Once again, Utah legislators are showing they're not content to use the levers of power just for the public good. Some insist on sending messages.

The "message bills" do not really address any pressing problem. They're just a way for a senator or representative to grandstand on an issue to make himself look good to some segment of his constituency.

Sometimes the motive is to appear to be working. Lacking anything worthwhile to say, some will just pick a subject that will push people's buttons. Others seem to believe that the more bills they sponsor, the more productive and effective they appear.

Here are some examples of message bills currently on Utah's Capitol Hill.

Sen. D. Chris Buttars's proposal to require public school teachers to counterbalance any statement about the origin of life or evolution against other "theories." The trouble is that there is no theory of life's origin, and evolution is an observable fact. The West Jordan Republican's bill is really a clever way to inject religion into the classroom, which he tried to do earlier with "intelligent design."

Sen. Howard A. Stephenson, R-Draper, wants the Utah Legislature to pick the candidates who will eventually run for U.S. Senate. Stephenson says the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which ended the practice of legislatures appointing senators and opted for the people, was a horrible mistake that cost state governments representation in Congress. In truth, his bill is a horrible mistake that stands no chance of going anywhere.

Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, proposes to ask Congress to rename Hill Air Force Base in Ogden to Reagan Hill Air Force Base, in honor of Ronald Reagan for his work on the Cold War, even though Reagan's own military experience consisted of making movies during World War II. By contrast, Hill's namesake, Maj. Ployer Peter Hill, was one of the Army Air Corps' first test pilots and flight instructors and was killed testing the prototype of the B-17 bomber, the plane that would hammer Hitler's Fortress Europe into oblivion.

Sen. Parley Hellewell, R-Orem, is sponsoring a resolution stating that students can pray in school if they want, even though there is no law that says a student cannot pray. The law only bars schools from organizing prayers.

Another Buttars message bill is his attempt to outlaw gay-straight alliance clubs in Utah schools. The Legislature went down this path 10 years ago when Salt Lake City's East High organized one. In the end, lawmakers learned that the clubs were constitutional under equal access laws and could not be blocked.

There are problems with these kinds of meaningless bills.

First, they contribute to the logjam of legislation that lawmakers have to work through in a short 45-day session. In a given year, legislators usually pass about 400 bills -- and many of those at the last minute. There are about 800 bills introduced each session. Some never see the light of day while even good bills can languish in the system while one of the message bills gets all the attention.

Second, bills are not cheap. A senator or representative just doesn't sit down at his or her computer and write up a bill. It has to go through at least one legislative attorney, who reviews it for possible legal problems and determines where it fits in the Utah State Code. If the bill involves money, then legislative accountants have to calculate the cost to the public.

Then the bill goes to the printers, who have to make enough copies for anyone who asks for one.

In the end, it takes quite a bit of time and money to move a bill. Message bills are a waste of both. Unfortunately, too many lawmakers in both houses simply shrug and offer a lame excuse which boils down to "We don't want to say our colleagues are idiots." And so the message bills roll on.

The ideal solution would be to limit lawmakers to three bills each. This would reduce the workload to 312 bills a session and force lawmakers to think carefully (like the guy who finds the genie) how they are going to use their three "wishes."

Until that happens, lawmakers should ask themselves if writing a law is really the right way to tackle a particular issue. For instance, Buttars reports being told of how a child who was exposed to the theory of evolution had lost her religious faith. That sounds more like a problem for her family to deal with through better religious instruction in the home, not for a bill that plows religion full-steam into secular public schools.

We ask those inclined to run message bills to show a little more statesmanship. It's a perverse mind that is willing to hijack the limited time of the Legislature for measures that don't accomplish anything except to make a few people feel warm and fuzzy.