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

(bright orchestral music) - Good morning, everyone.

Welcome, it's great to see all of you again.

Thank you for coming to attend this monthly news conference.

There are a lot of things happening in our state right now.

I'd like to focus on just a couple.

And maybe first I'd like to talk a little bit about wildfire season, as we are coming to the end of wildfire season.

It's been an interesting summer for us.

We've had hot and very dry conditions across June and July and into August.

I will say, just wanna give some statistics, nationwide there have been over 37,000 wildfires across the country that have burned so far about 7.3 million acres, with some of them still burning hot.

There are, nationwide, about 26,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel fighting these fires nationwide.

Our neighboring states have experienced significant wildfires, and those have been covered, and we're providing support where we can.

I received a text message from Governor Gavin Newsom just thanking Utah for the support that we have given our, our friends in California who have had a really rough wildfire season.

Now, Utah has fared better than our neighbors, and we've had about 1,100, well, to be more precise, 1,131 fires totaling about 57,000 acres.

434 of those were naturally caused, mostly lightning.

77 were from unknown causes, and 620 of these were caused by humans.

Our firefighters, and I really just wanna give a shout-out to them, to everybody who's been engaged in this at the local level, state level, and federal level.

They've done an incredible job at keeping us safe this year.

This includes, again, those local fire departments, many of whom are volunteer fire departments, especially in rural Utah, that provides so much support to our state and federal agencies.

94% of Utah's wildfires have been caught before growing over 10 acres.

And this is in part because of some changes that we've made over the past couple years that we're very excited and proud of.

I can just tell you definitively that if we had conditions like we had that this year five or six years ago, we would've had much larger fires, and, you know, likely hundreds of thousands of acres would've burned.

But we invested in a couple helicopters.

We have a helitack crew and new equipment that we have cached strategically in places in Central Utah that have helped us to catch fires and effectively attack larger fires before they get out of control.

So, again, I wanna thank Utahns for practicing their fire sense, doing your part.

We know that human-caused fires historically have been about 54% of all wildfires, excuse me, this year, been about 54% over the past couple years, significantly lower than the national average of 80%.

We're doing a much better job than we used to in not starting as many human-caused fires.

But even though the weather's cooling down, wildfire risk is still high out there.

And so we just want you to be safe and careful as you're out and about.

We haven't had a chance to have this meeting since school came back into session.

I just wanna shout-out our teachers as well, the incredible people who teach our children across the state, we have some of the best teachers in the world right here in Utah.

To families and students who are all now back in school, we hope you're having a great school year, a safe school year, and that we continue to learn and progress as a state.

We're just so proud of the education system that we're building here.

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

- Governor, this morning a lawsuit was filed over the Utah Inland Port Project.

Part of it alleges a violation of separation of powers, that you should have more control over appointments to the Port Authorities Board, not the legislature.

They're essentially arguing that it's tipped more in favor of the legislature.

Do you agree?

Should you have more power over the Inland Port?

- Well, Ben, I have not seen that lawsuit yet.

I did see that there apparently has been a lawsuit.

I reached out to the Inland Port folks.

I don't think they've been served yet, or at least they hadn't when we had that conversation.

So, I haven't been able to see that yet.

I don't know kinda what the legal theory underpinning that is, and I have to be careful about active legislation that includes the state, so I can't say much more than that, but it's certainly something that we'll look at closely, and I'm interested to read what the allegations are in that lawsuit - They also allege impacts to Great Salt Lake ecosystem with some of these projects that have been approved in Weber County and Tooele counties.

Are those projects too close to the Great Salt Lake that your administration says you're committed to saving?

- Yeah, we don't believe that those projects are too close to the Great Salt Lake.

We've worked very closely to make sure that this type of development is actually protective of the Great Salt Lake, that we'll be able to create some barriers there.

And I know it's something that the Inland Port is concerned about as well.

I've said before and I'll say it again, this is gonna be the most environmentally friendly inland port in the country, and we're committed to make that happen.

- Governor, there have now been two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, and you were with him the day before the latest attempt on his life.

What were your thoughts upon learning the news about this second attempt, and do you expect us to see a string of political violence leading up to the 2024 election?

- Well, deeply disturbed again that there was a second attempt.

Grateful, as the president, the former president and the current president both have said, grateful to the law enforcement officers, the secret service officers that engaged the gunman and were able to, with the help of a bystander, were able to apprehend the alleged shooter or a attempted shooter.

And, again, just deeply disturbed and concerned about our country right now, the extremes that we're seeing in political discourse that is leading, of course, to political violence.

I have to be honest, though, to say that I'm not surprised.

In fact, a year ago, we convened, the National Governors Association in New Hampshire, it was in the fall, so almost a year ago, that we convened together to talk specifically about political violence and what causes political violence and the potential for increased political violence.

We've certainly seen a significant rise in threats, a tenfold rise in threats towards members of Congress just over the past five years or six years.

I don't remember the exact timeframe.

But not a 10% increase, but a 10 times increase in threats of violence.

We've seen it here in our state sadly.

Threats of of violence towards myself, my family, towards members of the legislature, judges, the judiciary have seen, across the nation, have seen a significant increase in threats of violence.

And so I don't think we should be surprised to see this happening, but that doesn't mean that we should accept it.

And it means that we should use our platforms at every opportunity.

And I will certainly continue to try to do this, to ask people to engage in a better way, to engage in a more productive way, to remember how to disagree without the hate and content, and certainly to push back anytime there is violence.

And to do that across party lines as well.

I appreciated President Biden, who called President Trump and talked directly to him.

We need more of that.

I appreciate Vice President Harris as well, who reached out and with concern.

I think that's good and healthy, and I hope to see more of it.

- [Hannah] Governor?

- Yes.

- When you pledged your support to former President Trump after the first assassination attempt, you wrote that you believed he could save the country by emphasizing unity rather than hate.

Do you think Trump has done that, and how are you feeling about your choice to back him now after years of declining to do so?

- Sure, yeah, so I made a commitment at that time, and I remain true to this, that I'm gonna do everything I can to help our country be better, to help reduce this rhetoric and the violence that we're seeing, I believe strongly in this.

It's part of who I am.

It's not something I'm doing to get votes.

You know, my opponents have used it against me.

I don't always get it right, I'm not perfect.

I also don't believe that I'm important enough that President Trump is going to change or do things differently just because of me.

But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna try.

And so, we're having conversations about that.

We had a conversation, a short conversation when he was here, and I'll leave those conversations privately.

I think everybody can judge for themselves what's happening and what he's doing.

But I am hopeful, and I have to be optimistic and I will remain optimistic and I'm gonna do everything I can to help him and others to try to bring our country together.

Now, I wanna be clear that unity does not mean that we all agree.

Unity is not that.

But unity is acting together and acting together in productive ways.

And we will have battles, but they should be rhetorical battles and they should be battles to persuade others and bring people together.

And I'm committed to doing that, and I hope people will judge me based on my behavior.

- Governor- - Governor, after a series of legal setbacks, some state lawmakers have expressed an appetite for judicial reform and the election of judges.

Would you support electing judges to the bench over the current process?

- Yeah, I would not support electing judges to the bench.

We have an incredible system here in our state.

It's been recognized across the country as one of if not the best systems in the country.

And I'm grateful for that.

I think the last thing we need are more divisive elections, especially over a branch of government that is supposed to be independent.

And I think independence is important.

We're always looking at ways that we can reform government and make government better, and I'm certainly open to those discussions and those conversations as we move forward.

I don't believe our judiciary is perfect, I've certainly had some disagreements, but it's also part of the system, which is great.

We don't always get our way, and we have three branches of government for a reason, and those branches of government are supposed to be held in tension at times.

I do worry about judicial activism.

It's something I care deeply about, it's something, as I get the opportunity to choose judges, you know, I get a panel of potential applicants that I get five people that I get to choose from, and then I grill them.

We grill them multiple times.

It's a very difficult process to become a judge in the State of Utah.

You have to go through lots of different levels to work your way up.

And one of the questions that I ask is about judicial activism.

What does it mean to be a judicial activist, and how do we prevent that from happening?

And I ask about their judicial philosophy.

I wanna know how they decide cases.

And it's very important to me that judges do do one simple thing, and that is they take the law as it exists and they apply it to the facts of the case.

That's what judges are supposed to do.

Not what the judges want to happen, but just what the law says and what the facts are.

And we've done a pretty good job of that.

And then, of course, that's not the last step.

The legislature actually gets to confirm those via the senate.

So the senate gets an opportunity to grill every one of those judges, and the senate gets a chance to vote.

First, a committee gets a chance to vote, and then the entire senate.

And so there's a very robust process that we go through.

And then we do get an opportunity, we the people, to hold those judges accountable when they come up for retention elections.

And so at every step of the way, I think we've figured out a great way to select our judges, and I'm grateful for the judiciary, even when I disagree with them.

- Governor, have you- - Do you think that they appropriately applied the law in Amendment D when they ruled on that or on abortion?

- Well, so, again, that case is still ongoing.

Both of those cases are still ongoing.

I've said before, you know, for example, on the abortion ruling, I disagreed with that, but that's not how it works either.

I'm not the judge in that case.

And so I respect the judiciary even when I disagree with them.

- Governor, you mentioned you're concerned about judicial activism.

Have you seen any evidence of judicial activism in Utah?

- Not much that I would point to specifically, but it is something I'm worried about.

I think we have seen it at the national level for sure.

We've seen, I think, a tremendous amount of judicial activism from the Supreme Court in the past.

I feel much better about this court and the direction they're going.

But I would also point out that sometimes, (chuckles) and I'm guilty of this sometimes, that we say judicial activism is when there's a decision we disagree with, and that's not fair to our judges either.

And so I'm very proud of the judiciary here, again, even when I disagree with them.

- Governor- - One of the Supreme Court cases coming up next week is on Amendment D, which I know you spoke about a little bit during the governor's debate.

Do you think the language of Amendment D is clear, or are you concerned at all that it might confuse voters about the powers they're giving up to lawmakers?

- Well, again, that's up to the judiciary to decide.

And I read the opinion from the lower court, and it's a compelling opinion, I think.

There's disagreement.

Again, the role of the court is not to supplant the law and to write that language, but it is important that the language is clear and conveys what the actual changes will do.

So, like all of you, I will wait and see what the Supreme Court says next week.

I do hope that eventually the people of Utah will get a chance to weigh in and decide one way or another how this is going to go, I think that's very important, but it is important that we get it right, and I think that's all we want to do.

- But is the language misleading?

- There's a question over here.

I'll let the court decide whether that language is misleading.

There's a question over here, please.

Emily, yeah.

- Governor, the 9.6% turnout for the Utah GOP's March presidential caucus has come up again after party leaders have twice pushed to have discussions about it taken off a legislative agenda.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on whether the state has jurisdiction, whether it's the legislature or otherwise, to step in when there are problems with elections at caucus, especially when there are alleged ADA violations.

- Yeah, so I've said before, I was disappointed by the turnout, that 9.3%.

I would love to see that turnout much higher.

I think that the caucus convention system works and works well when we have significant turnout.

When we don't, it doesn't, it's not representative.

And I think that's one of the issues.

So, there were a couple questions there.

The question, yes, the state, and this is very clear, I mean, the legal precedent from this goes back to the founding.

It's very clear that the state, the legislature does have the ability to decide how people get on a ballot.

That is very clear.

There's really no controversy about that.

There's states don't have to recognize parties to get people on the ballot.

There's lots, states do it lots of different ways.

Alaska does it very differently than California.

California does it very differently than Utah.

Utah does it very differently than Georgia.

And that is up to our representative form of government to decide how that's going to work.

So, yes, the legislature could come in, they have made changes in the past.

SB54 was one of those changes that changed the way that people get on the ballot.

Certainly, there are other laws that relate to and federal laws included that relate to ADA compliance.

I'm not sure what the argument is there.

I'm not weighing in, but, you know, the law's the law.

When it comes to the way parties handle their inner workings, though, that is protected under the Constitution.

And so parties have a right to decide their membership, decide what they want their parties to be, decide how they hold their meetings and when they hold their meetings and those types of things.

And it wouldn't be appropriate for the state to weigh in and compel a party to do something unless the party was somehow violating a law.

- Governor, recently- - Yes, please.

- I've reported extensively on a child abuse homicide case out of West Haven involving a 12-year-old boy, Gavin Peterson.

Many reports were filed to the state on his behalf.

As I've been working on these stories reporting, concerns continue to come up about staffing and funding regarding DCFS.

Governor, are you aware of these concerns, and what are you doing about it?

- Yeah, sure, thank you.

And thanks for your reporting on that terrible, tragic case that should never happen, obviously.

Child abuse is incredibly disturbing, and I hate that we live in a time where it still continues.

We have incredible workers at DCFS, just some of the best in the state.

And sadly it's impossible to find and root out every single case of child abuse that occurs.

We could use some more caseworkers, for sure.

And it's been hard.

It's been hard.

By the way, every governor has been facing this.

We've had shortages, workforce shortages across the country over the past couple years.

And social services is one sector that's been particularly hard hit.

The turnover is happening more rapidly than it used to in the past.

We've done some things.

we've elevated wages there to try to keep people here, keep them longer, they can get paid more doing other things.

And so I'm grateful for the legislature that have given us more resources so that we could increase wages to help stop that turnover, so we have more people that can do the work when these reports do come in, can follow up on them.

One of the other problems we have is false reports.

So, we get people who are filing false reports, and we have to chase those down only to find they're false reports and now we've wasted time and resources on cases that don't matter and we end up, on occasion, very rarely, missing a case that does matter.

And so we will continue to work with the legislature, to work with leadership in DCFS to try to understand, you know, what the caseloads are, how we can lighten those caseloads and get more resources there so that that cases like this get taken care of in a way that saves lives.

- Governor- - Is that happening now?

- Yes, yeah, it's ongoing.

It was happening last year.

It's something that has been ongoing for the past couple years.

And, of course, cases like this heighten that scrutiny and should.

Thank you.

- Support of more funding?

- Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we've included more funding before.

We've gotten some of it, not always as much as we want, but the legislature has been good in trying to help us to get more funding and resources in those cases.

- Governor, that case has also raised questions about oversight for homeschooling in the state, especially as the state increasingly continues to subsidize parents who make that choice.

I'm curious if you think, as part of the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program, there needs to be more of an accountability mechanism for parents who are homeschooling.

- No, no.

I mean, for child abuse?

(chuckles) Are you saying that the child abuse is happening because of homeschooling?

- This child in particular was homeschooling, and so it's brought up questions about whether the state needs to make sure that- - Kids that go to public school, there's no abuse there?

I just, I'm really offended and I think people who homeschool would be deeply offended by the question.

Absolutely not.

Look, we're never gonna have government big enough to be living in people's houses to be able to prevent all of this.

That's just not how it works, and it can't work that way.

The people who are accountable for this are the people who abuse this child, and they are going to be held accountable.

And I hope they rot in hell.

They are the people responsible.

It's not the government going into everyone's homes and everybody who's homeschooling.

That's a ridiculous assertion.

But we will do everything we can to prevent this from happening when those cases are reported to us.

But I'm just, I'm just deeply offended by the question.

- Governor, today Amendment A opponents are launching their campaign against this amendment, and you have in the past stated your support for this.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Why is removing the earmark for public education on the income tax a good idea?

- Well, it's a good idea because it gives us the flexibility that we need then to fund government as a whole.

(chuckles) We've had this earmark in place, and I don't wanna get too wonky here, but I would encourage you to go back and look at the way we funded education every single year since the earmark became a thing, at least in the time that I have been associated with state government.

That earmark has never worked the way it was intended to.

Every single year, what the legislature does is determine how much we're gonna fund public ed and how much we're gonna fund everything else.

And then they've shifted money from the general ed account.

They did this via higher ed, because higher ed was not part of the education account funding, it was over here.

And so every year when they needed more money for roads or anything else, they would just slide part of higher ed out of the general fund, over into the education fund, and then use the money they wanted to.

And then when it got close, we made another change that we could now use that education fund money for social services and other things, so there could just be more shifting.

So the idea of the earmark and all of that money going directly to education funding has never worked the way it was intended to work.

And so instead of, I think, kinda keeping up that charade, what we should do is actually put some protections in place, which we've done via legislation, to make sure that we're getting more funding to our schools.

And we've proven that, we've been able to prove that over the past several years when we had significant increases in funding.

Our teachers now, starting salary for teachers is in the top 10, something I was told could never happen.

We're close to that 60,000 mark that I put out a couple years ago.

And we're racing towards that.

I mean, we're right there, we're right on the doorstep, which I'm very proud of.

And so we've seen about, I think, between a 25 to 35% increase just over the past four years in spending in education.

And that is not because of the earmark, it's because of our commitment to our kids.

And so, having good government and balanced government means being able to make those decisions and deciding where that funding needs to go.

I will also say that one of the best parts about this is that we get to remove the sales tax on food.

And that's something that I think everybody should support as well.

And getting that reduction is going to be meaningful for families, for everyone, but especially families at the margins who are struggling.

- But can you tell voters, should they trust the legislature on this?

- Well, again, what I can tell voters is it hasn't, that earmark has never stopped the legislature from doing what they wanted to do or needed to do in the past, and so it really just means business as usual, and business as usual has been very good for education.

- 'Kay, 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 pbsutah.org/governor.

(bright orchestral music)