(gentle music) (uplifting music) - [Announcer] PBS Utah presents "The Governor's Monthly News Conference," an exchange between Utah reporters and Governor Spencer Cox.

(uplifting music continues) - Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

It's great to see all of you again today.

Thank you for joining us.

It's an exciting week here in the state of Utah for lots of reasons.

Of course, the NBA All-Star Game is here.

It's also an exciting week because we're nearing the end of the legislative session, we're only two weeks away, which every week closer to the end is a better week and we're always excited when we get there.

But most importantly for the state of Utah, just want to reiterate an important announcement that we made yesterday, Texas Instruments, who is a global leader in semi-conductor manufacturing, announced that they are expanding their operations here in Utah.

They've been operating in Lehi since late last year, but yesterday they announced they will be expanding their chip manufacturing presence with an $11 billion investment.

That's the largest private investment in our state's history by more than double.

A very exciting day.

This is the largest economic investment, as I mentioned, bringing 800 jobs, and thousands of indirect jobs as well, that will impact Utahans for generations to come.

We're so excited for that announcement, and grateful to our partners at Texas Instruments for their investment in Utah.

I just also wanna mention that last week I had an opportunity to take part in the National Governors Association meetings back in Washington, DC., where I met with my colleagues.

There were about 40 governors that participated in the NGA meetings.

These are bipartisan meetings.

I'm very fortunate to be serving as the vice chair of NGA right now, with the chair, Governor Phil Murphy from the great state of New Jersey.

We had an opportunity to go to the White House where we met with the president and the vice president.

We also met with many members of the president's cabinet, talking about issues that are important to his administration and to our country.

We had lots of questions answered, mostly surrounding investments and legislation recently passed by Congress, so the CHIPS Act, the infrastructure act, those big investments and how those are being rolled out to the states.

We were fortunate to get some answers to questions that governors had there, and then had dinner at the White House with the president and first lady, as well as the vice president.

It was a great opportunity to show some bipartisan work on important issues and I am just grateful for my fellow governors who are working to get things done.

With that, we'll go ahead and open it up to questions.

- Governor, have you settled on an agreement about tax cuts yet?

It sounds like legislation's coming.

- Yeah, we have not yet, Ben.

Only because we don't have final numbers yet.

Those numbers should be ready for legislative leadership on Friday, I believe, is when they'll get their first look at them, potentially.

We'll probably announce those numbers on Tuesday.

That's when I'll get a chance to see them, over the weekend.

Of course, Monday's a holiday.

So we don't, we've kind of been working around broad perimeters, what this looks like.

There's still some difference between the House and the Senate.

That's at least my understanding.

They haven't come to a consensus yet.

But we've been involved in all of those discussions and feel pretty good about the direction we're headed.

I don't feel like we're gonna get 100% of what we asked for, but I think we'll be close.

- Are you supportive of a proposed constitutional amendment to remove the earmark for education and social services?

- If done correctly.

There's an opportunity right now, those discussions are ongoing.

My team has been in those meetings with the education community, education stakeholders as well as legislators.

I think there is a good opportunity for us to get rid of the earmark, but to put some guardrails in place to make sure that in the future we continue to fund education.

And I know that's what the education community's interested in.

That's what I'm interested in, as well.

Would love to see the tax on food removed.

That's something I've been supportive of for a long time.

Think we have an opportunity to do both of those things.

I don't know, I always ask this question, can someone point to a year where the earmark has made a difference in the decision around funding education?

And I've yet to have anybody point to a year where it actually made a difference.

The legislature has ways to fund what they want to fund and what they feel needs to be funded every year, kind of regardless of the earmark, there have been ways to get around that for many years, and so I think there's some other things we could do that would be more productive.

- Governor, your thoughts on the abortion bills that are making their way through the legislature, specifically Lisonbee's to close down abortion clinics, then Birkeland's on rape victim's access and services.

- So yeah, I haven't spent much time on the Birkeland bill.

The Lisonbee bill just came out a day before yesterday I think, so we actually did not get a preview of that one.

We got the copy when you got the copy, so when that one came out.

We have had discussions though, across the board, with stakeholders who were involved in working on that bill and we feel pretty good about the bill.

It is much more of a consensus bill.

I think what's been lost with that is this is more of a clean up around the trigger law that was passed a couple years ago.

This will actually help those providers, our hospitals, they've been involved in these discussions as well, so IHC and The University of Utah, have little more clarity around that.

There was even around, you know, rape and incest and those types of terrible situations, there was a hesitancy under the existing law, which is on pause as it's being litigated, but that there was a hesitancy to perform any abortions under that law.

This will give them the clarity that they've been asking for and seeking.

- Both bills would also remove the rape and incest exemption after 18 weeks.

Do you support that?

- [Spencer] Yes.

- Why?

- Because I think that that gives plenty of time for a decision to be made and people will have an opportunity to get an abortion.

Look, I also believe that those are broadly popular.

This is part of the problem in the abortion discussion.

We've gotten to a place where it seems like the choices are no abortions ever or no restrictions ever.

If you look, the American people are much more nuanced on this and certainly most people don't support abortions into the second trimester.

And so I do think that that's a valid timeframe for people to be able to make that decision.

- Also, do you support Senator Escamilla's bill to narrowly legalize medical psilocybin?

- [Spencer] I do not.

- [Katie] Why not?

- Because I'm just not there yet.

- So Governor, I've been reading stories from 30 years ago about the last time the All-Star Game came to Utah.

Dober Media described it as somewhat of an odd and peculiar place.

What kind of political and cultural changes do you want to be on display for people who are here for the game this weekend?

- Well, I just want people to enjoy the very best of Utah, and I think what happens, those oddities that people think are very quickly dispelled when they actually come to Utah and they're gonna have a wonderful time.

I was 17 the last time that the All-Star Game was here, I was a senior in high school.

I was incredibly excited.

I didn't get an opportunity to go to anything, we couldn't afford to go to anything, but just watching it on TV and seeing my state being front and center, it was a very proud day for Utahans and kind of a precursor to the Olympics that were coming, you know, nine years later.

And so a lot has changed since then, for sure, and I think people are going to see, especially starting with the All-Star Game in '93 and then the Olympics in 2002, that Utah is a very different place in lots of ways.

Our food scene was changed tremendously.

I'm very excited to show off some of the amazing restaurants that we have here.

Certainly, Salt Lake City has become a much more cosmopolitan place than maybe it was 30 years ago.

It was interesting, I was listening to "The Ryen Russillo Podcast" a couple days ago where he was talking about this and he basically said, you know, "Salt Lake City and Park City are not what a lot of people outside of Utah think they are and people are going to be very surprised when they show up and they'll love it."

He loves to come here, it's one of his favorite places, and I think that will be true of just about everyone that visits.

It's gonna a wonderful cultural experience.

I would also say the reverse of that is true.

I think it will be wonderful for Utahans to see well over 100,000 people, upwards, some estimates of 150,000 people from all over the world coming here and experiencing this place, and we get to rub shoulders with them.

An event that, again, we haven't had anything like it for the past 20 years.

- Were you afraid the NBA was gonna pull out last year after the passage of the transgender youth sports ban?

- No, that's really changed.

We've had those discussions with the NBA for quite a while.

They're trying to get a little more out of those culture war pieces as well, so we were not fearful of that at all.

- Governor, where do you stand on a bill that would drastically reduce emissions polluted by some of the biggest industries in Utah, including bromine?

- Yeah, so we're looking at that bill right now.

Obviously, we're very interested in anything we can do to clear up the air.

This is an issue that I've been working on for a few months, well before the legislative session started.

We'll have some announcements coming up in the next couple weeks and I would just encourage you to stay tuned on that piece.

- But if this bill is run and gets through, would you sign it, do you support it?

- Sure, yeah.

Yeah, I've gotta look at all the details of it.

I wanna make sure that it actually does what it's supposed to, but I anticipate that if it passes I would sign it.

- There's a number of bills dealing with the water conservation in the Great Salt Lake that so far have not been making it through, particularly ones dealing with golf course measuring, ones dealing with the target goal that your own strike force recommended.

There's the turf buyback that removed a ban on future turf.

Are you satisfied with the actions the legislature is taking on the Great Salt Lake?

- Come back and ask me that question in two weeks and I'll be able to give you an answer.

So far, I feel really good about the direction we're headed.

The target goal is a dumb thing.

We don't need a target goal, we need a range, and we already have that range.

I don't need a law to tell me what the average range is, the average healthy range is for the Great Salt Lake.

That was also a resolution.

So I don't care about things that aren't going to make a difference, I only care about things that are going to make a difference and we have a big Great Salt Lake bill that will be dropping soon that I'm very interested in.

- The Teuscher bill?

- The speaker's been working on.

Yeah, we've been having discussions about that.

And so I'm very interested in the financing piece which will be in the final budget, so I wanna see how much money we get.

We've asked for $500 million, I feel confident we're gonna get that, maybe more.

I'd be happy if we got more.

And then I wanna see the structure around how we're actually going to make sure that the water that we're conserving gets to the Great Salt Lake.

That's the piece.

Like, we're putting the money in place, we're putting the legal structure in place, but now we've gotta make sure that gap that the water we save actually gets to the now literal end of the road.

- And how do you guarantee that that actually happens with any of these bills going through?

- Yeah, yeah, that's, so there's a couple pieces to that.

So we actually have to be able to measure it.

That's a piece.

I know Senator McKell and some others have been working on issues around that, making sure that we can actually measure the water.

Just because you save it, if you're not measuring it, you don't know how much is left and how much you can get there.

And then, again, this commissioner piece will allow us to have somebody watching that constantly and helping us understand what tweaks need to be made, both in rule and in law so that we can make sure that it actually makes a difference.

- What do you think about California not signing on to the six other basin states' Colorado River conservation plan?

- Sure.

So we've been very fortunate to have a team working closely with all the states, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states, on the Colorado River, and what I can tell you is I just met with them earlier this week, I think it was on Monday, and we had a wonderful update and I left a little more optimistic, actually.

Yes, there is still a divide between California and the rest of the states, but I don't know that that gap is huge.

I do believe that really the dynamic now is it's more of a dispute between California and Arizona.

That's where the real rub is right now.

Everyone else is pretty much in agreement on what needs to happen and when it should happen.

And we've never had significant litigation on the Colorado River Basin.

We're the only major basin that has not had litigation.

We've always been able to figure it out as states, and I hope we can do that.

And we appreciate, California is negotiating in good faith and I feel hopeful that we'll be able to come to a resolution there.

But I also wanna give a shout out to our team.

They've been amazing.

We've come a long ways over the last couple years in Utah being a leader in this space with the team that we have in place.

We're actually running models now for other states, which is a really positive thing.

It means that we're working collaboratively and showing, again, the Utah spirit that we can help them achieve their goals as well.

- Governor, the Utah State Bar is opposing SB 129, which they say would remove required political balance on the Judicial Nominating Commissions.

What are your thoughts on the bill and would you support it?

- Yeah, I support bill.

I think they're wrong.

Those requirements for balancing, or at least not taking into consideration the politics of a potential judge, that's in the Constitution.

That has nothing to do with this bill and that will not change from this bill.

This is just an association who wants to have more power over government and we can choose good judges and we can choose the panels that put those together.

I have no problem having attorneys serving on that panel, I just don't think that the Bar should be the one that gets to choose those attorneys.

That purview should lie with the governor, as the Constitution allows the governor to make those choices.

- Back to medical psilocybin for a sec.

Can you explain your position a bit more?

The legislature passed that task force last year.

They did the report.

Would you rather wait for the FDA, or why aren't you there yet?

- Yes, I'd rather wait for the FDA.

- Anything more you'd like to say about- - [Spencer] No.

- You just don't want to discuss it?

- No, I just don't, it's just not there yet.

We got there with medical marijuana, I just don't believe the science is there, I don't believe we should be experimenting on 5,000 people here in our state, and I think there are some serious consequences and side effects, societally as well as medically, that I'm just not comfortable with.

- Governor, the Department of Public Safety announced the appointment of Sheriff Jared Rigby to the position of POST director with your approval.

As you know, his swearing-in ceremony last month was canceled because of a video in which he's accused of bullying and intimidating a police officer.

Did you see that video before approving the appointment and what were your thoughts when you did see the video?

- Yeah, I did not see that video prior to the appointment.

I did see it afterwards.

It certainly raised some concerns.

I will say that those concerns were, in conversations, that those concerns were lessened after I understood the context and the conversations that happened, however, I also support the decision that was made by POST and the commission to revisit this and reopen the process, and there was broad consensus amongst that with everyone, with the Sheriff's Association, with some of our police chiefs and police associations as well, and so I think it was the right decision and I have all the faith and confidence and support in Sheriff Rigby.

He's a wonderful public servant and he's doing great work and he has my full support.

But I do feel better about the process and where we are right now.

- Do you have concerns that these questions were being asked, you know, days before the swearing-in ceremony, as opposed to in the months during his interview process?

- Sure.

Look, there is a process.

I'm grateful we got to the best result, however that had to be, and I think it's certainly given everybody an opportunity to kind of reevaluate the process.

And, you know, we only had one candidate that was sent up and so I suspect that we'll see that play out a little differently in the future.

- Didn't you approve a different candidate prior to approving Rigby?

- We did.

There was a also, and I don't know if I ever got to the approval point in that one, but there was certainly a recommendation that was made for approval there, but there had also been a misstep in that process, and so when mistakes are make we go back and fix them.

And that was our message to the commissioner of Public Safety in Utah, Commissioner Anderson, and he recognized that there had been a mistake in the process, so they did have to go back and revisit that.

So we just want to get it right.

This is a really important one for the people of the state of Utah and no matter how long it takes, I wanna make sure that we get the right result.

- Angel, go ahead.

Yes.

- Hello, as you may know, 20 states, including Utah, have sued the Biden administration to try to block the humanitarian parole to help 30,000 immigrants to come legally to the States.

You said before and you have shown a lot of interest to help our community in so many ways, so why supporting this kind of lawsuit, and don't think this actually helps?

- Sure.

So getting immigrating right is really important and I am supportive of legal immigration and, again, doing immigration the right way.

This was really a topic of discussion that came up often in our conversations back in Washington, DC this past week, specifically with the president.

I had an opportunity to talk to the president, or ask a question to the president, about both immigration and what we're seeing on that front, as well as the fentanyl crisis that he brought up in his State of the Union, as well as, he also brought it up in our meetings with him.

And although not directly related, certainly, border security is an important piece.

And I've said this many times, there's broad consensus in the United States about the importance of securing the border as well as fixing legal immigration.

And so that's what our discussion was really about and around.

I do need to give some credit to the president and the administration for some of the changes that they're implementing now when it comes to asylum seekers, having them apply from their country of origin instead of making their way to the border or having them apply for it in the first country that they come to outside of their country.

There is some data that shows that that is making a difference and will keep people from making that very dangerous and arduous trek across Mexico and then trying to get across the border illegally, which we don't wanna see.

And so just figuring this piece out is going to be really important, and making sure we get it right.

The federal government is about to end the COVID emergency, which has been used as part of the Stay in Mexico policy and so they're trying to figure out what's going to happen when that changes, and I know they're working towards that.

Now, we still have some serious disagreements about the border and about how to do this the correct way, but you'll be seeing an op-ed from myself and the governor of Indiana, a good friend of mine, about immigration and how this is something we should be able to work together to fix.

I'd love to get away from the lawsuits, but until we get people working together and broader consensus on that, some of this will play out in the courts.

- Governor, the deadly consequences of failed parole supervision has resulted in the deaths of three year old Odin Ratliff and three year old Hunter Jackson.

Since 2020, eight people have been murdered or killed and one young person was abducted and raped, all by people on probation and parole under the supervision of Adult Probation and Parole.

You told me in 2021 that people have to do their jobs and when they don't do their jobs and bad things happen people have to be held accountable.

What have you done to hold Adult Probation and Parole leadership accountable?

- Every time something like this happens, Wendy, there is an investigation and people are held accountable.

If laws were broken, if rules were broken, if policy was not followed then there are consequences and those consequences can be up to and including termination from their position, they can suspensions, they can be suspensions without pay.

There are consequences when our team doesn't do their job.

Sometimes our job does their job and bad things happen, and I can't stop all of those.

I wish I could.

Every one of those is a tragedy, they're horrific, and they've also happened every year since we've been a state.

- The legislative audit confirmed our findings that they were not following department policy.

- [Spencer] That's correct, and they were held accountable for that.

- Who was held accountable, because the top leadership, Brian Nielson, Dan Blanchard- - Those- - James Hudspeth, Glenn Ercanbrack are your top leaders- - That's correct.

- Of the Utah Department of Corrections and DP&P.

- [Spencer] And they weren't the ones overseeing those people.

- [Wendy] They're supervisors.

They're in charge.

- They are, yes.

And they held them accountable for that.

They did.

- And can you elaborate on the accountability?

Because we have seen nothing.

We have seen nothing.

- I cannot because those are personnel violations and those personnel, that personnel data is not available publicly.

- Governor, a resolution that would set a target lake level for the Great Salt Lake failed in committee.

A week or so later, a strike team came out and said, "We should set this goal."

Where do you stand on setting such a goal to raise the water levels of the Great Salt Lake?

- Yeah, again, I already answered this one, but I'll answer it again.

We don't need a line, we need a range.

The lake has always, always, always, from at least in recorded history, the lake ebbs and flows.

It goes up and down.

There is no single range that makes it the exact place where it needs to be, and so we should have a range, we should develop a range, we have that data.

This is not rocket science.

That law was meaningless, it does nothing, it would help nothing, it would change nothing.

It was a resolution.

It's taking up far more oxygen than it deserves.

We're happy to put a range in there.

I'll develop that range, we have those numbers already and we're perfectly fine with that.

- Governor, I wanted to get your thoughts on Representative Hopkins' Olympics legislation that would set you up to sign the Host City contract that would make Utah taxpayers ultimately responsible for the more than $2.2 billion Winter Games.

Are you confident taxpayers would be adequately protected against any losses from what is supposed to be a privately funded event?

Also, what do you think lawmakers' role should be?

- Yeah, so this is old news.

We did this 30 years ago, or 20 years ago.

We've already worked through those agreements.

We have fail safes in place.

We feel very good about where that is.

And all they're doing is setting up a committee to review and whatever they wanna do.

That's a legislative prerogative, they're certainly entitled to do that, we support them being able to that.

We feel very confident in our ability, in fact, we actually feel more confident than we did when Governor Leavitt signed these agreements 20 years ago.

Much more confident.

Because at that time, we did not have all of the facilities.

There were significant investments and there was a lot of risk to the public 20 years ago.

That risk now, to a Games 30 years post our last Olympics, is very, very minor.

Again, we have many of the agreements already in place with the venues.

In fact, if we don't have them all in place, we will shortly.

So having those venues already built, already ready, already contracted, that's why this Games makes so much sense and it's why, I think, you will see the IOC change their course, you can already see it happening, to where I think we will end up with four or five sites that just host the Games in perpetuity.

I could see that happen.

The era of building brand new stadiums only to tear them down, that's an ecological disaster, it's an economic disaster, it's bad for countries, it's bad for the Games, it just doesn't make any sense.

But we, seriously, I mean, if they said, "Hey, we're gonna have an emergency Olympics in six months, could you guys do it?"

We could do it.

That's how prepared we are for this.

And I really, I wanna give credit to the foresight that legislators and Governor Leavitt had 20 years ago when they said, "Look, we have these buildings, and we had the most economically successful Olympics in history, let's put some of that money aside in an endowment to take care of these facilities for the future for Utahans to enjoy."

And that's exactly what we've done.

And so they're up to date, we're ready to go, and there will be no, there's really very, very small risk on the taxpayers of Utah.

80% support it.

You can't get 80% of people to agree on anything.

- All right, that is all the time we have for our television broadcast portion.

Thank you so much for joining us for "The Governor's Monthly News Conference."

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] This has been "The Governor's Monthly News Conference."

For transcripts, full video, and more information, visit pbsutah.org/governor.

(uplifting music continues)