Jason Perry: On this episode of "The Hinckley Report."

Legislators consider new policies that could change the way state government runs.

Debates over housing, homelessness, and other policy issues could have major local impacts.

And as lawmakers consider the state budget, which programs will be prioritized and which could be cut?

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund, and by donations to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Hello, and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

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

Covering the week, we have Representative Ariel Defay, a Republican from Kaysville in the Utah House of Representatives; Doug Owens, a Democrat from Mill Creek and Minority Caucus Manager in the Utah House; and Jeff Parrott, State Watch Editor for "The Salt Lake Tribune."

Thank you so much for being with us.

So much to get to.

We just ended week four of the legislative session.

Does it seem like it?

Does it feel like the end of week four?

Ariel Defay: It feels like 45.

Jason Perry: I thought that might be the case.

I'm so curious, because I want to get into what's happened so far in these first four weeks of the legislative session.

And Representative, can we start with you, Representative Defay?

Nine hundred and fourteen bills as of filming today.

Nine hundred fourteen bills, that is not a small number of pieces of legislation.

Ariel Defay: Yes, yes, we are introducing record numbers of bills.

However, we are moving at a very slow, some are saying, a glacial pace on the floor.

So, I don't think you're going to see a record number of bills passed this year.

Jason Perry: Is that a deliberate effort?

Why is that happening?

Ariel Defay: You know, I don't know.

It's interesting.

We are having some really good floor debate.

We're spending a lot of time, having good discussion around the bills.

And I think we are being more deliberative in our committee time and judicious in the bills we're sending to the floor, so I think we're contemplating a little bit more.

Jason Perry: Yeah, Representative Owens, give us sort of your historical perspective of this a little bit, because it does seem to be, we seem to be hitting records.

This will probably be a new one this year.

Doug Owens: Yeah, I always tease my Republican friends.

For people who are for limited government, they can sure introduce a lot of bills, so that's a running joke for me.

But I think the process is pretty good at winnowing out bills that are sort of done for, you know, messaging purposes and so forth.

But I would like to see some reforms where we encourage legislators to only focus on their most important things and help filter the process before it gets to committee or the floor.

Jason Perry: Jeff, let's talk about sort of the numbers and what's happening with our legislators.

I'm going to ask them in just a moment what they think about whether or not this is a full-time job or not.

But many people might not realize, it wasn't until 1986 that we went to our current model.

We were every other year until then.

But as the state of Utah seems to be growing, the decisions about how much time our legislature needs to spend seems to be increasing.

Jeff Parrott: So, currently, it's a 45-day sprint.

It's actually like a 33-ish business day sprint.

But I think that, but that's not really what happens.

There's special sessions.

There's interim sessions all throughout the year.

I think the two of you certainly have full-time jobs up at the Capitol and not part-time jobs.

So, I'm interested to hear what you guys think about any kind of changes, what that would mean for your, you know, day or night job, depending on how you see this.

Jason Perry: So there are 14 states that have part-time legislators, legislatures, and what's interesting about this is they kind of say this is just over 50% of the time.

Is it?

Is it a full-time job for you, Representative Defay?

Ariel Defay: I wouldn't say full-time, but it's a lot of time.

It isn't part-time, either.

It's very fulfilling.

I appreciate that it's a part-time job.

I have worked in other states as a policy staffer where I have worked for a full-time legislature, and I have found that full-time legislatures can be very costly and also inefficient.

So, I am really a proponent of the way Utah does it.

I think we do it well.

We do it efficiently, and I think it's important for legislators to remain part time.

And we have to go back and live with the policies that we make.

And I do go back, and I work, and many of my colleagues still do have other jobs.

And while it's demanding, it's good for us to have skin in the game.

Jason Perry: Representative Owens, you're part of a family of political-minded people that have always been engaged.

Talk about this, with these conversations sometimes about maybe we need to go full-time or not, or maybe there's some value in having a part-time legislature.

Doug Owens: Well, you know, my wife teases that it's the best full-time/part-time job that you don't get paid for anyway.

But I think it has got pros and cons to be a part-time legislature because this is now not the state that enacted a part-time legislature 150 years ago.

We are a mid-sized state with some complicated, big issues, and you know, a lot of pressing needs to be attended to by government, frankly.

And so I'd like to see us become more professional, a little less amateurish, and a little less part-timey.

Although, I think the part-time perspective, where people have other professions and interests, I think that is healthy.

But if we could sort of temper that, and there is a bill to sort of spread out the session over the year, I think that would be a really nice idea.

I think it would enable more teachers, for example, to participate in the legislature, more blue collar folks to participate, because you could manage the schedule instead of having to get seven weeks off all in a lump.

So, I think some reforms like that that would--short of going to absolute full-time legislature, I think some reforms like that could be really helpful.

Jason Perry: Jeff, let's talk about that bill for just a moment.

We'll see where this goes.

This is Representative Ryan Wilcox from Weber.

It's House Joint Resolution 22, and what his proposal is, to try to get to this conversation a little bit, is 3 15-day sessions.

I guess, so it's the same amount of time, but breaking them into one budget session, two general sessions, and breaking them up over the years with that first budget session coming, I guess, would be the equivalent of next week after the state receives its revenue numbers.

Talk about that approach just a little bit.

Jeff Parrott: I don't know if I've got much more to add than what these two have already said about that bill and how it would spread things out.

I do think it is interesting to have a set budget period.

That is something the two of you, I know, consider over the 45-day session.

You're hearing bills all the time.

You're rushing to appropriations meetings, and then to, you know, different committee hearings and different topics that you cover.

So, I would be interested, I think, from a journalistic side covering just a set session on like what money looks like.

I think that would probably be great for transparency.

I think it'd be great for letting people kind of see how money gets spent and how money gets allocated in the state.

But outside of changing, you know, a huge constitutional amendment, which not only would take 2/3 in the House and the Senate, and then there's going to be a tough mission in explaining to voters on why they should be supporting something like this.

Doug Owens: I like it, though.

You know, we've got a $30 billion budget crammed into the first half of the session, basically.

And you know, it would behoove us to take a little more care of these poor chairs of the EAC.

These four chairmen are spending days and days pouring through every line trying to get it right.

And I think we are a well managed state financially, but I think it's a big burden to try to get all that right in such a short time frame.

Jason Perry: Representative Defay, one of the reasons why Representative Wilcox was thinking about this bill is about sort of when the revenues do come in, which is interesting.

Because up till right now, you've been prioritizing.

Talk about this just a bit because you've been prioritizing funding bills.

Every committee has been doing it, but we don't really know exactly what the revenue numbers are going to be.

So, talk about that for just a moment.

I think that's at the heart of what Representative Wilcox was doing.

But it is instructive, maybe, what's coming this next week, because it's going to be maybe by Wednesday or Thursday of next week, we will know exactly how much money we have.

Ariel Defay: Correct, correct, yes.

It's all--we're working on assumptions, so I think there is value to this conversation because we are operating.

We all serve on different budget appropriations committees.

And we are--I serve on economic development, so we look over those areas.

And we develop a priority list that goes to the members of the Executive Appropriations Committee who prioritize, but we don't know the numbers.

And like you said, mid next week we hopefully will know.

And I think those numbers will probably reflect what we've been expecting, but we won't know for sure until then.

And I think what we know about the budget this year is that we haven't grown.

We're not going to get a lot of extra money, and I don't think we're going to lose a lot of money.

But I think we're looking at a very flat budget.

Jason Perry: Okay, let's get to some of the budget items.

Representative Owens, your side of the aisle in particular, what do you think some of the really big ticket items are going to be that might just catch everyone's attention and maybe even pass?

Doug Owens: Well, I always look at education first when it comes to budgeting.

You know, we have that constitutional earmark that dedicates our funding income tax receipts to pay for education.

And the income tax receipts are going to be flat this year, as we were just alluding to.

And largely, that's because even though the state's been growing and receipts should have been increasing without a tax rate increase, the federal budgeting has had an impact, because all our tax, income tax in the state is based on these federal income numbers.

And so because of those federal changes, our income receipts are flat.

There's still discussion this year of another tax cut.

I think we've had tax cuts every one of the five years I've been in the legislature prior to this year.

I think that's a mistake.

I think education could really use the $100 or $150 million we've been cutting annually to the income tax.

I would hate to see us do it this year with the income tax being flat.

There's really pressing needs in education for reducing class size, teacher pay.

We lose half our teachers in the first five years, and so I'd like to see us do more to build the morale of our teachers and do better by our kids.

So, that's always the number one concern when I talk budget, is how we're going to do for education this year with income tax receipts.

Jason Perry: Representative Defay, I know you're following this issue.

One hundred thirty million dollars is being discussed to expand the prison.

We have a brand new prison, but an effort to get more beds inside this prison.

Talk about that one for just a moment.

Ariel Defay: Yeah, we always prioritize public safety.

And we have been working on increasing penalties, and that is going to increase incarcerations.

And our state is growing, our population is growing, and so we do have to look at expanding bed space in prisons.

Whether that's something we can fund completely this year is a discussion that we will be having as a legislature and prioritizing, is that something that we, in fact, want to put our money towards?

Doug Owens: Could I--I'd like to throw in on that, Jason.

We have been increasing penalties on criminal offenses.

We've been having more mandatory minimum sentences, where we take the discretion as a legislature away from the judge hearing the case.

I think we need to return that discretion to the court.

Sometimes--all cases are not equal, even though the same offense has been committed.

Just to give you one example.

We've got a mandatory minimum now, five years in jail if you have a homicide under drunk driving circumstance.

And at first glance that sounds great, but there may be a circumstance in a case where that's not mandated.

So you take, for example, there are cases where a parent is driving drunk, and their own child dies.

That may not be a case where you want a mandatory five-year minimum.

That person has been punished exceedingly already.

So I think if we leave some more discretion to courts to have shorter sentences.

There's a lot of research out there showing if a bad guy is going to commit a crime, what they're thinking about is not, "How many years am I going to do if I get caught?"

What they think about is, "Am I going to get caught?"

So if we can divert those resources to policing and helping people understand, "I'm going to get caught if I do this thing," that's really more impactful on reducing crime rates than actually just keeping people for huger, bigger, bigger sentencing.

Ariel Defay: What I would say to that is that we are seeing a revolving door in our prison system, and we're seeing a lot of the same group of people.

And it's a large group that are coming in and out, and we really need the tools and the bed space to keep them probably where they belong.

And so I think that's what the efforts have been in the past couple of years.

Jason Perry: Jeff, you do such a great job on your reporting, so I know you're hearing the inside scoop on some of these funding priorities.

What do you see coming when those revenues come in that might rise to be a top priority of the legislature?

Jeff Parrott: So, I think homelessness.

That's maybe been the biggest change that I think I've seen this week.

The new bill about, you know, whether we can put it, like where we can put 300-bed facilities.

And then that was kind of an eye-raiser this week.

We already talked about the prisons.

I do think that's on its way, or at least it's gonna be a priority for legislative leaders.

I think I heard the word "bonding" came up last week.

So between--well, we talked about criminal justice.

We talked about homelessness.

We talked about education.

I think in what lawmakers call, the two of you call, as your leaders have called, socks-and-underwear years, I don't see a whole lot of money changes going around.

Jason Perry: Let me follow up on this thread a little bit on homelessness, because Representative Defay, we've talked even on this show about this idea of a campus on the west side, but that took a little bit of a twist this week.

Maybe a little less interest, at least in the house, of going that direction.

Ariel Defay: Correct, I think we're rethinking if it's a good model, and I think that's a valuable conversation to have.

We need to look at the homelessness population holistically and what's going to serve them best.

We're going to have a new director of homelessness, Tyler Clancy.

He's a representative.

He's going to move.

He has a really good finger on the pulse of things that are happening in our state in this area.

So, I think we're looking at how can we best use our funds.

We know we don't have enough funds to build a giant campus this year, so how do we use the money wisely to best serve those populations and yield better results?

Doug Owens: I'd say it's important, if we do move forward with that idea of a centralized place, I think, generally, that's not a good idea.

It's better to let--to have maybe one facility in Weber County, one in Salt Lake, one in Utah County.

But let people be closer to family.

I think we need to have guardrails around that large campus idea if we're going to do it because we need to know, are we going to connect people to services.

You know, being unsheltered is not a one-size-fits-all situation.

A lot of people, it's a very short-term thing with an economic issue.

If they can get a little stability, if they have time to find a new job, it really helps them.

Some people, it's a mental health issue.

Some people, it's an addiction issue.

So, we need to make sure we don't just make a facility that's warehousing people out of sight, out of mind, but make sure we do have some guardrails and keep them connected to the kinds of help that would really help them out.

Jason Perry: And we'll follow this one closely.

Of course, this bill is by Casey Snider who's in leadership, so we'll see where the direction goes on that.

Jeff Parrott: Bills like this also come--sorry to interrupt you.

But bills like this also, and you can maybe help me out here a little bit, come in an environment where Salt Lake County gets a lot of focus from the legislature.

And I know there is some push and pull between the local lawmakers and the local officials and then state leaders who may not necessarily be in Salt Lake County.

And I, you know, I'd love to do another week of reporting on this, but I don't think we're gonna have the time.

I'm just kind of like, what the feeling is on as lawmakers, you know, focus on Salt Lake County and like how the homelessness is approached, what leaders are interested in.

And you know, like they certainly need state money, and they need the state's help to address an issue that is not just important to the state but important to Salt Lake County.

Doug Owens: Well, I think sometimes it's painted as a Salt Lake County or a Salt Lake City issue.

But when you talk to these unsheltered folks, a lot of them are from other counties, but they've come to Salt Lake because that's where more of the services are located.

So it is a statewide issue, and I think it's good that the legislature has been assisting, and it will be good for them to do more on that front.

Jason Perry: Okay, I want to talk about money just a little more, too, on tax in particular.

Representative Defay, can we talk about this bill that everyone seems to be discussing, but we have not seen, on a potential gas tax reduction?

Because we've been hearing about it.

People in Idaho definitely heard about it.

Maybe give us some of the context on that because we may have, the state may have resolved at least the issue with Idaho.

Give us some context on what happened.

Ariel Defay: Yes, yeah, so as a House, we've been looking at affordability and what can we do.

And one of the things that the House leadership has looked closely at is gas prices.

We know we're paying higher prices than the average national price at the pump in Utah, so we started looking at taxing exports.

And this did cause some consternation with Idaho.

We have since been working openly with Idaho, and I know that there's been a lot of good and productive conversations.

And I think we are going to see a bill soon.

I think it will look different than it was first anticipated, but I think we're getting to a place where everyone will feel happy, and the stakeholders will be confident in how Utah moves forward in this area.

Doug Owens: And may I just throw in there, you know, it's a bad time to pick a fight with Idaho.

This ends up hurting the citizens of Idaho the way we were looking at doing it, and I hope it changes, like Representative Defay is saying.

It may, but you know, I wanna help the Great Salt Lake.

And one of the plans is that we could get some fresh water out of the Snake River and pipe it over into the Bear River.

It could potentially be economic.

I think it's a bad time to pick a fight with Idaho.

Jason Perry: Yeah, they do control a lot of the waters flowing into the state.

Doug Owens: They do, and there's some excess water up in the Snake that would be lovely to channel our way in this very dry year.

We ought to be taking awareness of that, too.

Jason Perry: I want to talk about a couple of more bills as we go along.

Do you mind taking a second on your maternity leave bill?

Ariel Defay: Yeah, so I have a maternity leave bill that would extend maternity leave for public employees from 6 weeks to 12 weeks.

And there's just so much science and so many reasons that this is helpful.

It helps with employee retention.

It helps with affordability and daycare.

Most of all, it helps with the health of the mother and the baby, and especially cognitive and neurobiological development.

And so we as a House have made strong families one of our priorities this year.

And so this is one of those very easy pieces of legislation that we can put forward and say, "We are supporting families in Utah."

Jason Perry: Okay, this next one, Representative Owens, a couple of your water bills.

You just kind of get to one, and then I'm so curious what the reporter says as what he's hearing about the viability of all of these things together while he waits for revenue numbers to come in.

Doug Owens: There are a lot of important water bills moving through the system, and thanks to my Republican colleague, Jill Koford, running some very important things, Ray Ward as well.

I've got some stuff.

I keep pushing on the issue of conservation.

We're moving a lot of agriculture water into municipal usage, and the number one depletion there is outdoor landscaping.

So, I keep pushing the notion of shouldn't we have some guidelines for new construction?

Let's do more drips to trees and shrubs, and a little less nonfunctional grass would be a great thing in the long run for saving water.

We don't need to just have rocks.

We could still have green coverage, and just do it more efficiently with trees and shrubs.

Jason Perry: Okay, go, Jeff.

Jeff Parrott: Poll after poll, year after year, Utah voters are telling their elected officials that housing and water are some of the most important things.

And so I think if, you know, elected officials are going to be listening to the voters, money and time and consideration will go into those two big issues.

Jason Perry: Okay, so let's talk--oh, go ahead, Doug.

Doug Owens: I was gonna say about housing, you know, I think it's important for us to act to do that.

Half of our growth economically is our kids coming up.

Half of our housing shortage is providing for our own children and grandchildren.

Half is people moving from out of state.

I'd like to see us as a state not incentivize so much economic growth.

I think we're getting enough homegrown economic growth to not worry about that, and not put our kids competing with people moving from out of state.

And I think we could do more to incentivize condos.

That's where, you know, a starter home, get people building some equity that way.

I'd like to see us strategize on some of those things.

Jason Perry: Can I hit this one for just a moment, Representative Defay?

Because we've been doing some polling about this, the Hinckley Institute, "Deseret News," and we did ask Utahns.

As we got ready to go into this legislative session, the question is, "What should the top priority be?"

And you all have touched on this just a little bit, and it wasn't even close.

Thirty-two percent of Utahans, all parties and all age groups, it turns out, say affordable housing is the number one issue facing Utah.

Ariel Defay: Yep, absolutely, 100%.

It's the number one issue we hear from our constituents.

We are taking it very seriously.

We have a bill that was introduced by Representative Cal Roberts.

One of the difficulties with building housing, the reason we have an affordability issue, is our supply.

We can't get the supply because we don't have the infrastructure to get to the places that are ready to be built.

We actually have a lot of land in Utah that's ready to be built on.

We don't have roads to get there.

We don't have pipes.

We don't have plumbing.

And so what Cal Roberts has presented is a bill that's going to unlock that infrastructure funding for localities.

So municipalities will be able to get some money to get that infrastructure put in, and hopefully get some of that supply built up in Utah.

Jason Perry: Jeff--oh, yeah, please.

Jeff Parrott: Yeah, I'd love to hop in here.

I love the approach of kind of like this big 30,000-foot view on we need infrastructure.

We need to get, you know, we need to change our zoning laws, or we need to like get rid of what lawmakers call "red tape."

But I also think there's some tactical decisions that can help people in the immediate.

And one of those things that I'm seeing work its way through the legislature right now is getting rid of hidden fees for renters, where a renter will see a price online.

"This is an $1800 two-bedroom."

They go look at it.

They fall in love with the apartment.

The contract gets slid across the table, and now it's $2400 because it's, you know, you've gotta pay for the community fee, and you've gotta pay for the trash, and you've got all these other additional fees that aren't up front.

And I think if we can get rid of, you know, at least some truth in lending here, or provide some truth in lending here, like not only will that, you know, make renting not easier, but at least more transparent.

It'll at least provide some faith in the system, and like what you see is what you get.

Doug Owens: That'd be a great bill.

I forget who's running that, but-- Ariel Defay: Representative Clancy.

Doug Owens: Is that--?

Ariel Defay: Yeah, it's called the junk fees bill, and I think it's through the House and the Senate.

Doug Owens: It's a-- that's a great bill.

Jason Perry: It's on its way.

I want to talk about a couple of high-tech areas for a second.

AI, you have some bills on AI.

I wanna talk for just a moment about where we see our legislature going at the state level on some of these AI initiatives.

Ariel Defay: Yeah, absolutely.

So, I sit on the AI task force.

We have a group of legislators.

We get together.

We have an Office of AI Policy in Utah that was created by the legislature a few years ago.

We take a look at all AI issues facing Utah, and what can we reasonably tackle as a state.

So, we work over the interim.

We've worked, and so I'm working on a bill that addresses deep fakes.

And also-- Jason Perry: Can you, what is that?

Maybe just start-- Ariel Defay: So, a deep fake is when you take an image or a video, and you use artificial intelligence to alter it.

And now we don't know what we're looking at when we're on the Internet.

We don't know if things are real or not, so I've created a bill that requires companies and platforms to disclose if an image is deep faked or if it's real.

So, it'll have a little watermark on it.

You click on it, and then you can see the actual history of the alterations of that image, so you can have trust.

And we hope industry moves this way anyway, because industry wants to know that you can trust what you're seeing, but this is a small step for us in creating trust in our systems.

Jason Perry: Yeah, Jeff, this is such an interesting thing for the media too, right?

What is real?

What isn't real?

What's real and is not real?

How are you approaching this?

Jeff Parrott: Things are changing fast, and I think there's probably some civic engagement, and like you said, like some media engagement here on like just getting smart on what these systems are and how quickly they're evolving.

I hate to even use the word evolving when we're talking about computers and robots, but here we are.

But yeah, I think transparency is important.

I think understanding what is real is important, and every single day it is getting harder.

And I-- Doug Owens: I--sorry.

Jeff Parrott: Go ahead.

Doug Owens: I appreciate Utah's been leading on this issue.

Doug Fiefia has another bill.

I was--I love Representative Defay's bill.

Doug's Fiefia's bill is to protect children using AI.

There have been some suicides nationally of children being convinced that AI is their friend and encouraging them to do crazy things.

So, I'm really glad Utah has not taken a back seat to congressional inaction or executive orders from the president that we shouldn't be legislating in this area.

I think it's great to lead out to protect Utah citizens.

Jeff Parrott: I think it's tough.

I think, you know, this is, it's essentially a business story, right?

It's a--this is--these are technology companies that, you know, want to develop faster, smarter computers, and what the future is going to look like in the next, you know, until whenever the-- Ariel Defay: And Utah is leading the way in this policy area.

Other states are looking to Utah because we've struck a good balance in protecting innovation and also protecting our citizens.

Jeff Parrott: Yeah, and the protection part here is, I think, the interesting part, where you know, the young tech entrepreneur or like the programmer, is not, you know, the person that maybe we wanna rely on for the protection, or for like what is helping kids.

And maybe they don't even wanna address those issues, you know?

Jason Perry: I'm sad to say, that might have to be the last comment, but we will be watching this closely.

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

The show is also available as a podcast.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund, and by donations to "PBS Utah" from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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