♪♪♪ 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 session enters its third week, lawmakers negotiate hot button issues; amid a tight budget season, state leaders prioritize funding requests; and Utahns weigh in on national headlines.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason: 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 Steve Eliason, a Republican from Sandy and parliamentarian in the Utah House; Senator Jen Plumb, a Democrat from Salt Lake City and Senate Minority Assistant Whip; and Robert Gehrke, a reporter with the Salt Lake Tribune.

Thank you for being with us.

The third week of the legislative session is in the books, and a lot of bills have come out, some that have imported all across the state.

I want to start with a couple that really caused some headlines first.

I want to talk about unions if we can go there first, Representative Eliason.

This is House Bill 267, Representative Jordan Teuscher, that essentially eliminates collective bargaining in the state of Utah, has a lot of implications.

Give us some of the context for this bill.

Rep. Steve Eliason: Yes, certainly.

So, this is actually the third year that Representative Jordan Teuscher has run this bill, and there's been a lot of changes that did pass last night from the Senate in its original form.

A lot of interest from firefighters, police officers, teachers, I think what a lot of people maybe don't realize is that collective bargaining is done on a very limited basis.

I think there's only one fire department, one police department, a number of school districts that still do this.

The unions will, if the bill is signed by the governor, will still exist and have an important role to play.

But yeah, there has been a fair amount of controversy with this bill.

Jason: Senator Plumb, let's talk about these groups.

So, it's all government owned organizations, so this is public education, you have law enforcement, fire departments, public transportation.

There was a moment here where there was a lot of negotiation going on.

Talk about what happened there and how we got back to this original bill.

Sen. Jen Plumb: You know, and I can honestly say I'm not 100% certain what happened behind those closed doors because it felt like we were making some progress and some steps and the stakeholders were being allowed to put some conversation points in, and perhaps negotiate out some pieces that felt better to them, but in the end it feels like there was just a shutdown and it went back, as Representative Eliason said, pretty much to the original version.

I really struggled listening to dialogue on the floor that was these unions and these collective bargaining pieces are harming the workers, but then having literally thousands of emails coming in from people saying, "This bill is harming me.

My unions are not harming me.

This bill is harming me."

And so, I really couldn't wrap my head around whether I was supposed to listen to the people in my body or whether I was supposed to listen to the people who would be impacted.

And ultimately, for me, it came out that I was listening to the people who felt impacted; our fire fighters, our police departments, our teachers.

Robert Gehrke: It was interesting to watch this because Senator Cullimore was really trying to get the unions on board with this bill with the with the compromise version of this bill, but you know, some of the unions didn't want to get there.

They didn't want to bargain.

They didn't want to negotiate their rights away, and some of the unions that were on board didn't want to--weren't coming to the table or--he wanted to have a news conference where they could all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

And when it wasn't getting there and he said he was getting mixed messages, he decided to just scrap the negotiated bill and run the original bill that ended up passing the Senate yesterday.

And if you talk to, you know, the firefighters, for example, they say that Utah, it makes Utah less safe because the firefighters aren't going to have those contractual protections if they want to raise safety issues.

You know, the--I talked to the head of the AFL-CIO yesterday after the bill passed, asked if they're considering doing a referendum on it.

This would be a ballot initiative to repeal the bill, and he said that's something that he would like them to do.

You know, that's not a guarantee that they're going to try to do it.

The bar to run a referendum is pretty high in this state, but it's something that's still on the table.

Jason: Representative, talk about that for just a minute, you know, this is not exactly a question for the parliamentarian, but let's talk about the procedure anyway because there's a conversation.

It did not pass with enough margins, as Robert said, to escape maybe a referendum or necessarily even a veto override.

Steve: Yeah, so the magical numbers are 38, 15, and 1.

You need 38 votes in the House, 15 in the Senate, and then the governor's signature.

If the governor vetoes a bill, if it could be over overridden by the House and Senate, and currently, it didn't pass with a large enough vote count to, you know, potentially not be overridden.

So, that's still up in the air and we'll see where that goes.

Jason: Yeah, I'm not convinced-- Robert: This whole saga is over yet either.

I think the governor could still kind of.

I don't think he's going to veto it, but I think I could see him potentially working with the Senate and the House to say, "Okay, I'll veto this bill.

We'll go back to the negotiated compromise bill and pass that one, and I'll sign that."

I think there's still an opportunity for him to kind of have some influence and help shape this.

Jason: And Senator Plumb, just really quickly before we leave this, and some groups are still pushing for that, the UEA in particular seems like they may be trying to do a little bit of a rally on the Hill to talk about this and trying to pressure the governor to intervene or maybe veto.

Jen: It feels that way to me too, and our email inboxes are absolutely still overflowing, and people are very passionate about this, and I don't blame them.

I mean, when it feels like you've had something and you then feel like it's taken away from you, it brings out passion.

Robert: And as your reference, there's going to be a big rally by the time this airs have already been held, but when the UEA shows up on the Hill, they usually bring thousands of people and so it's gonna be a pretty big showing, I suspect up there this afternoon.

Jason: It is Education Week, right?

Steve: Friday is Education Day on the Hill, yes.

Jason: Okay, I want to talk about a couple of election bills, and I want to start with you, Representative, because you're sort of the person that has started vote-by-mail in the state of Utah.

People might not realize this, but this was your legislation that started this.

But we have several bills that are impacting that legislation, particularly when it comes to sort of the process.

I want to talk about a couple of them and you give us some comments.

The first is Representative Jefferson Burton, this House Bill 300 amendments to election law that says that ballots have to be mailed to voters.

They must be returned in-person unless you apply in-person ahead of the election to submit through the mail.

And also you have to show your ID when you turn in your ballot.

Talk about that a little bit and how this might work in conjunction or maybe not at all with kind of what you developed.

Steve: A constituent brought this idea to me many, many years ago, and since it's been in place, voter participation is up about 30% in Utah.

It's been very, very popular.

House Bill 300 still seeks to maintain a component where they would mail the ballots out, and the one thing people really like is the time to be able to put their ballot on the table, sit around with their family and friends, and talk about candidates and issues.

That part would still be there.

The part that is still being discussed is how to return the ballot.

There's questions about how reliable the post office is.

There were two legislative audits indicating some issues with signatures.

So, we're still--it's past committee.

It hasn't come to the House yet.

So, there's still negotiations going on.

Some concerns about if you are, you know, older or immobile and can't return that ballot in-person, you know, what about those people?

So, there's still a lot to discuss on this bill, but the one thing that's for sure, and I've done this myself, we always want to make elections better and instill greater confidence that we have a very reliable and safe election system in Utah.

Jason: Senator Plumb, talk about where this is, because the Senate is going to have to weigh in on this a little bit, and it's been a body that has not really historically kind of chipped away at some of these issues with mail-in balloting.

Jen: You know, it's interesting, and we talked a little bit about it before, but there are a lot of bills coming over from the House that we haven't seen yet in the Senate.

So, bills start in the House, they go through committee and then they go to the floor, and they come to Senate committee and tend to then to the Senate floor.

And so, we hear a lot of murmurs about things.

I would say that from our committee experience, the Senate is less prone to make waves in this space, it feels like to me.

I don't have any concerns about mail-in ballots.

I think that Representative Eliason alluded to something that matters to me, and that is accessibility, and the ability for people to vote despite whether or not they can drive or whether or not they have challenges physically to vote.

I have no problem with mail-in ballots, and I kind of wish we would get over it.

Robert: It's interesting talking to Senator Mike McKell.

He's sort of going to be the point man for the Senate on this issue, but he's pretty ardent that they're not going to get rid of vote-by-mail.

The Senate's committed to maintaining vote-by-mail and trying to add some security measures in there.

You mentioned the audit that that they found five ballots that were cast over the course of three elections that might have been fraudulent, two from dead people, three were duplicates.

But at the same time in Utah County this last election there were 119 more ballots cast in-person than than were on the voter rolls.

And so, there are problems with both systems and I don't know that you're going to necessarily have a foolproof system because the fools are so ingenious, right?

So, I think there's--I think that the Senate is committed to keeping vote-by-mail.

They said 80%.

They did some polling.

They said 80% of Utahns want to keep vote-by-mail.

The same roughly 80% also want elections to be secure.

So, it's trying to find a balance between those two.

What we're hearing is that there might be a bill to have people put their driver's license number on the ballots in addition to the signature, a second level of verification, and I know Representative Eliason has talked a little bit about that as a possibility as well.

And just to add that extra verifiable layer of security.

Steve: It is interesting to note that when I passed this bill, it wasn't mandatory, every county has opted in to do this, and currently any county could opt out.

With our current system you can vote in-person, early vote, vote-by-mail.

So, we have a lot of options.

I think all of those would be retained, but you know, we're gonna have a robust discussion on how do we make elections more secure and make sure we keep access for all people.

Jason: One more thing on this, Senator Plumb.

So, Representative Ryan Wilcox, House Bill 351, has this bill that would make Election Day a holiday, to encourage some participation.

Jen: I like the idea of increased participation.

I work in a realm that's a 24/7, 365, so holiday or not, there's plenty of folks that still have to work on holidays, but I kind of like that idea.

I mean, encourage it as being something that everyone should participate and should have ease in participating.

People do leave town on holidays though, so I'm not certain that that gets us entirely where we want to be.

Robert: It seems like if we keep vote-by-mail, you don't necessarily need Election Day to be a holiday, but if you get rid of it, then I guess you make it a holiday so more people can get to the polling places.

Representative Wilcox also has a bill to disband the lieutenant governor's elections office.

That one probably could face some trouble.

The governor said that he is not in favor of that, and the polling has shown that the public likes having an elected official overseeing that office, even though, as we saw with the last elections, it can sometimes get tricky when there are election controversies and the lieutenant governor is directly involved in that election, so.

That's a bill that I think is going to, I'm watching that one carefully.

Jason: Representative, if you have a comment on that or you see where this is going.

Right now the lieutenant governor's office has a responsibility for elections.

This would create another state agency, an entity that would oversee elections with people appointed from the counties and other parts of the state to help oversee those elections.

Steve: Yeah, so a lot of times we'll have an idea put out there that kind of maybe swings far one way.

A lot of times we--some settle in the middle.

Maybe there'd be an option to say, well, if it involves the governor, lieutenant governor, there'd be an independent group or another county clerk that would oversee those types of issues.

Who knows, maybe that'll be the middle path that we reach.

Jason: Okay, I wanna get to a couple other issues.

Interesting in the news, Robert, let's talk about this for a moment.

This bill's dealing with sports and referees.

A very interesting bill, this is Representative Jon Hawkins and this--the origin of this was a personal experience that he had.

This is House Bill 140 assault amendments would create harsher punishments if someone assaults a referee or an official overseeing a sporting event.

Robert: You came to me because you've heard the way I treat referees, is that what happened?

You know, it's an interesting thing because a lot of the times these referees are doing this either on a volunteer basis or getting paid very little.

I've talked to people who've refereed and they just--the abuse that's heaped on them by parents or other competitors.

So, on some level I could see it making sense.

It's a little disconcerting though because there are so many bills this session that have penalty enhancements or sentencing enhancements on--for all sorts of crimes.

And I think it's something like four dozen bills this session are going to add to sentences for various crimes.

And so, we can go too far down the road where we get to the point where we're tacking on, you know, an extra five years for, you know, for this crime or that crime just because we think that this group deserves to be protected more than others.

And so, I think it's going to be an interesting debate.

I suspect there's probably going to be a lot of support for it because I think everybody has seen or heard stories where referees have been treated poorly.

Jason: Yeah, Representative, it's interesting.

So, this would make it an aggravating factor.

So, in the sentencing, the judge can look at this a little bit, but there are some surveys that were done in Utah, 57% of officials have reported sometime when they're officiating being--feeling unsafe in their job.

You know, like this, as we learned in the committee hearing like I'm going to get my life threatened because I called a strike that might have been a ball.

Steve: Yeah, my own son was a referee for youth sports and experienced some of these issues and backed away from it.

So, it's a very real issue.

Interestingly, we have protections, enhanced protections for assaults on elected officials, for health care workers, and so this isn't an unprecedented step, and I think most importantly it'll send a message that it needs to stop.

Robert: Can we get some enhancements for reporters?

Steve: There's no protections currently for reporters.

Jason: You need some more lobbyists.

Robert: They'll actually reduce your sentence.

Jason: I want to get to a couple issues and Senator, if we can start on some of these transgender bills because there there are several, we may see more.

One of them, this is state custody amendments, has to do with juvenile inmates who are being assigned housing based on biological sex, not on identity.

That's the first one I'd like to talk about.

And the second one, House Bill 269, this is Representative Gricius, which would ban transgender students from living in public college dorms based on their identity as opposed to the sex at birth.

Jen: That bill did pass out of the Senate last night, 269 did, and it's been fascinating and also really disheartening for me to watch the last four years.

Every year in the last four years this population has been targeted.

And it is, I think, on some level, it's pretty petty.

I mean, when I look at what we--what happens with our kids in college and I'm a professor, right?

I teach a lot of kids, kind of through that 18 up through 24 year period.

There's a lot of discomfort, period.

You're hanging out with people you've never met before.

You're doing things you've never done before.

You're being exposed to things you've never been exposed to, and I talked about it on the Senate floor.

For me, when I first went to college, I was really uncomfortable with the violence that I experienced and saw on the dorms with the hatefulness, with people misusing substances, there was a lot that made me uncomfortable and I would like to think it helped me develop into a better adult having to learn how to work through discomfort and having to figure out how to navigate spaces that I wasn't familiar with but I was going to find a way to get familiar with.

And so, in this bill, I am really bothered by what to me feels like it was a roommate dispute that completely turned against a very small and very marginalized community, that's our transgender kids.

Robert: When I first heard about this episode up at Utah State, I thought, so one student had a problem with the other student being transgender, they offered to reassign the student who had a problem with it.

I thought that was gonna be it, but of course we live in a very politically charged climate.

Transgender issues are very, they're hot button issues, the type of issues we talk about on the show, but, and so, so of course it became a political football, another one of these sort of things where the legislature felt like they had to step in.

It seems to me that the universities have handled these issues for decades and not without, I mean, without major problems and so now, you know, but now we live in sort of a different political climate, I think, and so this became an issue that the legislature had to step in on.

Jason: Okay, I want to get to a very interesting one.

It's about license plates, but it's so interesting this has become something we're talking about.

Many people like to get their their special license plate, your University of Utah license plate, for your school, whatever it is, but there is a cap about to be placed on the amount of money you can generate from these license plates.

And of course, the one that seems to be in the target is the black license plates everyone's seeing around the state of Utah.

So, this cap is at least right now in the way it's drafted, puts a $300,000 limit on what you can make.

So, talk about this for just a minute because it's very interesting because the black license plate has made millions of dollars for the Historical Society.

Steve: Yeah, that plate has been successful beyond our wildest dreams, and that now there's concerns of the Historical Society, which is a very important organization, is--has more money than they know what to do with.

So, I think it's a good discussion that we have a lot of special group license plates.

I actually passed one of the most recent ones, the Live On suicide prevention license plate, and what a lot of people don't know is that when they check that box to get that plate, the biggest part of the fee is going to the organization, whether it be the University of Utah, or the Live On campaign, goes there.

And so, I think we'll have a robust debate because nobody anticipated the Historical Society getting rich over this plate, but it's nice that we've offered so many options and that citizens are taking advantage of it.

Jason: Robert, you have a comment on this because-- Robert: All the history is going to be preserved now because of these license plates.

I like the license plates.

I tried to get one, but there was a waiting list on them.

It feels like maybe we could get the people who designed the Jazz uniforms, those to design new license plates, and everybody will want to get those too, and we're missing in revenue opportunity.

I think in a tight budget year they're looking around for places where they can scrape back some money and try to fund some other things.

And maybe I mean it's a victim of its own success in some ways, this license plate program.

Steve: I will say I think on that plate people have not subscribed to it because they're like I just really love the Historical Society.

They're like, no, I want that plate.

It's really cool.

Where other people are like I really like this cause and want to display it and this plate doesn't display doesn't have the Historical Society logo.

So, I think it's a little bit different.

Jason: And Senator, I don't know if you have a comment on this as well, but the excess money that goes over would go to transportation funds as Robert was indicating goes to other needs in the state.

Jen: I had a license plate bill, my very first session that was for the Great Salt Lake, and we're still waiting for it to get through its final pieces.

I'm hopeful that it's soon, but those funds go towards education and research on the Great Salt Lake.

Boy, $6 million there which should be glorious.

So, so there's kind of an up and down on that, right?

There's some areas where you could really use the money.

Jason: We know where to go now.

Okay, no less, maybe a little more controversial, daylight savings.

We have another bill on daylight savings.

Representative, what's gonna happen here?

This is House Bill 120.

This is Representative Joel Ellison, not your relative.

Steve: Distant relative.

Jason: Distant relative, okay, distant relative right here about time change amendments which is trying to get the state of Utah to join Arizona and Hawaii on standard time.

Talk about this because it comes up almost every year.

Steve: Well, I think like Arizona, Hawaii, if it could make Utah a little bit warmer, I think there'd be greater support for that, but we passed a bill several years ago saying that if Congress allows states to make this move, then automatically we'll move to year round daylight savings time.

But Congress has not acted.

We were assured back then that a bill before Congress was going to pass.

It didn't pass, but the legislation is still there.

This bill allows us to move to a permanent standard time and we don't have to ask Congress for permission.

I think the biggest issue people are struggling with is they just want the clocks to stop moving.

And this would accomplish that and I think a lot of the surveys that we sent out show that, you know, people have opinions on whether it should be standard time or daylight savings time, some very strong opinions actually, but the one consistent theme is generally we just want the clocks to stop moving back and forth.

Jason: Yeah, so we've done some polling on this, the Hinckley Institute, Deseret News, Senator Plumb, and to his point right there whether or not we should move back and forth, it was mixed if you want to stay on daylight savings time or standard time but only 24% of Utah said keep the system we have now of going back and forth.

Jen: I feel like that's what I hear every time that the spring forward or fall back.

I get a bazillion texts of people like, can we stop doing this?

My dogs, my kids, my headache, my all of it, I mean, I agree, I think it's that the change is what sets people off.

Robert: Yeah, if you wanna start a fist fight, this is just take a stronger position, strong position on daylight savings because people are just fired up about it.

But yeah, I kind of tend to agree with the with the people in the poll results just tell us one or the other.

It doesn't change how much sunlight there is during the winter.

I mean, well, I wish it could.

But just tell us one or the other and I'll be there.

I might be 10 minutes late, but I'll be there.

Steve: My biggest concerns about this bill though is if we don't change the clocks, how do I remember to change the batteries in my smoke detector or check my furnace filter?

So, we'll have to deal with-- Jason: You're very responsible, Representative.

Steve: Yes, yes.

Jason: One more interesting issue that's getting a little more time, and maybe through the eyes of a physician too, I'm not sure about this, but this idea of fluoride, this is we're talking about the fluoride in the water.

You know, I didn't realize there's only three.

There's Salt Lake County, Davis County, and Brigham City, the only three places where they fluorinate their water.

Talk about this because this has become a bit--a question people are talking about on the Hill.

Jen: Well, and I think, for me, trying to dive into the actual data and the numbers on it and I've had reach out from several dentists who really do believe that it's improving our oral health and our dental health in our kids in particular.

It's one of those siloed issues that I feel like people have either you're either on the this camp or the that camp without really knowing a whole lot about either of them.

So, I think this one's going to have to do some time and some thought, and I personally admit that I need to look further into what the actual stats are on it because people are very passionate about this, very.

Jason: They are indeed.

Robert: The Utah Dental Association took a unanimous position to oppose this.

They think that fluoride works, the providers seem to think that it works.

Part of what is worth noting on this bill is that the way the law is structured now these water districts can take the fluoride out, but that has to go to a public vote.

Brigham City tried to do it just recently and the residents voted that down.

They wanted to keep the fluoride in the water.

And so, now you have the legislature coming in and telling these local governments to get rid of it.

Salt Lake County on the other hand, has taken a position, they voted five to four, the county council did to remove it.

So, you know, I mean it seems like there's, it seems like there's a way for local governments to address this issue themselves if they think it's an issue that needs to be addressed.

But right now we've got this legis--we've got the legislature trying to impose a statewide one size fits all policy.

You know, if they don't want fluoride in their water, then don't put fluoride in their water, but if they want to take it out, they can take it out.

But the legislature now is inserting itself into that issue.

Jason: Robert I want to talk about another one of these issues that has some federal implications and local implications, and that is dealing with immigration.

Talk about some of the bills that are coming up right now in the state of Utah that are connected to executive orders coming out of Washington DC.

Steve: Yeah, so a little bit of history.

Many years ago when I was first in the legislature, we passed a lot of immigration bills trying to get some of this authority for the state of Utah.

The feds never gave us that authority and then we eventually repealed the bills, but with a lot of the action happening in DC, there there are discussions about, well, what does that mean for us?

What role does local law enforcement have to play?

There's discussions about if there are additional people being brought into custody.

Where they're going to be housed?

We already have jail crowding issues and so there's still a lot of discussions happening on this, but those are some of the issues that are starting to brew.

Jason: Okay, Robert, in our last 30 seconds, the Attorney General for the state of Utah, Derek Brown joined a brief filed by 18 other Republicans to support that executive order ending birthright citizenship.

Just a couple of minutes on that.

Robert: Yeah, this is a birthright citizenship order has been put on hold by courts both in Seattle and in Maryland.

And there's real questions about the constitutionality of it.

It was an interesting one for Derek to get involved in right out of the gate because he's the new guy.

A lot of the Republican states even didn't get involved in it and so, and it goes against what Governor Cox said earlier because Governor Cox said he thinks that birthright citizenship is in the Constitution.

And so, you know, it sets up this sort of loggerheads there.

Jason: It's gonna have to be the last comment.

Thank you so much for your insights this evening and thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

The 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.

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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