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Rebooting Utah's State Flag Isn't Working Out So Well

A replacement alternative was rejected for being too 'corporate'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 15, 2019 12:53 PM CST
Updated Feb 17, 2019 3:40 PM CST
Utah Lawmakers Reject 'Corporate' New State Flag
Out with the old (seen here), in with the new? Maybe not any time soon.   (Getty Images/MikhailMishchenko)

Utah is mulling a redesign of its state flag, but so far the process has fallen under the lamentable "best-laid plans" category. Two separate bills were recently introduced to lawmakers that would pave the way for a new flag, but a House committee has already offered what KSTU calls "withering critiques" on the first flag suggestion and seems ambivalent on the second. The first flag, created by Richard Martin and his son Jonathan, shows a rendition of the state beehive emblem, along with the date "1847"—a sleeker, simpler version of the current flag (you can view the proposed flag in the KSTU gallery). But the adjectives used to describe it by Rep. Travis Seegmiller include "sterile, uninspiring, and corporate."

And Rep. Jon Hawkins points out that 1847 isn't when the state of Utah came to be (that would be in 1896; 1847 is when Brigham Young and his Mormon clan first settled down in the Salt Lake Valley). The Wednesday meeting on the flags adjourned before the committee could make a final decision on that bill. The second flag redesign bill—in which a commission would recruit new designs based on public feedback—didn't face quite as much resistance as the first one, but one eyebrow-raising observation that may have stalled it from moving forward: It seemed like overkill to have 22 people sitting on that commission. The sponsor of that bill, Rep. Stephen Handy, says he'll make modifications to his proposal based on the committee's suggestions and resubmit it, per the Salt Lake Tribune. (More Utah stories.)

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