♪♪♪ male announcer: Funding for the Hinckley Report is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

Jason Perry: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report," as governments, schools, and hospitals struggle to address the recent covid surge, elected officials spar for control over mask mandates; the 2022 election season heats up as candidates file for office and start gathering signatures; and with days to go before the start of the legislative session, citizens react as controversial new bills are made public.

♪♪♪ CC BY ABERDEEN CAPTIONING 1-800-688-6621 WWW.ABERCAP.COM Jason: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

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

Joining our panel tonight, we have Republican State Senator Todd Wyler; Democratic State Representative Angela Romero; and Josh Brown, director of government relations with Rio Tinto.

Thank you so much for being with us this evening.

We have so much to get to.

This is a huge week in politics, a lot of it centering around what we've been discussing for the last couple of years, covid in particular, and the response to it.

I want to get into what's happening here in the state of Utah in particular.

This is interesting, we have nearly 13,000 covid cases yesterday, and the question we've talked about on the show numerous times over the last years is when it comes to the response, who's in charge?

Who gets to make the calls?

I want to talk about that for just a moment, and Representative Romero, let's start with you for a minute, because what we had first of the week is Mayor Jenny Wilson through a public health order through Angela Dunn put a county-wide mask mandate in place.

Talk about that and why she said she felt like she had the authority to do it.

Angela Romero: Well, because of the legislation that we passed last year she felt like she had the authority and, you know, the authority was given.

We talk a lot about local control at a state level, and one of those authorities we gave were to county health departments, and so Jenny worked with her person.

And what's problematic with that is it also gives the council the opportunity to overturn, but what I've noticed is we focus so much on Salt Lake County, but we have other counties that are doing the same thing, why aren't we gaslighting them?

Jason: Hmm, it's an interesting point, because Senator Weiler, this has been a little bit different in terms of the interaction with the city coun-- with the county council, which we had some pushback last time this question came in place.

Talk about what happened there and if there's anything different to it this time.

Todd Weiler: Well, there's a Republican supermajority on the county council, six to three, and one of the council members, Councilmember Albert, made a motion during a meeting to declare emergency and to try to override the county mask mandate in Salt Lake County.

He was advised I think by staff and by lawyers that because it wasn't on the agenda, they would have to come back in 24 hours, and they did that, and two of the Republicans voted with the Democrats to not override the mask mandate.

And you know what, we saw an interesting kind of arm wrestle between Mayor Wilson in Salt Lake County and the governor over state buildings, and the governor I think was supportive of Mayor Wilson's attempts to regulate the county buildings and her county but, you know, let her know that that he as the governor gets to set the rules for state buildings and Governor--Mayor Wilson it seemed like.

And I have some bad news for Mayor Wilson, she also doesn't get to set the rules for the federal building and the federal courthouse and the Salt Lake airport, that's done by the Salt Lake--sorry, by the federal government.

And it's surprising to me that mayor Wilson would make that kind of mistake.

Josh Brown: Senator, question though, it seems like this starts going into kind of a perpetual loop.

So the county vote--county council voted upholding the mask mandate, then I hear that there's going to be another discussion, they're going to meet with members of the legislature and then maybe do this again.

I'm just curious for my own knowledge, how does this kinda progress to a point of here's the decision, here's what we'd go with?

'Cause it seems like we do this quite often with this topic.

Todd: Well, you know I think that with covid it's easy to kinda throw all precedent and logic out the window and say, well, you know, everything's different now.

And let me just make a imperfect example, you know, if a military advisor recommends war, they don't get to declare war, Congress gets to declare war, and so we've always had a situation in this country where we have experts make recommendations to policy-makers and, then the policy makers are the ones that hold the ultimate power over the policy.

And that's what the legislature strived last year to restore, and so we have the county health department, which has an epidemiologist on staff and other things, they make recommendations, but ultimately the policy-makers get to set the policy.

And that's what you're seeing playing out here in Salt Lake County.

Is it a perfect process?

Maybe not, but it's better than any other process.

Jason: Josh, talk about how this played out with these particular parties, because the mask mandate goes into effect, and as soon as that happens even before the county council votes on it, the governor did come out with a statement, said I'm exempting state buildings, and I think his words were the counties do not have the authority to bind the state.

Talk about that, kinda that battle that's happening right there as well between kinda that really local control and that statewide control, particularly over the buildings.

Josh: The interesting--the statement I've often heard from legislators is everybody believes in local control until people wanna control, and I think we're getting to this point with the county council's gone through, they've got a path, they made a decision, legislation was passed last year multiple times, right, with the covid.

We had the 2021 session, then we had some special session work on covid, on covid controls, and it's really cascaded to this point of it's gone through the governor, the Senate president, the House majority, or the speaker of the House, and then goes to the--I believe it's the someone up in the health department high level.

And I apologize, I don't know the exact title, but that was the decision-makers, it then gave the control to the county-- or the councils from those counties or cities.

That decision was made, and now it kind of goes into that question that I asked before.

And it's really the clarity peace on my own end and is asking, you know, the Senators these decisions have been made, they've actually gone to another iteration where they--the council voted again, the decision has been finalized, and it looks like this might happen again.

And that's the piece I can't really get my arms around.

Jason: Well, I want to get a comment from you, Representative, then you from Senator, but I want to put the context here as kinda what Josh was saying here was with an-- with the response we got from Mayor Wilson.

Let me read that to, you and then let's talk about this authority and control, which is exactly what Josh was just asking about as well.

This is in response to the governor.

This is Mayor Jenny Wilson, she said, "While I appreciate the Governor's authority on many levels, he does not have the authority to exempt state buildings and employees from the Salt Lake County mask requirement and is defying a public health order of constraint."

Let's get your perspective on this one, Representative, and then Senator.

Angela: And obviously me an Senator Weiler will disagree on this, because he was talking about the law, but I'm talking about our moral obligation as elected officials to protect our communities and our constituents, and what Mayor Wilson is doing is she's going off the number, she's looking at how it's impacting in our communities, and all she wants to do is protect Salt Lake County residents.

And it's not very difficult to wear a mask.

It's not--we're not asking you to cut off your arm, we're asking you to protect your fellow neighbors and people in your community that might have health compromises, and so this isn't about politics, which I feel like it's become, this is about public health and public safety, but I feel like sometimes here in the state of Utah and at a federal level, people are using it as a ping-pong ball to score a point, and we're putting people's lives in jeopardy.

Jason: Thank you, Senator?

Todd: Yeah, so I don't think anyone's arguing a moral argument.

I think that the science with cloth masks and omicron is non-existent.

We know that omicron is 140 times more contagious than regular covid, 7 times more contagious than delta, and while I wear a mask when I'm asked to, I'm not sure that it's protecting myself or anyone else, and I actually tested positive just over a week ago for covid, I believe it's omicron, and I was sick with cold-like symptoms for a day, so I know that covid's real.

I'm not a covid denier.

I know that a lot of people will get a lot more sick than I did, and knock on wood I'm grateful that I was only--only had cold-like symptoms for a day, but Mayor Wilson's statement was not a moral imperative.

She said the government--the governor does not have the authority to override her mask mandate for state buildings.

And on that legal issue, she was simply wrong.

And I'm surprised that she would double down without checking with attorneys and without doing her research, because I think it makes her look foolish.

Jason: So, Representative, go ahead.

Angela: Well, I would disagree, 'cause we saw this with the city mayor, too, when we were talking about whether kids should wear masks in school, and so it's how you interpret the law.

So maybe in a sense Senator Weiler's right on this particular case, but at the same time as elected officials, we have--regardless of the law, I mean, we can talk about the law and we do to create the law, but we have a moral obligation to protect our constituents to make sure that everyone safe, and right now when you look at vaccination rates, we're--you know, especially when you're talking about marginalized communities, there's a long way to go, and I think a lot of the reasons why people aren't getting vaccinated is 'cause they're getting all this misinformation on TV, and they don't know what the truth is.

And so for me, it's not just about masks, it's about the over--all conversation about covid and whether you should get vaccinated.

We wouldn't be in this situation, from my personal perspective, if we would all just get vaccinated and boosted.

Jason: One of the groups that's been particularly impacted by these decisions is our education system.

Josh, in fact, we had a letter that was sent out by our legislative leadership and the governor, even Syd Dickson who represents education authority for the state of Utah talking about what should happen with these tests to stay programs and what our schools are allowed to do maybe under the law and maybe temporarily in spite of the law.

Josh: And for those who aren't aware, tests to stay it was a process that allowed schools to test students.

If you tested negative, you were able to stay in school.

If you tested positive, they could send the children back-- they would be quarantined during the time of having covid.

Right now we don't have enough tests to meet that requirement, it's close, but as I understand, it's not quite there.

So there's been the discussion of the, you know, the pausing for the test to stay, and it's also created this confusion a bit where I think people believe I've heard it's, you know, anecdotally that if you test positive, your child tests positive, they can still go to school because test to stay is no longer a thing, and it's really that communication piece that's been discussed.

Everybody's, you know, a lot of people work, a lot of people both parents work, you want your kids to be in school, test to stay was something that helped fulfill that, and as we go through this current back home, virtual learning for some of these students, some of these schools, it's that what does this really mean?

What can I do?

I don't know if, you know, talking with my neighbors, I'm talking with other members at my work, I don't think people are quite clear on exactly what that means.

When is test to stay going away?

Is it coming back?

Is this gonna go more than a week?

I don't have the ability to do it, how do I pull this off for a week when, you know?

Then they're gonna go back to school, it's hard for me to find a babysitter or caregiver or a opportunity for our kids to learn during that time I-- really fortunate that my child was able to go to school during that time.

He really was in school last year most of the time, and it is crucial, it is important.

They put up--I was at an event just the other day, there were some information that was shown on--I believe it was about fifth grade through high school--and it showed the deficiency compared to previous years on learning for fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade.

Some of these, I believe, were at--trying to relive the map I was looking at, the graph, 47% reduction in some of the testing scores.

So you know, again, political issues, moral issues, religious issues, it's really we need to help our children continue to be educated in a proper fashion so they can continue.

We don't want our kids to be delinquent in learning, and we don't want to put them behind.

Jason: To address some of these issues that just brought up, Senator Weiler, the letter that came out from legislative leadership and the governor said we will likely see some legislation coming forward from all of you to try to address some of those issues and provide some clarity.

I'd love to hear from you and then from you, Representative, what do you see coming?

Todd: Yeah, thank you, so I was the chief sponsor of Senate Bill 107 last year, which introduced the test to stay program, and, you know, covid keeps on changing the rules on us, so test to stay worked pretty well for for about nine months, maybe 10 months, and now it's not working because we don't have enough tests and because, you know, we're looking at record numbers with omicron, and so I think it was completely appropriate for legislative leaderships and the governor to issue that letter this week, because I was getting calls from schools and from parents who are like, well, what do we do now?

And you know, it's unfortunate because President Biden came into office a year ago promising to ramp up testing and to improve testing, and it's worse than it's ever been.

When I had covid it was hard to get a test, a lot of people in Utah having to sit in their cars for two hours and wait in line just to get a covid test, and there's failures there I think on all levels of government.

Nobody was anticipating this, but so I do expect that there will be some legislation as early as next week to re-address the situation with schools.

Remember when Senate Bill 107 was passed, vaccines were not widely available, and we were still--we know a lot more about covid and certainly about omicron, which is less deadly and less threatening to people than delta or regular covid, and so you know, the one constant in this pandemic is the rules keep on changing.

Jason: From the Democratic side of the aisle.

Angela: And I would agree with Senator Weiler, the rules keep on changing, but we as, you know, elected officials, as the stewards of the money that's gonna work with our schools and work with our elected officials and our superintendents, we also have to think about what do we do when we don't have teachers there to teach?

What do we do when we don't have substitutes there to fill in for those teachers?

How are we making sure that we're preserving teachers and their mental health so they want to go back in to keep on teaching?

What do we do to make sure our kids aren't suffering, too, as Josh mentioned?

And part of that, you know, masks play a role, but we--I don't feel like we've even had this larger conversation about how do we address these issues 'cause we're too busy pointing fingers about Biden or local control or you can't tell me to wear a mask, and we're forgetting about the people we're supposed to be here to serve.

Jason: Such interesting points.

Let me pull this out just a little bit more.

We've talked about the executive branch, we've talked about the legislative branch, what would the conversation be without the judicial branch?

A big week even there.

Josh, I wanna start with you, you represent one of the biggest employers instead of Utah, a worldwide organization, talk about this decision from the United States Supreme Court that specifically got rid of the vaccine requirements and the testing requirement for large businesses.

Josh: Yeah, we--the original OSHA vaccination mandate that came down months back, we have spent considerable amount of time, money, effort, resources, saying how do we scale up for that?

How do we prepare for that?

We were good to go on Monday, you know, that would be the new covid controls for our business, and our organization is very focused on health safety of our workers.

Everyone needs to go home safely, go home the way they arrived, and you know, the monetary piece and just the testing--frequent testing, I'm tested bi-weekly.

If you're--certain people on site are tested more often.

So the testing piece, we've you know, we're an organization that's large enough to have the ability to fund those, you talk to a lot of some of our smaller contractors and suppliers and they just don't have the resources, the manpower, and the financial ability to pay for these tests.

As the OSHA mandate came down, you know, discussion with us and other businesses and the business coalition was this is now a shift, you know, a vaccine requirement, then, is how do we test?

And if those who choose not to get vaccinated, is that on their own dime versus the business is paying for it?

So you know, there was a thought process that okay, maybe this would keep things progressing and moving it in the path to us getting back to what is the new normal.

You know, with the Supreme Court decision, we immediately go-- went back into our previous path.

So we have the ability.

If you look at it across the globe as you were bringing up, I mean, it's so dramatically different, Jason.

We have our Canadian partners, they're in lock-down right now.

We're unable to travel as a business.

You know, the mandate is no international travel at least for the current month.

This had gone into effect for the last, you know, better part of year and a half, two years.

It varies so much from country to country as well that we're not able to say, hey, here's a one size fits all for the organization.

So then that puts a lot of the ownership on the business units throughout the globe and even in the US, you know, we've got a California presence, Arizona presence, Utah presence, those vary from place to place.

So what it really leads to is us having to go through at each site have its own, you know, everybody's got the similar guardrails, but how do we get to that covid protection and assure everybody's safe, and we're not spreading it throughout the organization.

So the long-term path is the OSHA decision was a decision that we could get our arms around and go forward.

This comes back, puts us into that surety, and what is that next step?

Clarity and surety are I think what's key for the business community.

We're not so much on getting on the political, the moral piece, we want to have our employees safe, but at the end of the day it's what's the path that we can go to move forward.

Jason: Senator, let's talk about that surety and clarity a little bit, because I want to get to the heart of something Josh just mentioned, too, the United States Supreme Court did hinge that decision it seems on OSHA, on what OSHA can and cannot do.

In fact, that was part of the decision here is that Congress has given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers but has not given the agency the power to regulate public health more broadly.

That seems to be at the heart as to why they struck down the particular mandate.

Todd: Well, and they struck it down because Congress wasn't involved and because the federal government's power is limited, and if you listen to the oral argument they talked about hard hats, so OSHA can tell employees to take hard--to wear hard hats at work, but when they get off their shift, they can take the hard hat off.

You can't take the vaccination off, and I think that the Biden administration knew or should have known that this would be struck down.

I think that's why they waited 60 days after they announced it before they issued the rule in writing so that it could be appealed, and I think that the plan was, was we were going to basically scare a lot of companies and a lot of employees into getting vaccinated, and once they're vaccinated, even if the policy is over-ruled by the Supreme Court, It'll be too late.

And the good news for Rio Tinto and all the other employers out there is the Supreme Court has left open the possibility for an employer to still require the vaccine mandate.

They just said that OSHA doesn't have the authority to do it, especially without congressional authorization, and I think it's a good decision to preserve states' rights and the proper role of the federal government and preserve president--future presidents from overstepping their constitutional authority.

And interestingly, President Biden after this ruling said something kind of like this, something Representative, you said in the past is he said it's now up to states and individual employers to figure out what-- what is most beneficial for their employees.

Angela: Yeah, and you know, we saw when Salt Lake County did their mask mandate Salt Lake County businesses were happy for that, so again, it depends on who you're talking to and what kind of answer you're gonna get, and for me and I think my fellow Democrats on why President Biden wanted to put the mandate is if everyone's vaccinated, we get out of this pandemic.

Jason: Alright, can we switch gears for just a moment?

Legislative session starts on Tuesday.

I know we're all ready, we're all excited about-- I'd like to get a little preview for what's coming.

I want to start first with a little bit on the money.

There's a pretty decent amount of money on the table.

Some of--a lot of it comes from the federal government from the stimulus, packages that came last time, also increased tax revenues in the state of Utah.

Josh, you're following it closely.

I saw some interesting comments from the governor, from Governor Cox at an economic summit yesterday.

He said my warning is to the legislatures--legislators, don't spend it like the federal government.

I think he called them drunken sailors.

He called it a cotton candy high, alright, is that what we have?

Josh: They put up a slide that talked about an event that the governor spoke at that had roughly 25% of our state's GDP is in addition to this funding coming from the feds, and it's over multiple years, so there is a substantial amount of money.

You talk to a lot of the people behind the scenes, the governor, most of that's already been kinda appropriated or people had their hands up saying, hey, this is ours, and it's going to go this player, this makes sense.

A lot of focus on infrastructure, a lot of focus on water, a lot of focus on covid, a lot of focus on healthcare, so I mean, I think there's money there.

I think the comment about reasonable spending, doing it for the long term, that can translate, too, into so many other topics on growth, on infrastructure.

There's--I think we've hit a really great spot for the state of Utah.

One of the fastest growing states if not the fastest growing state, lowest unemployment, people are coming here and liking it, which is fabulous, and we're all Utah natives or most of us are, and we love it, it's a great place.

How do we keep that consistent in a way that allows Utah to stay Utah?

The Utah way I think is the House of Representatives, a document I saw called the Utah way.

Jason: Okay, for just a moment, Representative, one or two really big issues you think we're gonna see, and then Senator, really quick in this session.

Angela: I agree with you with how are we going to spend money?

Like what are we gonna do about infrastructure with the ARPA money?

How are we gonna look at water policy?

So those are huge issues, but another thing is housing.

We're experiencing along the Wasatch Front, how do we make sure we have housing available for all these new members coming in or for our children that are trying to buy homes when they can't afford to buy a home here in Salt Lake City.

So those are huge policy issues for us along the Wasatch Front.

Jason: Senator Weiler?

Todd: Yeah, I agree.

I just want to say that with housing, the government can't spend its way out of this housing crisis, but what we can do is make sure that there are proper incentives in place for affordable housing be built.

I think we're going to spend over $50 million this session on trying to preserve the Great Salt Lake.

There's a lot of very good reasons to do that, some of which I can explain and some of which I can't explain, but we know the Great Salt Lake is in trouble and for my--this will be my 11th session, and this is the first time that I've seen the Great Salt Lake really at the forefront of the agenda.

And I'm glad that Josh mentioned the fact we didn't get all the stimulus money last year.

A lot of people are like, well, why'd you only spend half of it?

Well, we only got half of it, and in Utah, unlike the federal government, we don't spend money that we don't have.

Jason: One item I want to ask about in our last last minute or so here is candidates are starting to file for office here in the state Utah.

These campaigns are ramping up, and we're starting to see people who are getting signatures, for example.

People who are I'm going to be a candidate, I'm going to run through my caucus convention system, I'm gonna get signatures, are we going to see any effort from the legislature this year do you think to revise that statute like we've seen in past years?

And if not, are there ramifications right now on people getting signatures, Senator?

Todd: I don't think so this year because the rules have already been set, people are already collecting signatures, and one thing that the legislature I don't expect will do is they'll change the rules midstream, and so I think we'll have to let this election cycle play out with the rules that are already in place.

Jason: Representative?

Angela: Yeah, I agree with him, and my more--my biggest concern when we're talking about elections and people running for office is making sure that the policy we pass on on whether you can vote by mail and other-- those other policies that we're kind of ahead of other states, we maintain those, and we don't go backwards.

Jason: Okay, it's about 30 seconds on this one, Josh.

There is an initiative already out there being circulated to get rid of this mail-in balloting.

Josh: Yeah, since the mail-in balloting started in the state of Utah, I've done it every single time, it's nice, it's convenient.

Being a scientist background, what does the data show?

The data shows voting goes up for those who are registered, fraud is not occurring in the state of Utah.

I think it's a very great thing, and I really hope that we look to the data and we do the decisions that help those who are registered vote easily and more often.

Jason: Very interesting to see how this one develops.

We do have some initiatives already make their way to us, we'll follow those right along with the other candidates we're following as well.

Thank you so much for your great insights this evening.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast onPBSUtah.org/HinckleyReport or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us, we'll see you next week.

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