this strain of E. Coli is known to cause kidney failure in children.
In a Facebook post, health officials said they had inter...