The Utah Legislature is looking to address education and healthcare
The Utah Legislature’s 45-day annual plenary session kicked off Tuesday, and as usual, lawmakers had a whole host of issues to debate.
In addition to balancing a $28 billion budget and keeping pace with continued growth in education and health care, the 29-member Senate and 75-member House will consider new laws affecting everything from teacher salaries to renewable energy to transgender sports rules. As the session begins, more than 300 bills have already been introduced.
Lawmakers can make big financial decisions, with an estimated $3.3 billion in surplus available to either spend on a rapidly growing list of demands, forgo a rainy day or fund some generous tax cuts.
While the GOP controls the legislature — the GOP has a 61-14 advantage in the House of Representatives and a 23-6 majority in the Senate — lawmakers can steer clear of a slew of thorny issues, and the political situation began early Monday as Speaker of the House Representatives Brad Wilson, R-Cassville, made his views clear during his opening remarks encouraging tax cuts, careful spending and a public pushback against the federal government on issues like energy policy.
“The best way to ensure Utahs can continue to call Utah home is to allow them to keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets,” Wilson said, noting that while lawmakers have already cut state taxes by more than $300 million. The past five years, “we’re just getting started.”
Senate President Stuart Adams, R. Layton, declared that “2023 will be the year of the tax cut — again, again, again,” arguing that the state’s recent history of low taxes and business-friendly policies has helped it grow into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. country.
“But the current federal policies have failed,” Adams said. Closing oil pipelines and excessive federal spending triggered inflation. Interest rates have gone up dramatically.”
Exactly how far those tax cuts might go will depend on how lawmakers feel, and the state’s conservative supermajority could choose to go beyond the $1 billion in tax cuts proposed in the Spencer Cox government. budget proposal.
spending on education
Whatever new spending is approved, it will be largely directed towards education, with many public schools reporting growing student numbers and problems with retaining teachers due to lower wages. Education spending per pupil in Utah ranked second to last among the 50 states last year, ahead of only Idaho, at $8,968 per student, according to data from the National Education Association.
In his budget, Cox proposes $177 million to allocate cost-of-living increases for state employees, which would equate to about a 12% increase on average, and recommends teacher pay increases of $6,000 per year.
Better compensation would go a long way to retaining more teachers, Wilson said, declaring that lawmakers should consider “the largest pay increase in the history of our state,” but lawmakers specified exactly how much they might pay.
Adams said that teachers’ salaries have not kept up with the competition.
“This year, for the second time in the history of the state, we need to fund teachers’ salaries directly,” he said, noting that previous investments in education did not always find their way directly to teachers.
water problems
It’s been a wet winter so far across Utah, but the legislature is still likely to consider a number of drought-related measures and major proposals to protect the Great Salt Lake.
“Last year, we committed nearly $500 million to water infrastructure in our state,” Adams said. “This is only a drop in the bucket. We need to create, adopt and implement a solution for the ages.”
Cox has proposed $560 million for water management programs, including more than $130 million just for work on the Great Salt Lake. Another $129 million is proposed for water conservation programs, and another $243 million to pursue other water infrastructure plans.
“We need innovative new ways to conserve water, solutions such as subsurface drip systems, cloud seeding and desalination,” said Adams. “These same solutions have worked in other countries, and they can and will work here.”
housing crisis
Utah has been plagued for years by rising housing costs, especially among renters, but Wilson said he expects the House of Representatives to make the issue a priority this year. He blamed high interest rates and “over-regulation” for creating a housing shortage across the state. Lawmakers have proposed a series of bills that could make it more difficult for local governments to stop some housing projects.
“When it comes to over-regulation, there is something that can be done,” Wilson said. “Local governments are at the forefront of critical decisions affecting our housing supply.”
These policies could have significant effects in southwestern Utah, where Washington County’s rapid population growth and its attractiveness to new move-ins have made it among the worst areas in the state for renters and first-time homebuyers.
In the most recent affordable housing plan published by Washington County, planners say the district will need to build approximately 900 new affordable housing units each year through 2030 to meet projected demand — about four times what has already been built in recent years.