♪♪♪ male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by Merit Medical and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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

Legislative funding requests begin to roll in as lawmakers face a tight budget year.

The first major pieces of legislation reached the finish line with many more to come.

And lawmakers react to executive orders from Washington D.C. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

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

Covering the week, we have Representative Jennifer Dailey-Provost, Minority Whip in the Utah House of Representatives; Senator Mike McKell, Majority Assistant Whip in the Utah State Senate; and Sean Higgins, politics reporter with KUER.

Thank you for being with us.

The second week of the legislative session has just ended.

Lots of bills are coming out.

We're still waiting to see a few of these interesting ones.

I want to jump in for a second though.

What I like to, you know, look at at the beginning of the session.

Are there any themes developing?

It might sort of instruct us about what might be coming in the next, next weeks and month and a half of the session, what do you think, Representative?

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: Well, my perception over the last couple of years is that the theme is the legislature comes out with some really big substantive legislation that elicits a lot of passionate discussion and quite a bit of controversy, and I hope, like in the last few years, we can settle down to the good work of good government over the next few weeks.

We've got some serious budget discussions to have and some policies that we need to discuss that, you know, are geared towards helping Utah families, you know, make it through tough financial times, economic times, and political times.

Jason: Yeah, Senator?

Mike McKell: You know, I think we're on the--we're on the edge of some big changes in the state.

And we do have some themes.

The Olympics are coming back in 10 years.

We're getting ready, but we're getting ready with energy.

We have a bill dealing with space ports, air taxis, and the future is before us, and we're gonna see some major, major changes where I'm at.

Explosive growth, how do we tackle that?

And I think those themes you're gonna see this throughout the session.

Jason: Sean, what are you seeing?

I mean, you're covering this so well.

Sean Higgins: I think one thing that sticks out to me is this idea of the Utah dream.

We heard Senator--Senate President Stuart Adams talk a lot about it in his opening remarks.

Speaker Schultz alluded to it.

Certainly Governor Cox alluded to it as well in his state of the state.

And I think that idea of what this Utah dream is, whether it's affordable housing, abundant reliable energy, any number of things are gonna be coloring a lot of what we're seeing this session--I think we've already seen that in some of the discussions we've had this year and coming down the pipeline.

I know we haven't quite gotten to energy yet this session, but that's gonna be a big one.

Jason: Yeah, really quickly before we leave sort of the themes, just asking for a friend, what's the budget looking like?

What do we know?

Mike: I mean for me I think the budget's normal.

We had some interesting years coming out of COVID.

There were a lot of federal dollars.

Some people say the budget's down.

I don't think it's down.

I think it's normalized to the type of growth we would expect.

I think we're doing a good job with the budget.

Obviously, we have a constitutional mandate to balance the budget.

We'll do that, but I think we have a fairly--and might be a fairly normal budget.

Jason: Are we still looking at some potential tax cuts beyond Social Security?

Jennifer: Well, if I had my way, we would have a serious discussion about cutting the sales tax on food, but my understanding is that there are still income tax discussions to be had and executive appropriations, and the degree to which the, you know, continued income tax cuts are actually helping families, I think is something that is still up for debate and shouldn't be taken as a given.

We need to have--we need to be very serious if we're talking about no growth in the budget whatsoever.

And so, if we're gonna fund any new programs we've got to cut other programs.

And we are well practiced in having that discussion.

And so, you know, looking at what is what we currently fund is actually helping people or maybe could be reallocated I think is a worthy discussion.

My concern is that too often those cuts are felt the most deeply when we're talking about the most vulnerable in our state, and I want to have an honest discussion about what those implications are going to be short term and long term.

Mike: And let me just jump in.

I do think you'll see a push to do income tax and Social Security.

Right now one of the misconceptions, I got a lot of folks reaching out to me.

They want to cut the Social Security tax.

They want to eliminate that entirely.

The exemption today is $75,000 and that's more than 80% of our seniors don't pay any tax on their Social Security today.

I don't think we've messaged that.

I don't think we've messaged that very well, but I do think there's going to be some appetite to see that exemption increase.

We've cut income tax five years in a row.

I think you'll see an effort to continue to cut that tax if we can afford it.

Sean: I think alongside this tax discussion a lot of what Representative Provost was was talking about how we allocate the resources we do have will be really interesting.

Obviously, Salt Lake City had this big announcement the other week with their homelessness program.

I think a lot of that hinges on some support, some amount of financial support from the state how the state is going to go along with allocating money to support that program is interesting, and I also think it's worth noting that Utah isn't unique in having this conversation about tightening its belt.

States across the country are having this conversation.

Municipalities across the state are having this conversation as well.

COVID relief money is gone.

So, there's a whole tranche of money that was available in the last few years that is not anymore.

So, I think these discussions will continue until the very last hours of the session, probably.

Jason: That's right; I want to get to a few bills and, you know Sean, let's start with you for just a moment because you've done some great reporting through KUER on a couple of those.

I'd love to get context from both of you on this.

The first one about ballot initiatives.

This is Senate Joint Resolution 2, Senator Lincoln Fillmore, a proposal to amend the Utah Constitution.

This is for initiatives that increase taxes or change revenue.

They're going to change the percentage from a simple majority to 60% required to make this happen.

Sean: Yeah, the discourse around this has been really interesting to me.

I was at the Senate hearing the other day when Senator Philmore was first presenting this bill, and on the surface it's a very compelling argument.

He says, you know, if he or his colleagues in the legislature raise your taxes, you can vote against them if you don't like that.

If your neighbor votes to raise your taxes, you can't throw them out of office.

And I think where the critics of this initiative or this resolution really talk about how onerous the initiative process is already.

It's--compared to other states quite extensive.

We have to collect, I think it's 8% of total voters in the state.

I don't know the exact number of that, but it's quite high.

Almost all of the Senate districts in the state also have to have signature gathering there and then you have to hold, I think it's seven meetings across the state in various parts of the states to get an initiative on the ballot.

And I mentioned the discourse on this.

I think you see an argument from the majority on this where you--they say the--it doesn't make logical sense to have someone argue against this because they say that the will of the voter is is sacred but you don't want the voter to have a say on this.

And I think if you talk to the people who are critical of changes to the ballot initiative process, they're actually quite thankful that the voters will have the final say on this instead of just the legislature deciding to change the constitution in this way.

Jennifer: I have a lot of heartburn about a lot of this, not the least of which because we don't require a 60% threshold for any of us to be elected, and, you know, there's other election law that we're going to be talking about right now.

An elected official can be--can come into office with, you know, less than 50% of the vote, and that's--and obviously that's a whole different discussion.

But I can't help but point out the irony and the frustration that bills like this effectively in addition to making it just harder for advocates to get it done, make it exceptionally more expensive to get a ballot initiative passed but then when we do talk about ballot initiatives.

You know, when when legislation came up last year about constitutional amendments, there was one of the criticisms of ballot initiatives is that out of state, you know, these--this alluding to these faceless evil forces from out of state that were gonna come in and influence our elections but now they're setting it up so that essentially national nonprofits or national advocacy groups would have to come in.

And so, the irony and the disconnect in this discussion that we want this to be a homegrown process, but we're gonna make it so hard as to it will be now impossible for it to be a homegrown process I think is is just leaving voters disenfranchised.

And I don't see why we have so much distrust in our voter populace that we can't just get to a place, let people run ballot initiatives, and then if there are structural or functional issues that just aren't working for the legislature, come together and have a conversation about it.

There's a more collaborative opportunity to make sure that we are keeping all of the voters in the state enfranchised in this discussion.

Mike: And I'm going to take a different perspective on that.

I think we are absolutely empowering voters.

This is a constitutional amendment.

This is a constitutional amendment and I'm going to say it again, it's a constitutional amendment.

That means that voters will decide.

This would be placed on the ballot and the voters in the state of Utah would get to decide.

I think there should be a high bar if we were going to use an initiative to raise taxes.

This is simply increasing that bar to a 60% threshold if the voters of the state of Utah want to raise taxes, but the voters get to decide whether or not that threshold is appropriate.

I've said it three times, it's a constitutional amendment, voters get to decide.

We're empowering voters to make this decision.

I think it's the right policy, but it's a policy the voters will get to weigh-in on if this resolution, this proposal moves forward.

Jason: Maybe take a second on the comment and--from Representative but also from President Stuart Adams has talked about the concern that he has some of your colleagues about out of state groups coming in and impacting this process or injecting funds into it also.

Mike: So, in the real world I'm an attorney, so there was a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United, and one of my big concerns with Citizens United is we have what we call dark money in the United States.

This is money that we can't trace.

It's not transparent.

And groups from outside the state of Utah have come into Utah.

They will come into Utah and one of the themes when I meet with constituents more than anything else they want transparency.

Those dollars that flow in from out of state, whether it's conservative money or liberal money or moderate money.

We don't know where it comes from and letting out of state groups control our ballot initiatives, I don't think it's good.

I don't think it's good policy.

I don't think making law through initiative is helpful.

One of the big concerns we've had in the legislature, especially in the Republican Party, is if the public pushes an initiative, we can't change that initiative.

If I pass a bad bill, the representative next to me, she gets to come back a year from now and try to fix the mistake that I made, and with a ballot initiative, it becomes very, very difficult to do that.

That is a bad public policy in my view to legislate that way.

And it's concerning to me that it's going to be done with dollars that we can't track.

Jennifer: So, I'm going to jump in really fast.

I know we need to move on, but number one, not all of the money that comes in is necessarily dark money just because it's out of state.

A lot of this is transparent.

It's advocacy groups, it's focus--issue based groups, and also there is, as evidenced in our last election, there was a lot of dark money in politics that was--came right from here in state so I don't think it's fair to say that just because it comes out of state, it's dark money.

What I'm saying is we've made it so expensive that funding it in state becomes increasingly difficult.

Sean: And I would just add that this conversation highlights the nuance that there is here.

There's a lot of gray area.

This is not black and white for a lot of people, especially for people in the legislature who are dealing with this all the time.

Jennifer: And also, as evidenced by the ballot initiatives passed in 2018, the legislature is not shy from coming in and changing what the voters pass on the ballot.

Jason: Connected to this one, Sean, some of your reporting as well, just really briefly on this.

This is Senate Bill 73, also Lincoln Fillmore, because it's sort of a companion to this on statewide initiatives requiring --this is the publication requirement, 60 days prior to the initiative going on the ballot, it needs to be broadcast in newspapers across the state.

Of course, there's been a little bit of an issue because maybe that hasn't happened in the last couple of initiatives, but this is what he wants to have going forward.

Sean: I think similar to SJR-2, this is on the surface it sounds like a great idea.

Yes, if there's going to be a sweeping change to state law that voters are going to be voting on, it should be accessible everywhere, but we live in the digital age.

People can go online and find these things as well.

This is, I would remind people that this is the very requirement that sank Amendment A and Amendment D in the courts last year, so.

I think it is--we talked about how onerous the initiative process is already, or at least some people who think that the initiative process is already onerous, and this would add another hurdle on top of that, not just logistically but financially as well.

Jason: A couple of big things happening in elections.

Well, this one is interesting, Representative Jordan Teuscher, primary election amendments.

This is House Bill 231.

This is dealing with primaries.

We have seen increasingly often in the state of Utah, you have primaries with many candidates, three, four, five candidates.

So, people are not getting a majority and this bill right here would say in this primary, if no one gets a 50%, reaches 50%, there's a runoff, a runoff election between the top two candidates.

Talk about this because this is huge.

Go ahead.

Jennifer: So, I think that it is a substantive change, but I also would like to have a better understanding of just how uncomfortable the broad populace is with winning by less than 50% if there's more than 2 people on the ballot.

I know that some people are very, very passionate about it and they're very vocal, but do they really represent everybody, you know, in the state?

Is that broadly believed that the only real way you can know who won a race is if they get 50 plus 1, or do--are most people actually understanding that in a, in a perfect world or in an imperfect world you're going to often have more than two candidates on a ballot?

That, you know, winning with a--without a majority, or a you know a 50 plus 1 majority but still a majority of the votes is compelling?

And so, you know I think people can think critically about those things and understand that the most votes is the win.

I just don't know that it is as broadly--it's as much of a concern as some some of the louder voices might indicate that.

Jason: Let me give you a little context to this great point too, and see how this plays with what the Representative was talking about too.

So, I'm gonna give you a couple examples and the primary in 2024, John Curtis was 49%; in the CD-3 Kennedy was at 39% in 2024; Derek Brown was at 44%.

You have three or more for governor in 2020.

Cox was at 36%.

So, Senator, talk about the implications of this because you do have people who get the position with much less than 50%, does that have anything to do with whether or not you have a mandate or not or?

Mike: Yeah, and Jason, I'm glad we're having this discussion.

I think it's a good discussion and I don't know where the majority party is or the minority party, but I think we ought to have this discussion.

I think you've got to couple it with the entire election process right from the start, including the caucus convention system itself.

Ultimately, I think it's helpful for a voter, for a candidate to receive more than 50%, but if we're going to walk down that road with a runoff, those are a lot of elections we need to have that discussion.

It's going to create a lot of cost if we do a runoff election.

Does it make more sense to couple that with a direct primary?

I think those are all the types of questions that we ought to be asking.

Me as a lawmaker, I've always felt like having a runoff makes more sense.

It gives the public an opportunity to elect somebody with more than a 50% margin.

But right now I think this is in the early stages.

I don't know what the support looks like on either side.

I don't feel like it's a partisan issue, but I think you're going to see a lot of individual legislators having different opinions on this from both parties.

Jason: I want--oh, go ahead, Sean.

Sean: I was just going to say that the most interesting aspect of this to me is the concept of a mandate.

I think we've seen in certainly the last year I'm thinking of the gubernatorial primary between Phil Lyman and Governor Cox, of who is the real standard bearer of the Republican Party here in Utah.

And when we talk about the financial aspect of this as well, running a whole another election is, I don't know how many millions of dollars to do that on a statewide level, but it's no small amount of money.

And I think when you do have an avenue where you do have to get 50% of whichever election it is, that is a mandate.

You have a majority.

You have majority support going forward and I think having that requirement for majority support would eliminate some of the ambiguity for some voters and some of those questions that people have about the process, and whether this person who won the primary with 30% really represents their constituents as they say they do.

Mike: Can I make one follow up to that?

Because I think it brings up a really good point with the cost and if you look at it today, if this proposal passed, you would have a caucus convention.

You would have a primary and a runoff.

And I think we need to have a broader discussion.

Do we really want to have three elections and is it time to consider if we want to have a runoff, should we start with an open primary then a runoff?

And I think we need to have a broader discussion.

Running three elections to me seems excessive, but at the same time, I like the idea of a runoff.

I like the idea of a mandate, but three elections, I mean that is a lot of--that is a big, a big effort.

Sean: Then there's voter fatigue we have to keep in mind too.

Like will people just tune out the process if they're being bombarded for--.

Jennifer: And I'd like to see, I'd like to see some data if where there are runoff elections.

Do the outcomes change substantively?

I don't know one way or another, and it would be nice for that to inform the discussion.

Jason: I don't want to leave elections just yet.

Let's talk about another big bill that just dropped from Ryan Wilcox as well.

This is the Elections Office is the name of the bill, House Bill 369.

This is a fundamental change also, a new state entity would take--would create an executive director of elections who would take oversight away from the lieutenant governor's office, Senator.

So, this is the purview of the lieutenant governor.

This creates a new entity with new people running it, not part of the executive branch.

Mike: Well, and let's just talk this through.

The goal, one of the questions for me is why are we doing this?

What are we trying to fix?

And the stated goal that several lawmakers have come to me with is we want to avoid any kind of conflict of interest or perceived conflict of interest.

Sutherland Institute, you've done some polling as well.

It seems to me that there's a lot of confidence in our election today, but one of the polling numbers that really stood out to me in the Sutherland Institute is that voters want to have an elected official.

They want to have somebody, they want somebody that is accountable.

So, for me when I look at this proposal, if we're trying to fix the conflict of interest, I'm concerned that this bill doesn't meet that goal.

And what I mean by that in this language, what it envisions is having the legislature, the president, the speaker, the governor, the auditors select basically five clerks, and now five clerks are going to oversee the election office.

If the goal is to alleviate the conflict of interest, I think this current proposal misses the mark.

We've had a number of concerns and problems with clerks.

My own clerk in Utah County has been under fire for looking at ballots he probably shouldn't have.

We've had a clerk in Cache County, a clerk in Juab County.

So, to try to alleviate a conflict by creating a new conflict, I think it just misses the mark right now.

Looking forward to having discussions and looking at this issue, but right now I'm not so sure we've hit the target.

Jennifer: I actually agree with Senator McKell, which is refreshing.

You know, I would never claim that our elections in the state are perfect.

There is no perfect system, but I do think, and I've said this on the show before, I think our lieutenant governor and her team do a very good job in a very difficult process in a very difficult world.

But the the fact of the matter is if we think we're going to eliminate all ambiguity or unknowns or uncertainty in our elections when we're talking about whether it's the lieutenant governor or clerks or legislators themselves, we have elected officials overseeing the process of electing elected officials.

There--we will never fully eliminate any perception of conflict of interest.

We can do our very, very best to introduce transparency and accountability.

And I think that creating this new office just creates more bureaucracy and isn't necessarily going to introduce any transparency or accountability.

It just shifts it to a new framework.

And, you know, I think if the goal is to increase confidence in the election system of which there is already a high level.

But if we're going to mitigate those few that still just can't get there, let's look at meaningful transparency and accountability mechanisms that don't blow up the system and put us back to square one; solving new problems we haven't even anticipated.

Jason: Sean, as you were talking to people about these bills, sort of give us some context of what you're hearing, but also how some of these may impact voter turnout, which is something that is high value for the state of Utah and Utahns tend to do show up.

Sean: I think absolutely there's no perfect answer to these questions when--if we were to take the oversight of elections out of an elected official's hands, then you have an accountability issue there.

We'll have some people who say we can't hold these people, the voters can't hold these people accountable if they make a decision that they don't agree with.

And I think no matter which direction the legislature turns on this one, there will be some people who cry foul, who cry conflict of interest like Senator McKell was saying.

There's just, you close one door, another door will open on this one, and I think a lot of people like Representative Provost said there's a lot of confidence in our elections right now despite what a very vocal minority in the state will tell you.

And it's sometimes feels like some of these election bills are solutions looking for a problem in some ways.

This one very well maybe fall into that category, but as the process continues and we maybe see some substitutes, some massaging of this, it could be a great solution, but this is very early in the process.

Jason: Talk about things that may be changing a little bit.

I want to spend the last minute and a half or so about these executive orders that came out.

From the moment President Trump was signed into office, he started to do some executive orders, but this week freezing funds coming from the federal government created a little bit of a stir, that might be an understatement, across the country, particularly here in the state of Utah.

Talk about how we are approaching that with our legislature since that seems to be a little bit of an uncertainty.

Jennifer: Well, I think that at least in the state of Utah, regardless who's in the administration we've always been pretty cognizant, that the state ultimately is going to be the backstop if there are disruptions at the federal level.

And we--I think we've been intentional about trying to make sure we've got things in place to protect people should that--should those situations arise.

And, you know, that could be when we talk about protecting people that can manifest in different ways.

It might be, you know, protecting businesses from closing.

In my view, we've got to do a lot to protect our most vulnerable citizens because some of these proposed cuts, the specter was very real for people that people with disabilities would not have basic needs met suddenly with no warning and no backstop for a population that traditionally does not have a lot of capacity for absorbing, you know, difficulties, financial and physical difficulties and barriers.

And so, you know, I've heard a lot of alarm from my community and especially with regard to this very hurtful and scary rhetoric about immigration and somehow overlying, you know, crime with immigration as if they're one and the same.

And so, I think that as legislators we have to listen to the fears of the people that we have the opportunity to represent but also get down to the brass tacks of what these implications are and making sure that we're building up some--shoring up some backstops for harms that we can't anticipate yet.

Jason: Our last 30 seconds, Senator, so we talk about how much people worry about this federal money, but we're very much talking about the federal money.

Mike: Well, let me just say I agree with Representative Provost.

The state will--has been intentionally been a backstop and every December we look at a report, what the impact would be if we didn't have federal funds.

We take that very, very serious.

Congress needs to do its job.

Congress needs to go to work.

I'm frustrated with Congress allowing executive orders that's the--and Congress needs to do its job and push back.

And this whiplash is hard for the state, but we have been intentional.

And to Representative Provost's point, I agree, and the state will be intentional if that were to happen.

Jason: It's gonna have to be the last word.

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

This show is also available as a podcast on PBSUtah.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by Merit Medical and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪