| The 45 day session is done! The legislature’s most important job is to balance the budget. Here is a quick look at how we did that this year. The Utah Legislature concluded its 2023 General Session with a budget of $29.4 billion (including federal and other funds) for fiscal year 2024. The budget includes $14.6 billion from state funds (General Fund, Income Tax Fund, Uniform School Fund) and $170 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).Top legislative budget priorities included state fund investments in: Cutting taxes — Reduced Income Tax ($400 million), repealed state sales tax on food conditional upon repeal of the constitutional income tax earmark ($165 million), removed the rate freeze on basic property tax levy ($145 million), cut gas tax ($33 million), offered Low Income Housing Tax Credit ($52 million), Child Tax Credit ($10 million), and Adoption Tax Credit ($3 million), among other tax cuts; Public Education — $233.1 million to increase the Weighted Pupil Unit (WPU) value by 6% from $4,038 to $4,280 and $196.9 million for educator salary bonuses; Transportation — $1.2 billion for commuter rail, trail projects, Cottonwood Canyons transportation, and other enhancements; Higher Education — $35 million for performance funding; Medicaid — ($127.2 million) one-time in FY 2023, $27.3 million ongoing, and ($300,000) one-time in FY 2024 to provide medical services to an estimated 505,000 clients in FY 2023 and 435,600 clients in FY 2024; State employee compensation — $242 million ongoing, including state employees: 5% cost-of-living adjustment, 3.75% targeted, 2.5% discretionary pay-for-performance; and higher education employees: 8.75% discretionary pay; Debt reduction and avoidance — $915 million ($775 million transportation debt pre-payment, $140 million state revenue bond avoidance). As required by the Utah Constitution, legislators balanced the budget to projections of available revenue. This document lists the most significant budget actions according to appropriations subcommittee: Spending Summary. There are a number of resources available for the public and legislators to understand more about Fiscal Year 2023 and 2024 funding: Budget Quick Facts – A pocket-sized guide to the budget. DataViz – An interactive graphical representation of the budget. View the budget by sources, uses, and new money. Click a bubble to see how that item has changed over time, and in what bills it changed. Search for budget requests and find where it exists in appropriations bills. Compendium of Budget Information (COBI) – A complete guide to the Utah State budget. Find budget requests on the Issues tab, and Line item/program budgets on the Financials tab. Questions From Constituents All day kindergarten: “The other day, there was a discussion about full time Kindergarten here in Utah, at our school. We were wondering if that law had passed? If it would be required of all schools (Charter) included to offer it to parents? If so, when would it begin? Would there be extra funding for schools who implemented it because of the law?” Optional all-day kindergarten passed and has been funded for $60,642,700. The funding formula for kindergarten has been adjusted to pay for it, and it is ongoing. However, whether or not to participate is optional for both parents and schools. Some districts and schools do not have the room, and others might not want to offer it. There is not funding to create more space for all day kindergarten—if a school needs more space to accommodate all day kindergarten, it is up to the district. Parents can choose whether or not their child participates in full-day or half-day. A lot of districts and schools have been requesting this and hoping this bill would pass. I am a cosponsor on the legislation, and here is a link to the bill. https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/HB0477.html Constitutional Amendment regarding removal of the state portion of the food tax and removing the earmark of the income tax for education: “In looking at the removal of the food tax, I do not understand why voters have to remove the constitutional earmark for income tax in 2024 to remove the food tax. Are all the state tax revenues earmarked for only certain uses?” The removal of the food tax is tied to the removal of the earmark because the sales tax fund is not growing as fast as the income tax fund. Most government programs and infrastructure are funded through the sales tax, so if we remove the sales tax on food, there will be less money to use on these things. With the earmark removed, there will be more flexibility in the budget. I can see the why removing the earmark is appealing to the legislature. I am a little skeptical about the legislature’s ability to prioritize funding and use the additional flexibility wisely, but with constitutional safeguards in place for education funding (added into code and into the Constitution), I hope we will do a good job. Of course, “good job” is subjective. 🙂 My idea of a good job is not everybody’s idea of a good job. I think we spend too much money on buildings and pet projects, and there is very little accountability for what we spend on roads, but others think I want to spend too much money on individuals with serious mental illnesses and disabilities. I supported the bills that will put this question on the ballot for voters in 2024. H.J.R. 18 Proposal to Amend Utah Constitution – State School Fund H.B. 101 Food Sales Tax Amendments |
| My Bills That Passed Here are the bills that I sponsored and that passed. Most of these were brought to me by concerned constituents. HB 113 Motor Vehicle Insurance Revisions Currently, about 13% of Utah drivers have the bare minimum liability coverage (how much an at-fault driver’s insurance will pay to cover the victim and their car) that is required by Utah: $25,000 for personal injury and $15,000 for all property damage. These amounts have not been changed in three decades and are not adequate to cover the damage to body or vehicle that is incurred in many accidents. This bill increases these minimum liability coverage limits to $30,000 for bodily injury and $25,000 for property damage. This increase is projected to increase rates by about 0.2%, or $0.20 per $100 dollars. HB 122 Sex Offender Registry Amendments The Department of Corrections presented this proposed legislation to both the Sex Offense Sub-committee and Juvenile Sub-committee that are within the Sentencing Commission (I am a member of all three). These committees include prosecutors, defense attorneys, Department of Corrections, Board of Pardons, the Attorney General’s office, mental health providers, victim’s advocates, law enforcement, and judges. HB 122 is a consensus bill that everyone agrees is needed to address the inconsistencies in the existing Registry code and provide clarity where there are gaps. This bill does not substantively change who registers; it creates a private registry for juveniles and is a clean up bill to help the Department of Corrections better manage the registry. HB 139 Sex and Kidnap Offender Registry Requirements This bill is a consensus bill that simplifies registration frequency and duration requirements for out of state registrants. It requires all registrants in the state, regardless of where they committed their offense, to be subject to Utah’s registry laws. HB 248 Mental Health Services for Adults HB 248 creates a grant program for the development of Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) in our local communities. ACT is an evidence-based practice to provide intensive services to people with serious mental illness, e.g. schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder, who repeatedly access inpatient psychiatric care, suffer from homelessness, and/or cycle through the justice system. This is not a vendor bill, but a modality of treatment that wraps services around an individual for life. Start up costs for ACT teams are prohibitive, but after about ten months treatment teams are self-sustaining through Medicaid. Salt Lake County has already piloted this program and has seen significant savings in both in-patient and total health care costs. Each team can serve about 100 clients.To be awarded a grant, the local organization has to provide some matching funds and show the ability to sustain the program. They also must coordinate with local homeless councils and criminal justice coordinating councils to align the ACT team’s services with existing services and strategic plans. there is a rigorous data gathering element and study also attached to this bill. I asked for $5.2 million to set up 5-10 teams throughout the state, but it was funded for $1 million. This is better than nothing. HB 250 Social Worker Licensing Amendments This bill removes two lower level exams that have been required to receive licensure as a Social Worker. These two exams are a barrier and a financial burden, and have been proven to not provide any additional protection to the public or preparation for professional practice. Utah is losing competent and qualified social workers at each of these exams. The clinical exam required after 3000 hours of supervised work is still in place.There was a lot of outside resistance to this bill because it takes power away from a national special interest organization which benefits financially from these tests. HB 250 puts this power back into the hands of the Utah licensing board to make decisions that are best for the unique landscape of cultural, social and economic factors of our state. It was supported by the National Association of Social Workers. HB 309 County Recorder Amendments Currently, there is no process to redact information from a document recorded by a county clerk. These documents can be viewed by anyone who clicks on the county’s public website, and most contain personal information such as birthdates and signatures. HB 309 creates a process for an individual to request the County Recorder redact their signature, the first five of their social security number, and the month and day of their birth date. The recorder will redact the information from all public facing documents but keep the original intact. The unredacted copy will be available to the person on the document, the beneficiary of a trust, an attorney, a title company, and the courts. It will also be available for subpoena and GRAMA. HB 314 Remedies for Victims of Domestic Violence Amendments In 2010, the legislature added protections for domestic violence victims, including a pathway for terminating a rental lease. This legislation helped many DV victims to avoid eviction, but there were many more who could not access the help it provided because of the tight restrictions. HB 314 improves upon current law to help DV victims remove themselves from a lease and also keeps landlords whole.This is a consensus bill that is backed by real estate groups and rental operators, as well as DV advocates and legal nonprofits. Domestic violence is one of the leading drivers of homelessness in Utah County, and many domestic violence victims have evictions on their records which makes it difficult for them to find housing. Between this bill and HB 359 from 2022 that provides a pathway to expunge evictions, I hope that the correlation between homelessness and domestic violence will decrease. HB 468 Employment Screening Requirements This bill will help to alleviate the shortage of substance abuse and mental health professionals in Utah by removing some of the barriers that confront qualified ex-offenders who have met the requirements a chance to be hired in these fields. It allows ex-offenders (with no violent or sexual felonies on their records) who have completed the required education and supervised hours, passed the required testing, and gone through the process to receive their license from Department of Professional Licensing to have a legitimate chance to get a job they have trained for and where their lived experience is an asset. SB 293 Expungement Revisions (HB 490 Expungement Changes) My bill, HB 490, which passed unanimously through the House, was very similar to a bill sponsored by Senator Weiler, SB 293, that passed unanimously through the Senate. We were notified by staff of the issue, and this is the marriage of these two bills. SB 293 aligns the current code and increases the timeframe for victims to object to a possible expungement from 35 days to 60 days. It also removes the Departments of Insurance and Commerce from the list of state agencies allowed to access expunged records (both of them were happy to be taken off). Finally, it allows someone to request confirmation of an expungement. Currently, because of interpretation of code, they are not being given this information.Utah’s Official Lost and Found A couple of weeks ago, I was able to meet with the state treasurer who manages unclaimed money. 1 in 5 people in Utah has unclaimed money. Follow the online link and fill out the application to see if you are one of them. If you have any questions, you can reach out to the online live chat or email [email protected] I will be doing a Town Hall Wrap up on the evening of March 22 with the other Provo Legislators, Representatives Clancy and Thurston. It will be broadcast online, and I will give you more information after we get the details ironed out. Meanwhile, let me know if you have any questions. |