In 1886, Judge Gideon J. Tucker told a widow that her attorney had given her bad advice about her husband’s will because the advice did not reflect changes to inheritance law that were passed during the previous legislative session. The judge concluded, “No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the Legislature is in session.”

The Utah Legislature is now in session and we citizens need to heed Tucker’s warning. One measure of how safe are our lives, liberty and property is the Economic Freedom of North America Index, in which Utah’s economic freedom score dropped, pushing us from fourth last year to seventh this year compared with the other states.