| Provo City Council Candidate Forum For those interested in Provo’s municipal elections, Representative Tyler Clancy will be hosting a forum for Provo City council candidates that is free of charge and open to the public: Date: Thursday, June 29th Time: 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm Bullock Room at the Provo Library (550 N University Ave) With the upcoming city council elections, this event offers an opportunity for Provo residents to learn more about the candidates’ ideas, policies, and strategies to address the city’s most pressing issues. The event will allow candidates to address key topics, respond to questions from the audience, and present their ideas on how to improve the community. Candidates will have tables set up for further discussion following the event. Report on Interim and the Special Session Social Services Appropriations Social Services Appropriations meets twice as long as the other appropriations committees, and we often get together at various places that receive funding from the state to see how the money is being spent. On Tuesday, June 13th, in the morning, we met at the Midvale Senior Center, which is a beautiful facility run in a joint effort between the City of Midvale and Salt Lake County Aging & Adult Services. Their mission is to promote independence through advocacy, engagement, and access to resources, and I appreciate that there is a place that seniors can go to get a meal, take classes, stay active, and socialize. In the afternoon, we met at the Capitol. Each year, we review one fifth of the Social Services budget, and this year we are looking at the Office of Recovery Services, Operations and Policy, Medicaid and Health Services, and Aging and Adult Services. We voted to study more in depth in the following policy areas: Adult Protective Services and Public Guardian staffing levels. Alternatives program, New Choices Waiver and Medicaid Aging Waiver return on investment. Office of Recovery Services retention (They have a turnover rate of 135%. It is a stressful job and the we pay them less than $19/hour.) Changes in federal programs Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Value-based payments to providers of mental health Ultra high-cost drugs and associated costs Medicaid program flexibility You can access the PowerPoint slides we reviewed in committee, and can listen to the a.m. meeting HERE and the p.m. meeting HERE. Health and Human Services Last month, the committee was briefed on the risk of reductions in federal funding and some of the various mechanisms the state has employed in the past to address potential revenue downturns. At this meeting, we reviewed current planning requirements and potential policy modifications. We also were briefed on the Legislative Auditor General’s recently published Best Practice Handbook. This is an EXCELLENT resource for any organization looking to improve efficiency and oversight, foster organizational culture, cultivate an environment of growth and retention, and optimize resources. The newly created Department of Health and Human Services was going to report on their efforts for continuous quality and improvement, but we ran out of time. We will hear that in August Interim. 🙂 Revenue and Taxation You can find the committee page with all relevant links HERE or watch the meeting with audio links HERE. I am still learning to enjoy this committee :), but I am committed to being a good steward of taxpayer dollars. We discussed potential changes in the tax code and opened committee bill files to address them. One of these changes is in regards to the Wayfair decision that allowed states to tax online sales. Currently, a seller without a physical presence in Utah is required to collect and remit sales tax if the seller has either gross sales in Utah totaling more than $100,000, or conducts at least 200 separate transactions in the state. The proposed legislation removes the transaction threshold and would only require sales tax if total sales is more than $100,000 in a given year in Utah. We also discussed the Property Tax Exclusive Use Exemption. Property owned by a nonprofit entity that is used exclusively for religious, charitable, or educational purposes is exempt from property tax. It has been the Utah State Tax Commission’s practice to apply the exemption when structures or improvements on the property are under construction only if a building permit has been issued. The Commission has been asked by nonprofits to allow the exemption earlier, and the director came to the committee to ask for guidance. I support the Tax Commission’s current policy. If the exemption is applied earlier it would create the opportunity for loopholes, e.g. a non-profit might never build, which would not be fair to other taxpayers who would be deprived of the benefit that the building would have given them and deprived of the tax income for their community. Other items we discussed were mineral tax withholding and short-term rental duration definitions. Utah May 2023 Employment Report After several months of slower job growth, Utah’s labor force saw an increase of 2.9% since May 2022. This growth resulted in 48,900 new jobs. The statewide unemployment rates remained at a very low 2.3%. The reason for this increase is the typical summertime employment surge. Each year at this time, the state’s economy sees an influx of new workers graduating college and high school. This is good news for employers. Since exiting the pandemic, Utah employers have needed more labor than was available. This tight labor market meant that many jobs went unfilled. Last month and this month, employers will see the labor market loosen some as graduates head out into the workforce. Utah’s May private sector employment recorded a year-over-year increase of 2.9%, or a 41,500 job increase. Eight of ten major private-sector industry groups posted net year-over-year job gains, led by leisure and hospitality services (16,100 jobs) education and health services (8,500 jobs) professional/business services (6,600 jobs) construction (4,700 jobs) The two sectors with an over-the-year employment decrease are financial activities (-1,400 jobs) trade/transportation/utilities (-1,000 jobs). You can listen to Chief Economist Mark Knold’s analysis of the May 2023 employment report here: https://soundcloud.com/utahdws/utah-employment-report-may-2023 Additional analysis and tables at https://jobs.utah.gov/wi/update/index.html County unemployment rates for May will post on or shortly after June 20, 2023, at https://jobs.utah.gov/wi/update/une/season.pdf June’s employment information will be released at 7 a.m. on Friday, July 21, 2023. (Statistics generated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C., modeled from monthly employer (employment) and household (unemployment) surveys.) If you have questions or concerns, please send them to DWS’s constituent affairs office, or you can reach out directly to me and I will forward them. Department of Workforce Services Customer Relations Specialist 801-526-4390 (Salt Lake) 1-800-331-4341 (Statewide/Toll-free) [email protected] Is Utah a low-wage state? A report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute indicates that wages for full-time workers, when adjusted for purchasing power, are slightly higher than the national average–both mean and median. (I am not sure if they are including housing costs when calculating purchasing power.) However, when both part-time and full-time worker wages are considered together, Utah’s average wages are below the national mean and median. A simple explanation for this is that Utah has the highest share of part-time workers when compared to other states; we have, by far, the highest share of teenage workers in the labor force when compared to other states, but we also have, by far, the highest share of women in the labor force working part-time. |
| Bills Mentioned in the Tribune I was reading an article on evictions in the June 19th edition Salt Lake Tribune, and three of the bills that I have sponsored in the last few years were mentioned as win-win for renters and landlords. It made me feel pretty good about the work I have put in to develop productive relationships with a wide variety of stakeholders, which in turn helps me to create good legislation. You can read the article HERE. (The reference to the bills is towards the end in the last section of the article.) Community Resources Members of our community who have criminal records often have a difficult time finding housing, transportation, and employment. If you know of someone in this predicament, the Sheriff’s Office and other organizations in the county have been working to develop resources that can help. Click HERE for more information. |
 |