♪♪♪ male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by Merit Medical and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you, thank you.

Jason Perry: On this episode of "The Hinckley Report," as the dust settles from the 2025 legislative session, what major themes emerged?

Who are the winners and the losers?

What priorities made it to the finish line?

And what were the major compromises?

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week we have Representative Hoang Nguyen, a Democrat from Salt Lake County and a member of the PBS Utah Advisory Board; Representative Jefferson Moss, a Republican from Utah County and House Majority Leader; and Max Roth, anchor with Fox 13 News.

Thank you for being with us.

We're gonna break down the legislative session a little bit, we had a, you know, it's a little bit in the rearview mirror, a lot of things still happening.

We understand the bills that were passed, but also some actions that might be coming.

But I want to start first with just how many bills you all talked about.

It was a big number right there.

Representative Moss, let's talk about this for a minute because you broke one record this session, 959 bills introduced.

That was a record, although it was not a record in the number of bills passed, 582, although it was close.

Talk about that for a minute.

That's a lot of bills.

Jefferson Moss: Yeah, we hear that every session and, you know, every representative comes up with some great ideas, maybe sometimes not the greatest ideas, but to them they're the greatest ideas, and they want to come and represent their districts or certain perspectives.

And, of course, we allow that, right?

There's no specific way that we say there's no limit on the number of bills.

We've tried to do some things over the last couple of years to minimize that.

You know, being, you know, you get a certain amount of priority bills and trying to say let's focus on those bills.

Jason Perry: Explain what that means because you--individually.

Jefferson Moss: Yeah, so each individual representative, because we have a lot of representatives and a limited amount of staff and there's only so much that they can do, especially if they wait later into, you know, as we get into the session, our lege staff has a lot of bills that they're working on.

And so, we try to help them to prioritize what are the most important things for them to make sure that those do get drafted.

So we make sure those are their first priority.

But we also know that a lot of legislators like to run a lot of bills.

What we've tried to do in the last couple of years to hopefully try to minimize that is we've even tried to bring like topics where we get a lot of interest, elections, whatever those things might be, trying to bring those groups together to say, "Can you work together?

Can you try to maybe bring some of these bills into one bill," right?

There's a lot of discussions like that that we try to do.

But yeah, it's always a challenge with the number of bills that we have.

Max Roth: I would love to hear the perspective from Representative Nguyen about how overwhelming it must be.

When I watch as a reporter, the votes, the bills come up so quickly and then you're--you have to vote within minutes, and these are complex topics.

It must just come at you--.

Jason Perry: How have you handled this because this is quite the introduction?

Hoang Nguyen: It's been quite the introduction, and then a lot of seasoned lawmakers says this is one of the toughest legislative sessions that they've ever had.

So, yay for all us freshmens who came in, right?

You know, when we have that many bills come on that quickly, it is not realistic to be able to read thoroughly all the bills, so we're just looking at the highlights of these bills.

And then on top of that, it reduces the amount of debate time and community inputs that we get when we have so many bills coming.

This year, we passed--well, last year, actually, we passed 591 bills, which is a record in ever in the state history.

This year, we passed nine bills less than last year's record.

That's a lot of bills to pass.

The ability for all these lawmakers to be able to read these bills, understand it, get the input from our constituents, from subject matter experts, it's just not realistic.

So, I don't think it does a service to the state of Utah when we're passing so many bills like this.

Jason Perry: Max, the governor weighed in on this very issue.

It was an interesting comment from him.

He called on the legislation to "ratchet down," those are his words, ratchet down the number of bills so we can have more process and get better outcomes.

That's something he's saying.

It's a little bit of what Representative was just talking about as well.

Talk about that a little bit because, you know, the argument is it might be hampering the amount of time our legislators have to talk about specific bills.

Max Roth: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think I was looking at some of the research I think that the Hinckley Institute did, which said that each bill gets an average debate time of 11 minutes.

Eleven minutes is not a lot of time.

You think about it took me three times that this morning to drive here, and over that course of time to have laws debated and decided is--I can't imagine that there's a whole lot of thoroughness going on.

It must help to have supermajorities because then things go a lot smoother from that perspective.

Jason Perry: This is Professor Adam Brown of BYU that keeps a running tally of these things.

You can go look at that as well.

But Representative Moss, one of the interesting dynamics of the Utah legislature is you have a single-subject rule.

Some people talk about this a little bit.

You cannot do multiple issues in one bill, which may be causing you to have three when you would have preferred to have one.

Jefferson Moss: Yeah, and I, you know, where there's discussion about whether or not we move away from that, the challenge, of course, is if you start to do these omnibus bills, then you get all sorts of subjects that are not aligned in the same bill, and that's when I think you do get some confusion around what is this bill really doing.

So that--but it does create some challenges, right?

We can only do the single bill and that's, you know, maybe something we could look at.

I do want to add, though, a lot of the debate and discussion is in those committees, it's in the interim.

We're having a lot of discussions before that.

We as leadership in our house also have said we want to see less bills.

We're all, you know, we will say that all the time, but at the end of the day, each of our members, you know, gets the right to be able to open the number of bills they do.

The other thing is, we have a lot of bills that really are not complicated bills.

They're, you know, clean-up bills.

We do a lot of those.

And so, sometimes you'll see that and think, well, these are--they're not even really even debating.

Well, it went through the committee unanimous, people all felt good about it, so there's not really a need to have those long discussions.

Hoang Nguyen: You know, that happens the better part of the session, but something that was new to me that happened at the end of the session is when there's a motion to suspend all rules.

And within the last couple of days of session, we are passing bills that did not get committee hearing, did not get proper input, and does not have time for proper debate on the floor.

So, that's where my concern comes in, when we are passing so many bills and we suspend motion of all rules and we don't have committee hearings so we can't actually really dig deep on some of those bills.

Jefferson Moss: So yeah, she's right.

At the very end, they do, both sides, do suspension of the rules, and it's both Republican and Democrat bills on both sides that haven't had the opportunity to get both hearings.

We're very--we scrutinize those.

As they come over, we're both trying to look at them.

But I do think there is a concern about that.

When they don't get that second hearing, you know, that does become a challenge, but you know, that's something that both the House and Senate have agreed to.

And we try to limit that, but it's just suspension of that second committee.

Jason Perry: You certainly kept all of us busy.

Let's get to a couple of these bills.

Max, you're watching so closely some of these themes.

The thing that everyone was talking about even at the heart of these bills was the budget itself.

It was still a $30.8 billion dollar budget, but it was not the amount that people had been hoping.

Talk about some of the big issues in your reporting that seemed to sort of catch the attention of Utahns, the ones that did get funded, and maybe something that didn't.

Max Roth: Well, a lot of the funding conversation was around--there was a lot of conversation around education, and higher education specifically, and that's something that I think the public is going to see play out now.

Those who have students in Utah colleges, a lot of folks are going to see--a lot of folks will agree that we need more technical education and more emphasis on that.

But then, like the flagship university where we're sitting right now, the University of Utah, is more of an institution that is research, liberal arts, those sorts of things, and that is going to suffer because of the emphasis on technical education.

And so, so that was a big budget issue that I was focused on specifically.

Tax cuts, they tend to be popular.

It's a rather incremental change to the income tax cut from 4.55% to 4.5%, and how big a difference that makes in a person's life compared to what it takes from the state budget I think is a big question.

Jason Perry: Representative Moss, that higher education was a big one.

I know I'm connected to it here, but it was a 10% cut and a reallocation so it can stay with the university.

Talk about the backroom discussions about this and what the hope is for higher education, and tie into it this great point from Max about technical education.

Jefferson Moss: Yeah, so I would say it was not backroom.

This is a very openly discussed, you know, through the interim there's a lot of conversation around how do we make sure that higher education is offering the programs that are the most relevant today, right?

We create programs and they go on indefinitely, and over time there's things that become less relevant for that period.

And so, looking and saying, "What are the things that today are still providing the right demand, that the number of students are interested in," so that was the re-evaluation.

So, from the beginning it was always said that the idea was going to be a reallocation, right, that we were going to say, "Let's take some programs," and the Board of Education is the one that gets to help determine those decisions working with their schools, "that maybe there could be programs that are maybe outdated.

There's not the same demand that there used to be."

On the other hand, and I hear this from the University of Utah all the time, there are some highly, highly in demand programs that they just can't--they cannot offer enough courses for them.

So, how do we make sure we're using those dollars the most efficiently and that will have the greatest impact for the state of Utah?

Hoang Nguyen: You know, I agree with the focusing on career ready programs for our students to make sure--our world's changing, technology is changing, jobs are changing, so we need to make sure we are training our students, right?

I spoke with the president of Salt Lake Community College and through this process they have cut 26 different programs that were--did not have high enrollment, that were not relevant to getting students ready.

That being said, you know, the U of U and other institutions, universities, are concerned with if the focus is on technical, does that mean that liberal arts programs, humanity programs will also get cut then?

And I think there's an argument to be said at a university level we want all of those--all those different programs that enriches our lives, enriches our culture here.

And so, that was a big concern if we are going to be focusing too much on technical and not letting our programs that are in arts and humanities thrive at the same time.

Jefferson Moss: And maybe just to comment on that, I don't think that the intention was ever to cut those types of--I was a political philosophy undergrad and I say that all the time.

I use that degree more than anything.

Critical thinking, being able to make an argument, right, those are critical programs.

I, you know, those are the ones that I think are still going to be in high demand.

They get you into law school.

They provide other skill sets.

So, I think it's just looking and saying, "Are these the most needed?"

Versus maybe some that clearly are not having the enrollment that they've had before.

Hoang Nguyen: Well, I'm glad you're saying your philosophy--that you're a philosophy professor because that's a huge--critical thinking is something that I think is getting harder and harder for some folks right now with social media and what's out there.

We need more critical thinkers to be able to go out there and bring more value to our communities here.

Jason Perry: I want to switch gears for just a moment on the judiciary.

We talked about this on the program a little bit.

Max, if we can get through a little bit of the, you know, not necessarily the bill's content per se, but so many of them were proposed and so many of them stalled.

At least, there was a negotiation.

They didn't go forward.

Give us some context on that.

Max Roth: Well, and what we saw--this is, first of all, and I'll be interested in Representative Moss's perspective on this, but the things that precipitated these bills, as far as I understand it, are a series of decisions by the State Supreme Court, largely, that disagreed with the legislature on redistricting, on the initiative process, and on the education and the income tax going towards education.

Those were all losses.

The state legislature went to court, lost, and it--what seems like, and this is why I want this perspective, is it seems like these systems that are in place to make decisions, and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, that's democracy and that's a court.

You go in, and someone wins and someone loses.

It's just the nature of it, and--but, so is it that you lose, and so there must be something wrong with the court?

Jefferson Moss: Yeah, I would say I wouldn't agree that that was the defining reason.

I think what happens is when there's an issue that becomes a high profile issue, members of our body are looking at that issue and it starts to bring up other ideas and other approaches to things.

I think that's what precipitated, maybe that had the conversation going.

When you look at some of these bills, for instance, 512, which didn't make it through, there was a lot of concern and, of course, this is the process that we have.

It goes through a House, it goes through the Senate, it's gotta go through the governor.

That was one that was addressing a problem that I hear about all the time.

"I don't know who I'm voting for.

I don't know anything about these judges.

Is there a way that we can get some additional information?"

The way she started the bill is not where it ended, as you know.

And so, I think it created some of the discussion.

I had one with the Supreme Court, right?

And we were having a conversation saying, you know, the state's grown.

We have more complex needs in the state.

We've looked at other states that have also increased their Supreme Court numbers over the last few years.

Should we consider it?

And sometimes you just open the conversation.

So, we opened the conversation.

But I get the timeliness maybe created that perception.

Max Roth: Well, and when you look at those issues, it's not so much--I mean, information, there's more information available on Utah judges than any state in the country.

It is--I've done a whole lot of reporting on the judicial performance and all that that does, and let me say quickly that this is where I have a little bit of a conflict of interest.

My dad was a judge and my dad was the chair of the Judicial Performance Evaluation Committee after he retired and was largely--was instrumental in setting up the evaluation process.

But it's a process where every single voter can go online, if they have their ballot at home.

This is what I do, is I look up and I read everything about the judges.

There are observers who have watched and evaluated how they do.

There are lawyers who are anonymously surveyed about how these judges perform.

And so, they're--and largely what happens, like in most workplaces, a judge sees the writing on the wall when they're getting bad performance reviews, they're told what the review is, and if it's bad and it's likely that they're going to face a serious challenge, they quit before they have to face that.

Jefferson Moss: Can I respond to that?

Because I think you are--appreciate the fact that you have a little more context.

I will say, every election cycle I get inundated with questions around judges, so I don't think most people know there's a process, and some of those don't think, well I give them whatever feedback I can, right?

I've told them there's different things out there.

But I think that that's been the discussion, is are there ways that we can get more information out?

And I appreciate even some more Democrats have raised a concern.

Is there something else?

Maybe this isn't the right bill.

Is there other ways we can help solve this problem?

Hoang Nguyen: You know, if they are looking for ways to learn a little bit more about the judge they're voting in or keeping in, all we need to do as a state is inform them of how they can do that.

There are resources out there already.

I think the bigger issue here is our Utah Constitution is set up so that there are the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch that should all operate independently of each other and to keep everyone balanced and independent.

That is the biggest part.

What was concerning about all of these bills that was attacking the judicial branch is the legislative branch trying to influence and impact the judiciary branch, and that we cannot have that.

We need to have that division of power and ability to have more of an impartial independent voice when it comes to our judiciary.

Jefferson Moss: Can I speak just one moment on that?

I appreciate that.

We actually have a constitutional right to do--most of these bills were within our constitutional responsibility.

So, when we talk about election of judges, when we talk about the number of Supreme Court justices, all of these things, we actually have that in our constitutional responsibility.

So there is definitely clear delineation.

We appreciate the separation of our branches, but there also is a role for the legislature to play.

Jason Perry: I want to get to a couple of bills, one that's going to be in the--has been in the paper, will continue to be in the paper, and it's related to the governor's power.

The governor has 20 days after the session ends to sign, veto, or can also let a bill go into effect without his signature, so March 27 is coming up pretty quick.

I want to talk about one of these bills that is on his desk right now.

We've seen the governor veto bills in the past.

It's not been a huge number.

Last year, seven vetoes, and then, you know, in 2023, no vetos, so it's very curious.

I want to talk about this flag bill for just a moment because this is one the governor is getting a lot of attention about.

This is House Bill 77, "Flag Display Amendments" by Trevor Lee, essentially says that only allowed flags, and that's designated here, can be displayed in government buildings.

Representative, talk about this for a minute.

Give us a little context on what this bill does and why the governor is getting some pressure to perhaps veto this bill.

Hoang Nguyen: So this bill makes it so that in classrooms or in any of the public schools they cannot display any kind of flags that would show any kind of, I think he called it partisanship, correct me if I'm wrong there, but.

Jason Perry: It has to get to a political statement.

Hoang Nguyen: Unless there's an educational basis for the flag being displayed.

You know, the concern here with this bill is for our LGBTQ+ communities when pride flags are not able to be displayed in classrooms.

I had a lot of constituents, a lot of high school students reach out to me about this bill saying, "These flags, when they are displayed in our classrooms, it offers a safe space.

It's a signaling to us that this is a safe place for us."

When in a world where it's getting less and less safe and there's a lot more bills that are being ran that is obviously attacking this community, that was a little bit safe place for some of our high school students here.

And so, the concern is when we are legislating inside the classroom to the extent of what bills, what signs, what posters can be displayed, that is concerning.

But when you take a look back, I saw a report that said, you know, Sundance, we are the last three places that Sundance is considering, and possibly leaving Park City here.

Sundance brings $132 million to our GDP here in the state when it comes.

When they look at these types of bills that are being ran here, it really makes them pause to think, do we want to come here?

It creates 1700 jobs in the state annually when Sundance comes.

When we lost the outdoor retailers, that brought $40 to $45 million in revenue to the state, and we lost them for four years to Denver.

When we almost lost the NBA All-Stars that brought, I think, just shy of $300 million to the state, these types of bills that we're running have a real big impact and economic impact on our state.

So more than just a bill talking about should we--should pride flags be displayed, it sends a bigger message to the nation when we do these things.

When we talk about bills being vetoed, if the governor signs this bill into place, if we pass this bill, this is gonna be one of the costliest bills we have to our state because of the economic impact that we can possibly lose by passing this bill.

Jason Perry: Representative, let's give some context to this as well.

So, the start of the bill saying you cannot do these flags, it says these are the allowed flags.

It's not just schools, right?

This is all government buildings is where this goes, and the allowed flags are things like flags of countries, states, universities, sports teams, Olympics, right?

So those are the flags that are--instead of a list of all you can't, these are the ones that you can.

Talk about that.

Jefferson Moss: I think the goal was to actually try to get the politics out of the classroom, whatever that flag is.

You want to fly whatever the thing is, right?

We've seen a lot of different flags over different things lately that people have been bringing into classrooms.

We don't want any student to ever have to feel weird or different about something they don't need to talk about their agendas, their politics, whatever that might be.

Our whole focus is these are government funded.

Let's keep the politics out.

Whether it's a MAGA flag, a pride flag, whatever that is, we just think that let's focus on the flags that are the state's or the government's that are not going to create division in our classroom.

Max Roth: I think one thing that it--that the message that is sent, and I think it's intentional and so it's not necessarily--so it's not necessarily a mistake, is simply, and what the message that, Representative Nguyen, you're saying your constituents are hearing--is hearing--are hearing is that the pride flag is being defined as a partisan flag, and that's probably true in Utah.

That's probably, when you look at the broad sweep of the Utah public, there are folks who think that a pride flag is a political statement about a subject that is up for debate, which is whether gay rights should be emphasized.

And so, I think that's what that states, is that that's the case.

And then, is that what the intention, to send that message, that our message is that a flag that's for gay rights is partisan.

Jefferson Moss: Yeah, and I, and again, I think the focus where they went to is the right focus.

Let's focus on the flags that we all agree on, the state flags, the national flags, the things that we all support, things that we all agree on.

I don't think the classroom, especially K-12, that should be a topic that they need to even have a conversation about.

Max Roth: Yeah, I don't agree on a BYU flag being in--no, I'm kidding.

Jefferson Moss: You can say that, I don't know.

We're at the U right now, so maybe.

Hoang Nguyen: And where this bill extends it to city and government buildings, too, that's a concern, you know, if we're saying it's--we want to keep it out the classroom, but now telling other elected officials who are running municipal cities what they can and can't do, what flags they can and cannot display, that's a concern.

Jefferson Moss: Again, these are government buildings that are funded by taxpayers.

That's why we're saying let's keep the politics out of government buildings.

Jason Perry: Okay, we'll watch what happens with this one.

I want to get to one more issue that is coming after the session.

We're starting to talk a lot about referendums.

All right, Max, let's start with you a little bit here because there is a potential referendum happening out here on labor unions.

This is the public sector labor union bill by Representative Jordan Teuscher.

So what they have to get is 140,748 signatures.

That's 8% of all registered voters in Utah and 15 of the state's 29 counties.

It's a high bar.

Max Roth: It's the highest bar in the country.

There's no state that has a higher bar than that to get something on the ballot.

It's likely that they'll succeed because we're talking about the teachers unions and we're talking about public safety largely, fire and police.

Those are the public unions that have some sway in Utah and that there are a lot of them and they're all over the state.

So, it's likely that they could get that done.

Yeah, it was an interesting process.

That was by far the most controversial bill on the Hill this year.

Got the most attention and, you know, it was--again, it's trying to see what is the problem that it's solving, and it seems like the--it really is a statement about believing that unions are just a negative influence.

And that's what the legislature is saying, is that they don't believe that unions are productive.

They don't believe that bargaining, collective bargaining, is a productive way to go about things.

And so, if that's the message, they sent it.

Hoang Nguyen: You know, Max, if I may jump in here, I saw that same report that you were talking about in terms of how many bills are passed and how many--how much time we're dedicating to debate those bills on the floor.

The HB 267--am I getting that right?

The union bill had the most--our average debate time was 11 minutes per bill.

That bill, the union bill, had over 100 minutes dedicated to debating on the floor.

More so when you say it's getting a lot of attention, we're getting national attention because of this bill.

National unions are very concerned because right now it's just influencing the collective bargaining rights for public sector employees.

The concern is, what's gonna stop there?

That's gonna go to private unions now, public--private sector and start legislating policies around how they can start negotiating laws around union labors.

So that's the concern.

I think they will be able to pass this, the referendum, because we're getting attention on a national level and they're gonna pour all of their efforts and resources into Utah to make sure that we get those signatures that we need in order to protect the rights of our citizens to be able to collectively bargain in unions because we don't want it to go any further than HB 267.

Jason Perry: Our last 20 seconds, Representative.

Jefferson Moss: Last 20 seconds to answer that question?

Well, first of all, I think that's a big leap to say we're gonna jump to private, this is dealing with public unions.

This is dealing with a very small group of districts and unions in the state of Utah.

The ones that do collective bargaining is a small number.

The problem you have is the majority of our state does not have--if you take the UEA, my area is 30%.

You have 30% of the teachers that are members of that union that actually are having an input on that.

We would like to see more voices.

It doesn't say they can't--unions can still have the discussion, the debate, but we want to bring more people to the table, bring more voices to those processes of how they get paid, what their work environment looks like.

Jason Perry: Gonna have to the last comment.

Thank you for your insights and thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast on PBSUtah.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by Merit Medical and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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