- [Announcer] PBS Utah presents the Governor's Monthly News Conference and Exchange between Utah Reporters and Governor Spencer Cox.

- Good morning everyone.

It's great to see all of you here.

We're excited to have you with us this morning.

And I want to thank, this is the biggest crowd we've had ever I think, so.

We have numerous reporters online as well, so I'm really excited to have all of you here today.

Now as I think most of you know, but for our viewers at home, the legislative session ended 20 days ago, but it did not end for me.

My session is much longer.

I had an extra 20 days to review or sign all 591 bills a new record this year.

I've been working through those bills.

I still have some to go.

I have until till midnight tonight, and we'll keep working on those through the afternoon and evening hours.

It's been an exhausting process, but I'm happy to report that I'll be reviewing again that final batch of bills today.

In general, I just wanna say that I am very pleased with the outcomes of this session, especially around my top priorities.

And I want to thank the legislature and their families for their sacrifice, their diligence, hard work, and the spirit of collaboration, which we've worked so hard on over the past three and a half years.

While we didn't agree on everything, we appreciate how most legislators respected the process and worked with us to find solutions to some of the most pressing challenges that are facing our state today.

We will be holding some ceremonial bill signings in the coming weeks to highlight specific bills that we think deserve extra attention.

It's impossible for citizens of Utah to, I mean, it's impossible for me and you in the media to really understand all the bills that passed.

And there are so many good ones that probably didn't get written about or didn't get much attention, and we wanna make sure to highlight those.

So I look forward to those, to those ceremonial bill signings that will be coming up.

Generally, we're excited about some of the measures that we'll of course promote housing and home ownership in our state.

We will have new tools to help first time home buyers buy a home and incentives for municipalities and developers to build more starter homes, which is part of our goal to build 35,000 starter homes over the next five years in our state.

I'm also grateful for the legislature support of our holistic approach to homelessness.

With new funding for emergency shelters, enforcement of no camping laws, a new home court to offer treatment and alternatives to incarceration and pathways to increase behavioral health and employment.

All those things that are so important to us.

The way that our team and local government officials, business leaders, philanthropists, law enforcement, we all came together with the providers to rally was truly remarkable.

And I look forward to great things to come over the course of this year.

On education we again, we're able to see healthy increases in funding for the weighted pupil unit and more around keeping our kids safe.

We're also very excited about the service initiatives that we were able to put into statute that this year for high school kids and those post high school as they move into their post-secondary years.

We believe that service is critical to our state and look forward to continuing that culture we have around service in our great states.

So I look forward to working with the people of Utah over the course of this year to implement the laws that were passed by the legislature and looking on ways that we can better things for next year.

So with that, I'm happy to take questions.

- Governor, a number of cities and the Intermountain Power Project have asked you to veto Senate Bill 161, which they say could essentially amount to a state takeover of a utility in this massive power plan.

What are you gonna do?

- So I will be signing the bill.

We will, however, be working with the legislature on some things that we think could maybe be done better.

And so there's a possibility of a special session to make some tweaks to the law.

More than anything we just wanna make sure that we get this right.

And this is something I've actually been working on for more than a decade, something I've been deeply concerned about.

We know that that energy power is very important.

Anytime we're looking to close down facilities, I think we should be cautious about that.

If there are opportunities to keep those facilities running, we're gonna want to exhaust every potential, every possibility out there.

Making sure that we're complying with environmental regulations that are in place and seeing if we can thread that needle.

So we'll continue to work very closely with IPP.

We'll be continuing to work closely with regulators there.

It's a very complicated bill and there are lots of opportunities for us at every phase to reevaluate where we are and where that's going.

Nothing is set in stone, even with the bill.

There's a very crucial study that will take place before anything happens.

And that's part of what we've been talking to the legislature about, making sure that we get this study that it's an independent study, that it gets us real information about our ability to potentially keep that facility open.

And in a way that doesn't endanger any other facilities as well across the state.

- So should the state take it over though?

- That remains to be seen.

Look, we don't operate plants like that.

And so I think the, what we would be looking at is the opportunity for a third party if one exists, that would be interested ultimately in purchasing the property.

- How strong of a possibility is there of a special session and when and what specifically do you wanna see changed?

- Yeah, so we're still working through those details, but I would say there's a fairly strong possibility that we'll have a special session just for some tweaks.

Nothing too monumental or serious, but that are important.

We're having those conversations right now with the legislature.

Not sure exactly when that would be, but sometime probably between now and July.

Nothing really pressing.

- Would there be other issues in that special session you'd like to see addressed?

- None that we have right in front of us now.

But as you know, anytime there's a potential for a special session, I'm sure we'll have lots of opportunities to evaluate some things.

- Governor, there was another wrong way crash, a terrible one just this morning in downtown Salt Lake on I 15.

What do you say to people who say, okay the state has done this new signage and all these other measures, but it doesn't seem to be working?

- Yeah, I would tell people to stop drinking and driving.

And again, I don't know what happened this morning, but I can tell you with every single fatality we've had so far, there has been impairment.

Either drugs, alcohol or both.

And that's deeply problematic.

Now we do have some new technologies that we've been employed in a couple places that seem to be working better.

Give us instant notification, allow us to notify drivers that there is a wrong way driver potentially as well.

And, it's very expensive technology.

And so we're working with UDOT to get that deployed in as many places as we can, as quickly as possible.

- Other places, do you see other means in which the state could do a better job of monitoring, notifying?

- Yeah, I think I just answered that question.

Yes.

- Governor, final night of the session the legislature passed SB 273, the bill to require the Salt Lake County District Attorney to track time spent on criminal cases.

Do you plan to sign or veto that bill or?

- Yeah, so I'll be signing that bill.

We've had conversations with the county and about the bill, and you'll also notice in that bill, it is does not into effect until July of next year.

So there's a very delayed implementation date.

The concerns that have been brought up are around some of the policies that have been employed at the DA's office.

And again, what's happening with criminals being released very quickly, charges not being followed through.

That's the concern that we were hearing from the legislature.

So we've had communication with the county council and some of the concerns that they have as well to try to see if there's a better path forward.

We don't wanna put an unnecessary burden that doesn't actually help or solve the problem.

And so I think what you'll see over the course of the year is the legislature working together with my office.

And the county as well to figure out what exactly is it that that's the concern and how do we get the information to solve that concern.

- Governor, can we expect any vetoes on this final day of bill signing?

- You can expect some vetoes.

I don't have that list quite in front of me yet but mostly there'll be vetoes around our ability to work closely with the legislature, things that don't need to be into law.

I will tell you my greatest concern with this legislative session is just the sheer number of bills.

591 is a big number.

And I know everybody thinks their bill is the most important.

But what happens is, in a 45 day session, when I was in the legislature getting to 500 was kind of a rarity.

I mean, that's about where we were.

Now, we're about a hundred more than that.

We haven't added, you know, an extra 20% of of days to work on those bills.

And I think we start to see the quality suffer a a little bit.

And there there are just several bills that maybe started out as something substantive, but then they didn't have the support.

So they removed the substantive pieces and we end up with something that's doesn't do anything that is kind of non-substantive.

We also have bills that easily could have been implemented with just a phone call.

It doesn't need to be a bill.

We like to joke that we have a meeting that could have been an email.

We often get bills that could have been a phone call.

You know, we work very closely with you.

Just call us if you need this information, you don't have to put it in a bill.

We'll give you the information.

So I think you'll see some of those later today.

- Can you name one bill that you're planning on vetoing?

- I will name all of them by the end of today, so we'll just leave it there.

- Governor.

With the record level of bills passed, did you have adequate time to review everything?

- Yeah I did.

But it chewed into time to do anything else over the course of the 20 days.

So again, my dedication is to the people of Utah and to make sure that we review every single bill.

And that's what we do.

And I have an incredible team who helps me with that.

And they go through the bill in depth.

We talk about each one of them.

And so it does, it obviously makes it harder.

I'm still the governor during that time.

There are other things that I have to do.

It's always interesting, you know.

The legislators get done, sign a die, and they get to go on vacation and now they're all back with their suntans.

They look great.

And we're still slogging away in the depths of the capitol.

And so it obviously is a challenge.

It's a challenge to me and to my people.

And being said, you know I wanna be clear.

There are so many great bills that were passed this session.

And I don't want to sound too critical, but I think there is some self-selection that could be helpful.

We could be a little more discerning about what really needs to be done.

You kind of have two extremes.

I was told yesterday that Congress last year passed 27 bills.

I think that's the number 27 bills to run the United States of America in one total year.

And now let me be clear, Congress is completely dysfunctional and I think we needed more than 27 bills.

But I don't know that our state needed 591 to remain functional, after what I thought was a pretty good year before.

We probably could have not had any of them and still gotten along pretty well.

(speaking over each other indistinctly) - Conversations with state leaders about maybe trying to reduce the number of bills that are proposed in future sessions?

- Every year.

Yes.

While we do have leadership in the legislative bodies, they also represent the same number of people as the other people in their body, right?

The newest member of the legislature has the right to run as many bills as the most senior person there.

And so I do think there is kind of a cultural piece of this that has changed, clearly has changed.

And I hope that there's a way we can kind of figure that out and start to focus on the more substantive pieces in that the bills that matter most.

- The Olympics future host commission is visiting in early April to tour facilities and make its final recommendations to the IOC of whether Salt Lake City will get the bid.

At a time when so few countries see it as a smart investment to bring back the games.

Why do you think it's socially and financially beneficial to Utah?

- Yeah, thanks Hannah.

I promise you that if every country had the infrastructure that we had, they would see it as a smart investment.

The reason that some countries have decided not to do it is because they have to build all of these venues, and that's very expensive.

And then the venues don't get used and they end up getting torn down.

And that's clearly a waste.

It's a waste of a country's resources.

It's just wasteful I think in general.

We are so fortunate not to have that problem or that issue.

We have all of the facilities now, we could host the Olympics next year if we had to.

And that changes the equation for everyone.

We also have tremendous public support.

I think in large part because of that.

These venues do get used all of the time and we're very lucky to be really the North American capital of winter sports and that that will continue.

My hope is, and there's certainly been talk of this, that over the course of the next few years that the IOC will make a decision to kind of have a set group of cities that host the Olympics so that, every 20 years, maybe.

Or every 16 we come back to these host cities.

And Salt Lake City will be one of those.

I can envision one where you have an Asian Winter games, European winter games, a North American winter games.

And then maybe you have a new city every fourth time, something like that.

And if that's the case, I think Salt Lake City would be well positioned.

- Is there a social perspective too?

You know, what does this do for the reputation of Utah on a global scale?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think if you look at the success of Utah over the last 10 years.

And again, taking my bias out of it, we've been the number one economy from a GDP growth standpoint, been one of the fastest growing states.

We've had all of these accolades come our way.

I believe there's a direct line back to the 2002 Olympics because of that we we're punching well above our weight.

And it's because of that Olympic opportunity that we had.

It's also a great opportunity for us to invest in the right ways.

We did that, just met with Governor Levitt who has his memoirs coming out, talking about what they were able to do leading up to the Olympics and the investments that they made in our freeways, infrastructure, transit, all of those things.

And having something out there, kind of a goal that we're all working towards really has a unifying effect on our state and allows us to do some big things.

So we're trying to get through this legislative session, get the bid secured, actually sign.

Hopefully on July 24th we'll be in Paris signing on the dotted line.

That's what we're looking forward to if everything goes well.

And then we can bring everybody together and say, okay we've got 10 years what do we want Utah to look like 10 years from now?

- We do have some people joining us remotely that I really want to get to.

So if Adam with Fox 13, you can go ahead with your question.

- Yes, governor, we keep finding unreported cases of children being assaulted and sexually assaulted in psychiatric hospitals.

One facility in particular has now lost its license four times due to patient safety concerns.

But it's never been shut down despite calls for that to happen from some lawmakers.

Now some lawmakers are also pointing to you, to the executive branch, which oversees the Department of Health and Human Services.

So my question is, are you happy with the state's level of oversight of psychiatric facilities?

- Yeah, thanks Adam.

This is something that I'm very concerned about.

I believe that you're referring to Highland Ridge.

Am I correct on that?

Yeah.

So this is something that has been brought to my attention, something that we are very concerned about.

There is a review happening right there.

I believe that there have been some law enforcement investigations there as well.

There is a process that we have to go through by the law.

We will go through that process and execute faithfully on that.

I will say that, something that has changed is that there is a full-time monitor there at the hospital now, and that is something new.

So that if there are issues or those complaints come in, we have someone there monitoring full time.

And again, if at the end of the process, at the end of the review then that the evidence weighs in favor of a license revocation or shutting down the facility, we will execute on that as well.

- Okay, Adam does have a follow up.

- Go ahead, Adam.

Is that all?

Okay, we're good thank you.

- Governor, the Colorado River Compact negotiations are gonna get underway within the next couple of weeks.

Utah and other states will sit down and start hammering out an agreement.

What do you want to see out of it on behalf of the state?

- Well I just want to see again, a fair allocation.

I think that's what we're looking for.

We've been preparing for this day for several years.

We have some of the best legal minds and scientific minds anywhere in the country working on this for us right now.

And I'm really pleased, Ben.

I wanna point this out that our Colorado River Commission has been working so closely with the upper basin states and lower basin states.

We have a better relationship now, far better now than we had three years ago.

Three years ago we were in a very contentious spot and I felt like Utah was behind in our ability to excel in these negotiations.

That has completely changed over the past three years.

In fact, many of those other states are relying on on our experts as we're doing modeling together.

And that's the most important thing to me.

We know that the hydrology of the river is not what they thought it was going to be 10, 20, 30 years ago.

And so there are very hard decisions that will have to be made by everyone.

But there is a commitment to make those decisions together and to make the right decisions and to think outside of the box.

What are some things we can do?

Can we support lower basin states with new technologies so that they're pulling less water from the Colorado so that we can get our share of the allocation.

We know that water has been over allocated that there is an over usage in the lower basin states versus the upper basin states.

We have desalination technology for example, that is being utilized elsewhere in the world.

Could we be supportive and work with the federal government to help California and other places utilize that desalination technology so that their needs are being met as well.

And that there's a win-win in this.

Those are the types of things that we just really wanna be smart about.

We wanna work together.

It's not us versus them.

We don't look at this as a zero sum game.

It really is how can we all work together and find a win.

And I think if you were to talk to the other states, they would say the same thing that they've noticed that Utah is really at the table and well respected and working for solutions.

- If this becomes a political battle, can Utah you know, punch with California, Nevada, Arizona?

I mean is it, are we gonna get rolled if this becomes?

- Yeah I don't think we'll get rolled.

I certainly hope not.

This is the one major basin that has never had a lawsuit.

That has never, you know, the allocations here have never been determined by a judge.

It's in fact, again, it's the only major basin where that's true.

We're all pretty proud of that.

And we would love to get there again, because again, I think we'll make better decisions than if we're getting rolled then ultimately a judge makes those decisions.

And so I think we can, I really think that there's a path forward where we can get there.

But, you know, if not, we will do whatever is necessary to protect Utah's rights on that.

- At this point though, do you expect that, will the states be able to come to some sort of consensus and an agreement, or is the Bureau of Reclamation gonna have to make the decision for you?

- It's possible that the bureau will have to step in.

I recognize that.

But we're still very optimistic that there's an opportunity for us.

And, and again, there are two things there.

One is kind of the immediacy of the existing agreements and what's happening in those reservoirs.

And then there's the renegotiation that's happening and those are two separate issues.

The good news is right now is that the hydrology of the river has improved.

So what we were looking at two years ago with the bureau potentially stepping in and just making decisions has kind of been paused a little bit to allow us to work through this.

And with the water year that we had last year and what's shaping up to be a pretty good water year this year.

Especially with some of the recent storms that were in the southeast portion of the state.

And surrounding states that will feed directly into the Colorado River.

And specifically into Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

We feel like we're in a little better shape heading into those negotiations than we may have otherwise been.

- The Supreme Court has had the case of Utah's trigger law now for more than a year and a half going on two years.

In your view, has the Supreme Court had enough time to make a ruling?

- Well, I'm not gonna put any pressure on that, on that other branch of government there.

They'll work through their processes and again, hopefully make the right decision.

We'll respect whatever that decision is.

It's a very complicated issue.

And I know they're doing their very best to work through that.

- How badly would you like to see the law take effect?

- Well, I get it.

I would like to.

Governor Herbert signed the law and I supported it, so yeah.

And so I would, again, I would love to see that law take effect and hope that that happens soon.

- The UEA has said that they're going to oppose this constitutional amendment in November that would remove the income tax year mark for education.

You, I take it, support that amendment.

Why do you think that they're wrong and you're right?

- Well, I think that this is good for Utah.

I think that it's good in that we get to remove the sales tax on food, which is the state portion of the sales tax on food.

Which is about 200 million million dollars.

This is a tax that will help people especially those on the margins who struggle.

So I think that that's a very good thing.

When it comes to the education piece of this, again, I always hear that this earmark is sacred and we have to support the earmark.

The earmark has never changed one decision by a legislature in our state's history.

And so I don't think that it will make any difference.

And so we get to remove the sales tax on food.

We will continue to fund education.

Education funding doesn't happen.

The legislature doesn't sit around and say, you know what?

Gosh, I want to spend that money somewhere else.

But we have that earmark, they've found a way around the earmark every single year that I've been involved in the legislative process.

And that will continue.

And so this is a great opportunity to get some things in the constitution that will help us better manage our state and again, bless so many lives.

So that's why I think it's a good thing.

And I think the people of Utah should vote for it, and I hope they will.

- Governor, how do you rate the 2024 legislative session on Great Salt Lake legislation and water conservation?

- I rate it very high.

I give it an A plus.

I'm so excited.

There were some pieces that we didn't quite have done the first two years that we were looking the Great Salt Lake.

This kind of finalizes those pieces, it helps us get the excess water when we save water, helps us, it gives us a path to get that water to the Great Salt Lake.

While still supporting those who own those water rights, who have those water rights.

It was, I think a very innovative session.

And when you add the report that that came out the plan for the Great Salt Lake that came out of the Commissioner's office, Brian Steeds office.

I'm incredibly optimistic and I can tell you we met this week.

We got our report directly with legislative leadership and the Commissioner of the Great Salt Lake.

We feel really optimistic about the amount of water heading to the Great Salt Lake this year.

We think we're gonna see it rise a couple feet and that's good for Utahans.

- Okay that is all the time we have for our television broadcast.

We wanna thank you so much for joining us for the Governor's Monthly News Conference.

- [Announcer] This has been the Governor's Monthly News Conference.

For video and more information, visit PBS utah.org/governor.