♪♪♪ 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," Governor Cox weighs in on high profile bills, local officials react as state leaders look to make major changes to public services, and legislators debate funding priorities after revenue numbers come in.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ 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 Doug Owens, a Democrat from Salt Lake County and Minority Caucus Manager in the Utah House; Representative Ariel Defay, a Republican from Davis County; and Daniel Woodruff, reporter with KSL 5 News.

So glad to have you here, week 5 of the legislative session, so much is happening, but I want to start with the news that kind of came out that we've been waiting for, which is the consensus revenue numbers.

Almost everything depends on what the actual numbers are, and our legislatures got together.

They've given us the numbers, and Daniel, we'll start with you for just a moment because it's lower.

It's about $112 million lower than the estimates.

Talk about that and what the discussions are now.

Daniel Woodruff: Yeah, I don't want to get too in the weeds and bore all of our viewers here, but there is less money to work with this year, and legislative leaders have talked about in the past what the budget is going to look like, what kind of tax cuts may be part of this year's budget, and as of now, as we've talked to leaders from both parties, they have said it's all up in the air.

They're looking at how to deal with a budget that will have less money than they've had in the past, the economy is still growing but not as quickly as it had in previous years, and there was that real COVID impact in our revenues.

And so, it's less than what they had before, and I think the big question right now we're watching is what kind of tax cut is going to come from this.

Jason: I won't--go ahead.

Doug Owens: It's disappointing to members coming into the session.

We all have our appropriation requests lined up and it was disappointing news to hear that we're not gonna have the money to fund very many of them at all.

Jason: Let's talk, let's talk about how that's gonna work, Representative, because the last time I looked at it, this is over $1.4 billion worth of asks.

Everyone's asking for it, a lot less money.

What are we going to see in the last couple of weeks of legislative session as you start to prioritize based on a lower revenue number?

Ariel Defay: Yeah, we're we're going to have a lot of conversations with members.

I know our caucus is looking at tax cuts.

That's still very important to us.

And what are the most important things to fund.

The good thing to know is Utah's economy is still strong.

We are going to be able to cover our costs and that makes me hopeful as we look at the budget.

I think we hear a lot on this program and on the Hill, "Socks and underwear," right?

It's a socks and underwear budget.

I think the thing to know is that we don't have to throw away our socks and underwear.

We can keep our socks and underwear and I think we're going to look at creative ways to make sure that we have everything covered and we're in a strong position to do that.

Jason: Yeah, let's talk about-- Doug: Can I just throw in there, I think it it calls into question the tax cuts we've been doing in the past few years where we're already a low tax state and we've got some pressing, pressing needs for infrastructure to accommodate our growth.

You know, we've got billions and billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars in water infrastructure need that are gonna be coming due over the next 20 to 30 years.

We got to think hard about whether a tax cut really makes sense.

We certainly want to do it if we got the money, but we do have pressing needs.

Jason: Yeah, I wanna talk about that tax cut for just a moment.

It's interesting you bring up the Senator Jerry Stevenson, who always, he's the one that comes up with the phrases, "Socks and underwear year."

This year, Daniel, he's saying you're just gonna have to wash the underwear from last year.

That's what he's saying a little bit right now, but it does come to this question that you brought up about whether or not we will still see a push for a tax cut even with a revenue near this flat to down.

Daniel: It's clear Republican leaders in the House and the Senate still really want a tax cut, and they have pressed an income tax cut again.

Remember, Governor Spencer Cox has pressed for an elimination of the state portion of the Social Security tax, so you still have that back and forth between the governor's office and Republican leaders.

The other day, President Stuart Adams all but said he still really wants a tax cut.

He was being careful to not promise a particular type of one, but I would not at all be surprised to see again for, I believe fifth consecutive year, another form of income tax cut.

Also, it's important to keep in mind the money for the tax cut has already been set aside by the Executive Appropriations Committee, so it is money that is currently sitting there earmarked for a tax decrease.

Jason: Representative Defay, so that number is $230 million that was set aside by you and your colleagues already for potential tax cuts, and it's what President Stuart Adams said is these tax cuts are still on the table until they're not.

Talk about those discussions because there is the Social Security tax cut and maybe income tax cut that is still on the table.

Ariel: Yes, yes, tax cuts are a priority, and I think that we can attribute a lot of Utah's strong economy to the fact that we have done continuous tax cuts.

I think it's important for our caucus that we continue to support that robust economy through tax cuts.

What we are looking at is a kind of a mixed mode of how are we going to make those tax cuts and how much is it actually going to be and that conversation will be ongoing.

I think the governor's priority and many people, many of our colleagues have a priority of expanding the Social Security, but we're also looking at young families and people who are living on fixed incomes that are living on tight budgets and how do we help them as well.

So, I think we're discussing a mixed approach to what that tax cut would look like.

Doug: And I think we ought to make sure we're taking account of those middle income folks when we do a tax cut, you know, the ones that have been enacted in the last four years have been very rarely they've been so small they really haven't benefited the middle class.

They've been like $10 or $20 a month and which is not a big impact to a family budget, but it has been a big loss to higher ed.

It's been over $100 million in--I'm sorry, not higher ed, but public ed.

So, we ought to think about those impacts and who we're benefiting because those were benefit to our wealthy citizens, those tax cuts, but really not to our middle income earners.

Jason: Okay, I want to get to a couple of bills that are being discussed and we'll even get to some that have passed already, including one of yours that you have passed already, Representative Defay.

I want to talk about the State Records Committee for a minute.

This is something that people hear about occasionally in the press, but this is Senator Mike McKell's Senate Bill 277 that eliminates the State Records Committee that currently is the group that goes through the appeals process for records.

Let's talk about this from the media perspective just a little bit because this is one of the ways the media gets their information is through these records requests.

Talk about how that works for a second and how this plays to this bill, Daniel.

Daniel: Well, the media and the public, this is a public issue.

So, ultimately when you want a public record and you're denied you can appeal it to the State Records Committee.

I've got an appeal pending before the committee right now with the county that has refused a record.

And so, this is not only for the media, but it's for an average citizen who's trying to fight for records.

They will go before the committee, which is made up of a number of people from various aspects of the community, and they decide if the records should be released.

Senator McKell's bill would change that, abolish the committee and have one trained attorney.

Sort of like an administrative law judge saying whether or not the record should be released.

He feels that the process right now with the records committee has been very slow and inefficient.

Now, the Utah Media Coalition, of which KSL is a member, has opposed his bill because they believe the Records Committee has worked very well, and they believe that it is tailored well for helping citizens and the media alike get access to public records.

His bill did previously have some other elements in it that were very controversial.

He did take those out, so all it would do is get rid of the Records Committee and replace it with this one individual.

Jason: I--go ahead, Representative.

Ariel: I was gonna say we are getting numerous emails on both sides of this issue, and I can certainly see both sides.

I think it's interesting.

I had a conversation with a gentleman who was a member of the committee, and he said it was the longest four years of his life because he said the committee is made up of people who don't have legal expertise in this area, they're trying to make decisions, trying to grant all these appeals, and it gets very backlogged and decisions are very inconsistent.

So, I can see where the bill's coming from and the merit.

It'll be interesting what it looks like when it comes out of the Senate and makes its way to the House.

Doug: But we want to make sure whatever we do to streamline that process that we're keeping that open access for the people and the press, representing the people to look at government, and make sure we're not losing any open windows that, you know, we don't want to be closing the shutters for the people to look into how the government is working, so.

I think it's maybe there are other ways to streamline and I worry about having one lawyer who's answerable to the governor on those issues instead of an independent commission.

I think we ought to maintain the independence there.

Jason: Take a moment on that because the committee is replaced with, as you said, someone who has knowledge and experience, experience relating to government records law.

That was the idea and it was to Representative Defay's comment just a little bit as well.

I guess the senator's idea is you get someone who's quite familiar with the law to help take care of these decisions.

Doug: And that's a fine thing, but I still think we got to make sure we're maintaining that decision maker's independence from the governor because we want the executive branch to have open windows for the public as well.

Jason: Before we leave this one, Daniel, through your lens as a member of the press, one of the big issues that you brought up was this balancing test that exists right now.

And it's whether or not the public's interest outweighs the privacy concerns.

That's the balancing test that is normally been conducted by this committee and, you know, also as you start seeing some of these appeals.

Talk about that for a minute because it was gone and now it's back.

Daniel: Well, as I understand it, it was in the bill to take it out, to get rid of the balancing test, and that was really a problematic point for the Utah Media Coalition feeling that that would err on the side of non-transparency and Senator McKell did take that out fairly quickly, and that was not part of his final bill that passed the Senate committee and now is waiting a vote in the Senate.

And advocates for the current process will say that balancing test is critical to tilting toward transparency, toward the public being able to know what their government is doing and how their money is being spent.

Jason: Let's get to another very interesting bill.

These boards and commissions have been something we would talk about in the media, something I look at often also having served on some of these in the past.

This is Representative Jefferson Burton and Representative Owens, we'll talk to you first about this, House Bill 412, and this removes political affiliation.

Often you have you set up a board, you have geographic representation, you have political representation.

This bill gets rid of the political representation part of it for several boards and commissions.

Talk about that for just a minute because we want to get to how these boards function.

Doug: Yeah, I think it's important to maintain some political balance on these commissions that form an important part of our government, you know, we're talking about things like the Air Quality Board, the Solid and Hazardous Waste Disposal Board.

We want those matters of high concern to Utahns on environmental issues to have representations of both--from both parties.

Why wouldn't we want bipartisan look at those issues, you know?

It goes to the larger theme going on in our country right now where we get hyper partisan and we feel like we can't trust the other party.

I've gotten to know 104 people in the legislature very well over the last five years and I love my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

I think we can--even though we have different viewpoints, we can work together and I think that could work on the boards as well.

I think it's important to take account of all political viewpoints, and I sure want both parties weighing in on air quality decisions and stuff like that.

That shouldn't be a partisan thing and ensuring that both parties are in there makes it nonpartisan if you take away that requirement to to take account of party, we're gonna wind up with one party running the show on those boards.

Ariel: I do agree, I think it is important that we have varying viewpoints on those boards and at the same time we have, you know, 400 boards and commissions in Utah, and we have almost 200 open seats currently and the governor has to get those filled and sometimes it's hard to find qualified people to take those seats.

And so, I think it makes sense to try and bring other voices in that can fill those seats and at the same time I think I'm hopeful the executive branch will take into consideration balancing viewpoints.

And so, I think it's a good move and helpful in moving our boards and commissions forward in Utah.

Jason: Daniel, talk about a couple of these pieces because as was just mentioned, there's over 400 boards and Representative Jefferson Burton said what part of the issue and why he's looking at this is because there are so many open spots they're having a hard time filling some of these.

Kind of give us some context there, particularly given there was a similar bill in 2017 that was vetoed by Governor Herbert.

Daniel: Yeah, and I wish I knew more about all these boards, right?

I mean there are so many, and I think for the general public, they don't know a lot about it, but there are a lot of opportunities to serve and those seats do ultimately need to be filled and certainly without taking a position one way or the other on the bill, we do see this from time to time tweaking boards, how the boards work, and ultimately in this case how they are made up politically because at the end of the day a sponsor would argue the seats do need to be filled.

Jason: Yeah, for those who are watching you go to the Boards and Commissions website of the governor's office, start applying, open positions right there.

Let's talk about a very interesting issue that will be discussed this week because we have two universities in the state of Utah who are about to either get a new president or start a search for a new president, and this bill, Representative Defay, if we can talk about this for a moment, Senator Chris Wilson on higher education.

Right now when it comes to picking a president of a university, the practice is you get down to the final three, you make it public, and then you pick your--pick the one who is going to be the president.

This bill right here based on, you know, a lot of discussion is going to say it's only the final candidate that is made public.

Talk about that for a moment because it's Utah Tech and it's Utah State that will be working on a president soon.

Ariel: Yes, as a Utah State Aggie, I am thrilled about this bill.

I think it's a great move.

It allows for people who are in positions in the state to apply without having to be--without having to be scrutinized by the institutions they're coming from.

I think there are a lot of good candidates who are probably, who came from Utah Tech, who came from Utah State, and would be phenomenal as presidents, but feel that they can't apply because the process is public.

So, I love that it makes it private.

I think it opens it up.

I would love to see an Aggie at Utah State leading the charge.

So, I think this is a really good move.

Daniel: You know, Jason, a couple of years ago we saw a very similar bill.

Representative Melissa Garff Ballard proposed a very similar thing and ended up taking this provision out after criticism from the Utah Media Coalition and other groups who argued that this is actually a critical public process that higher education deserves more scrutiny, not less, and therefore there is no reason to hide this process from the public when you're deciding who's going to lead an institution of critical significance.

So, we've seen this bill before.

It'll be interesting to see if it goes forward in its current form or if there are any changes as there were a few years ago when the House proposed a similar one.

Jason: Let's turn to some public education funding for a moment, Representative Owens, start with you.

Senator Lincoln Fillmore has a bill called the Minimum Basic Tax Rate Amendments.

This has to do with school districts getting property tax right now, so it would require the school districts to deposit all their property tax into the general fund, and then the legislature would distribute those funds out based on these formulas that they have.

Talk about this bill and what it's doing.

Doug: I think it's a bill of great concern to me because it takes all those property taxes that have been enacted by local authorities to help their education systems locally and to make up for the shortfall in state funding and education to scoop that back up for the state allows the state to effectively do an end run around the constitutional earmark for income tax to go to education because they're gonna backfill those property taxes with income taxes that should have already been going to education.

So, I think in the long run it's gonna be harmful to public ed funding.

And I think there should be a lot of people who are concerned because those taxes were enacted on the proposition that the funding was gonna go to the public schools and that's to have the state undermine that I think is a big mistake in terms of the public confidence and in terms of education.

I'll just want to throw in one other idea.

I think we gotta look at this holistically how we're looking at our public ed system, you know?

We've enacted over 60 bills in the last five years relating to public ed, all of them on the assumption you can't really trust our teachers.

We got a morale issue with our teachers, and I think we need to do some encouragement of--for the teachers and make sure, you know, we're not losing half-- the fact is now we're losing half of our new teachers in the first five years of their employment.

And so, we got a retention issue.

I think it's time we start putting more money into education, paying our teachers better, reducing class sizes, and I think this bill that we're talking about SB 37, I think is the number that's right, I think, I think it would be a mistake in a line of some other mistakes we've been making over the last few years.

Jason: Representative, maybe give us your take on this because this has passed.

It's on its way to the governor now as well your take on this because one of the provisions is that the districts will still receive their minimum funding amount, which is a set number here too.

But talk about how you view this particular bill.

Ariel: Correct, yes, I--the districts won't lose any money and the WPU, the weighted pupil unit, will not decrease, so that, that is insured.

I think it's a good springboard for having a broader conversation like Representative Owens said about education funding.

I'm a parent of three children who are in education in high school, and junior high, and elementary.

I've done PTA and community council for years and years and education is near and dear to my heart.

I sit on the committee and I think that we do want to boost the morale of teachers.

We want to let them know that they're appreciated and valued because we need them.

We need them for our students.

And so, I think looking at education funding holistically will be important moving forward and how do we balance that with the other needs of the state?

Jason: I want to get to just related to education, Daniel, the Utah Fits All scholarship program.

This is representative Candace Pierucci, is currently in the House right now.

This is this $8000 scholarship for K through 12.

It's interesting, there were 27,000 applications for 10,000 spots right there, but this is really getting to what you can spend the money on.

Talk about that for a moment.

Daniel: Yeah, I know there was a discussion about some parents who were trying to reimburse ski passes for their kids and such, but I think this is, I think that the Utah Fits All scholarship when it was passed, it's been, I think, tweaked and refined every year, and I think this is just part of that.

You certainly have the supporters that would like to see more money going to it.

We already had the money discussion.

We'll see what money is available for that, but I think this is just part of an ongoing process of refining that program that clearly has a lot of demand.

It's also been controversial for those who felt that it takes money away from public schools.

Doug: Let me say about that controversy, Dan, I think it's important to look at that.

It's now $80 million going to these vouchers.

It's a voucher program.

It's money that I think should be dedicated to the public schools.

There's no accountability.

This issue of people trying to get ski passes paid for with that voucher money is really indicative of a larger issue.

There's no accountability required.

It's one thing to give $8000 for a person to home school a kid, another thing to give them $8000 which is how it works, to put their kid in a private school with no mandate for the private school to meet any cert--any qualifications.

We hear of schools getting started up in strip malls by people who are not qualified, and I think it's time if we're gonna have this voucher program, which I don't like to begin with, to be honest with you.

I think we need to enact some greater requirements on what kind of education the kids are getting from those private schools using the vouchers.

Ariel: Yeah, and to that point, I do respect Representative Pierucci, this program came from her.

She championed it and she's also willing to say what are the pitfalls?

What can we do to fix it?

I think this bill makes great strides in making the program more accountable and making sure that we are using taxpayer funds wisely, so I am supportive of the bill.

I'm glad that she has taken the charge in trying to fix any problems that do exist in the program.

Doug: I support the bill as well.

I think it is a good fix, but I think we need to look at the larger issue too.

Jason: Really quickly, Daniel, daylight savings, looks like--we talked about this on the show.

This one went down.

It wasn't just like voted down.

This bill was tabled.

Daniel: We talk about this issue every year, right?

This is a bill that comes up, I think, every single year.

It came up again this year.

The bill from the House would have kept Utah on standard time period and then maybe later moved to daylight time, but the Representative Joseph Elison from Toquerville said, let's just stop switching our clocks, and he said Utahns really care about it.

He said it was the most tracked bill of the session.

On our website it was the most read story by far.

So, there you go.

The bill died.

The bill passed the House with over 50 votes.

There was tremendous support from the House.

I can't remember how you two voted on it, but then it goes to the Senate, where we knew it was going to face an uphill battle because the leadership did their best to pour cold water on it right away.

They said, "Are we gonna really have this discussion again?"

And when it went to the Senate committee 7 to 1, they voted to table it that effectively means it's dead.

It's not really expected to come back and for now we're gonna keep switching our clocks, but families testified in the committee hearing saying we really wish you would allow us to stop switching our clocks.

We have autistic children or children with special needs or other issues in our family where it's not just losing an hour of sleep.

It is a major change for our children that is very problematic for weeks or months at a time.

So, the issue is not going away.

I think we'll see it again next year and the year after that, and I don't know, but the Senate seems very hostile towards changing it at this point.

Jason: It does seem to be the case.

Doug: It's been rough because I think there are certain interests that need the switch.

Farmers who are coming home working after hours from their day jobs doing their farm work, sports teams have a hard time not taking advantage of those summer hours.

I hope some of that could adjust.

People overwhelmingly do want us to quit switching our clocks.

I know I get put out myself, but I tried not to vote for a personal reason on this bill.

Jason: Okay, I guess you had one anyway.

Let's talk about, I wanna talk about a couple of your bills.

Representative Defay, you have a very interesting bill talking about marriage because it was a very interesting conversation in the committee, that's for sure.

Ariel: Yes, yeah, this is a fabulous bill.

It makes efforts to protect children from coercion, from trafficking.

So, this is marriage of minors, right now they have to get permission from a juvenile court and this would say that the juvenile court may not grant that permission if the two parties are more than four years apart in age and then it also has a 72 hour cooling off period.

So, we apply for that permission, then let's wait 72 hours and make sure that's what we want to do.

I think it's a fabulous bill.

It did have interesting conversation because what if I'm 17 and I want to marry a 25 year old and the answer to that is wait a year and then get married, but I think-- Daniel: Or as you said go to another state.

Ariel: Or go to another state and yes you can go to-- Yeah, yeah, so I think it will-- I think we are seeing some trends and I think this will protect children.

Jason: Representative, talk about your bill on social media.

Doug: This bill that I got running will protect child actors.

There's other states that have done stuff to protect their kid actors, setting up trusts for some of the income they earned.

There's been a lot of famous actors, including Shirley Temple, who got to be adults and their parents had run through all the money, so it helps stop that.

Also, social media influencers.

Utah is second or third in the country for the creation of family oriented social media content.

And we got a lot of people making a lot of money who I think should be putting some of that aside for their kids, so.

This sets up protection for the kids and maybe most importantly it lets the kid when they become an adult decide they want content taken down that they may consider that was embarrassing or defines them who they are as a 13 year old when they moved on in life.

And it can cause substantial embarrassment or emotional harm.

We want them to be able to remove that content from the internet, and it's gotten support from some of the big platforms like Google and Meta or at least non-opposition, I'll say that.

And some of our big content providers in the state like the bill.

Jason: Okay, I wanna end with one final issue.

It's interesting the governor signed a series of bills, Daniel, one of them in particular who was getting a lot of push back on was on this bill eliminating collective bargaining in the state of Utah.

We only have a minute for on this one right here, but talk about that because there's a lot of pressure.

Governor said, "I'm signing it, but I sure wish there had been a compromise."

Daniel: And there had been a compromise, there was a House Bill 267 eliminates collective bargaining for public sector unions.

There was a compromise that would have allowed collective bargaining under certain conditions, and we all waited for that for a week.

And then at the end of the day, the Senate passed the original bill saying that that compromise just did not come together.

And Governor Cox signed it within a couple of days despite immense pressure from the Utah Education Association and others and in his statement when he signed it, he said he was disappointed that this compromise didn't come to fruition.

Jason: Daniel, are we going to see anything coming that you're hearing on the street in terms of a referendum or something like that?

Daniel: We always hear rumors that there will be a lawsuit or there'll be a referendum-- I think we'll have to wait and see, but there's still a lot of discontent among the unions, but the Republicans that passed it said they felt this was the right policy for the state.

Jason: Representative Owens, the last 15 seconds.

Doug: Well, I'll just say I think that was a bill looking for a problem, you know, I don't--we--our teachers are not overpaid.

They're not demanding outrageous things at the table, and I--to take away their collective bargaining right, I think was a mistake and a morale deflator again.

And let's lift--let's lift them up.

I think it was okay to listen to that voice.

Jason: And we'll watch this one closely.

Thank you for your insights this evening 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.

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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