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," as we near the end of the legislative session, lawmakers push to get their bills over the finish line.

How are legislators handling a tight budget year and how are shakeups in Washington reverberating throughout the state?

♪♪♪ Jason Perry: 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 Karen Peterson, a Republican from Davis County and House Vice Rules Chair; Representative Grant Miller, a Democrat from Salt Lake County; and Dr. Damon Cann, a political science professor at Utah State University.

So glad to have you, the representatives, then the professor.

It's gonna be good because we have a lot to talk about in terms of legislation.

We have one week left.

I want to get through some of the bills that we've seen this week that are going to continue into next week, maybe even a little preview about what's to come.

But maybe I'll start with just an interesting kind of soft here.

Representative, how do you spell "Utahn"?

Because apparently, this is a matter of a bill.

Karen Peterson: Without the extra A. Jason Perry: Oh, without the A. Karen Peterson: Absolutely without the A, yes.

Jason Perry: Anyone else?

Grant Miller: Well, I'm really glad for this clarification.

Sometimes I would look at it and people say, "You're from Utah.

What is that?"

I'm like, "A Utonite?

Uteonian?"

I'm glad that once and for all we've settled it.

Jason Perry: So the state demonym is what it's called.

This is Senator Dan McCay, Senate Bill 230.

Damon, just give us a small bit of context on this because it turns out like maybe some people who are not from the state, it's an AN, for the locals just an N. Damon Cann: Yeah, so this piece of legislation will end up, should it pass, ratifying what almost everybody in Utah already does.

I think the target audience is probably more for external to Utah forces, but the sad part is that a lot of those folks are probably not paying attention to this particular piece of legislation anyways.

Jason Perry: And watch the spell-checkers too.

Karen Peterson: There's something to be said, though, for when someone uses the A that I know that they are not from Utah.

I'm just saying, it's like a little secret code we all have and we might lose that.

Jason Perry: Let's get into some bills that were kind of hot this week, and Representative Miller, let's start with you.

This is, because I want to get to this idea of these professional licenses, and this is about cosmetology licensing, but it's a bigger question we'll talk about here as well.

This group, called the Office of Professional License Review, has been working on restructuring of professional licenses.

This time it's about cosmetology, which is interesting.

As they start, you have your cosmetology license, but then the approach seems to be, for this and maybe some corresponding industries, you create micro licenses.

Talk about that.

Grant Miller: I think that as a legislature we have to be very careful with the way that we draft policy to regulate certain industries, and I think that sometimes it makes sense to reduce barriers to get into a certain industry.

With this cosmetology issue, there are--there's policy out there to propose to reduce the amount of training time that you need to get a cosmetology license.

And sometimes that can be appropriate, sometimes not.

It depends on public safety.

I've talked to a lot of these people in the cosmetology industry that say this is more than just beauty.

You know, when you're cutting people's hair, you use scissors, you use sharp objects.

People need to be competent.

When you're dealing with beautification, you're dealing around people's eyes and nails, orifices.

If you're not paying attention to what you're doing, it can be something that negatively affects someone else's health.

Jason Perry: Yeah, so, Representative, talk about this for just a second because you talk about what this is a little bit here, too, but many people have to work through division of occupational professional licensing, but, you know, some see these, the regulations as, you know, maybe do we want to be regulated, but that's not the truth at all.

In fact, some industries very much work on making sure they're guiding the regulation of their industry.

Karen Peterson: Right, regulation makes sense when we're talking about health and safety and ensuring that.

I do sometimes think that people that are already in the profession like licensing because it's a barrier for entry for other people and it makes it a little more competitive for them.

I will say, you asked the cosmetology question to someone that has the best hair in the legislature, so that was a good person to direct that to.

But you know, I really appreciated the Office of Professional Licensing's approach.

We used to just have kind of these bills every session that someone heard from someone, and then it was almost like whack-a-mole on licensing.

We passed this--we created this office about three years ago and we're having a lot more systematic way of looking at licenses and going through those one by one rather than just, you know, one legislator heard about something and now we have a bill and everyone's storming the Capitol related to that issue.

So this is a better process, so we'll see where the bill goes.

Jason Perry: Okay, we'll watch it closely.

I want to get into a couple big categories.

Damon, let's start with you.

Several bills on voting, okay?

I want to get into these because there are a lot of them.

I want to go through a couple.

The first one is interesting because it's sponsored by the Speaker, Speaker Mike Schultz.

This is House Bill 563 Ballot Title Amendments, and this has to do with who is going to be writing the ballot titles and the analysis.

Give us a little bit of history on this and why this change is being proposed now.

Damon Cann: Yeah, so ballot titles are a hugely important issue, and the reason why is study after study shows the way you write that ballot title, the information that shows up on the ballot actually has influence on the way people choose to vote on those pieces of legislation.

So that means that who writes the ballot title becomes really important.

We saw Amendment D especially catch a lot of heat last fall for the way that title was written.

The Utah Supreme Court ultimately says it was biased, and surveys suggested a lot of Utahns agreed with that.

I think Speaker Schultz is, basically what he's proposing here is to walk the law back to where it was before.

And honestly, what elected official wants the political heat that comes with being the person that writes that title?

Let's put that back in the hands of the drafting attorneys and others at Legislative Research and General Counsel where that belongs for a neutral, impartial title, and then let the people decide what they want to do with those ballot initiatives.

Jason Perry: Go ahead.

Karen Peterson: Well, I just really appreciate Speaker Schultz being willing to run that bill, to say like, "We learned and now we're going to fix this."

Jason Perry: The Speaker and the President both said we need to walk this one back.

And so this is maybe for the viewers, Grant, so this is the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel be the lawyers who, for the legislature, who will be drafting this language.

Grant Miller: Yeah, the legislative lawyers that we have are nonpartisan, and so I think that it's very appropriate to have them review the policy and summarize it in a very succinct way that doesn't risk a political bent.

The last thing you want to do is really politicize a ballot initiative on the ballot itself.

Jason Perry: The words really can matter in these particular cases.

Let's get to one more.

Damon, let's start with you on this one.

This is House Bill 300, this is Representative Jefferson Burton.

It's called Amendments to Election Law.

This has to do with our mail-in ballots and your photo IDs.

This, I want to talk about this for a minute because we've talked about it on this show before, substantial changes have happened to this particular bill.

Damon Cann: Yes, so when this bill started out, it would have basically eliminated voting by mail in the state of Utah.

And vote by mail is actually pretty popular, a lot of residents have responded.

And to his credit, Representative Burton has responded and really done a lot of things.

I think kudos to him for listening and doing as much as he can to strengthen this bill.

There is still an opt-in provision.

You have to--there's a three-year time frame in which people can come in, opt in to say they want to continue to vote by mail.

You know, I'd love to see the automatic ballot still going out to everybody, but I'm really pleased to see voting by mail continuing to be a thing in Utah and giving voters the opportunity to vote as easily as they would like to.

Jason Perry: Representative, talk about some of these touch points that have been inserted into this bill when it comes to, if it's now opt in, the ways in which we can do that.

Karen Peterson: Yeah, so there will be multiple ways that you can opt in.

The bill talks about an online portal, a way you can go in and be verified with your ID to make sure that you are who you say you are.

Also, just when you renew your driver's license, there will be an opportunity for you to say--we've always had, you know, that you can register to vote when you get your driver's license.

So now you'll also be able to say, "I want to receive my ballot by mail."

And this is an important change in the sense that we have had a number of legislative audits that have looked at voter rolls and looked at the question of verification of who's voting.

And so, this is a nice way we can address it.

My constituents have said overwhelmingly that they appreciate vote by mail.

They like receiving their ballot in the mail.

They like the opportunity to sit around the kitchen table with their kids and their family and say, "Let's research these issues, let's decide which candidates represent us, and then let's figure out how we want to vote."

They want that opportunity.

At the same time, they've also said if we can provide more security with this ballot, we also would like that.

And so, everyone will be able to vote the way they've voted.

They'll sign their name and then they'll add the last four of their state ID, so we kind of have a double verification like you do with every app on your phone now.

And so, we're able to both meet both of those objectives of access, ease of voting, but also making sure our ballots are secure and we know who's voting and who's turning in their ballot.

Jason Perry: Representative Miller, give us a thought from your side of the aisle on this.

Grant Miller: Well, for one, I'm really happy that we get to keep our vote by mail system intact.

I think that was really important, but my concern has always been accessibility.

Throughout this entire session, I received a lot of emails, not just from my own constituents, but from folks all over the state.

And there's more than one instance where someone was living in a rural part of the state where they said that they were elderly or had a disability, couldn't leave their house, and the county building was, you know, perhaps 30-40 minutes away from their home, and they had no actual way to go and vote in person, or if they were required to turn in a ballot with an ID, they wouldn't be able to do that.

They would be effectively barred from voting.

And even though these weren't my constituents and they were likely politically aligned differently than me, the fact that they weren't able to vote and that their vote would be deprived I thought was very concerning.

I believe that as Utahns and as government officials, lawmakers, we should always be watchdogs and make sure that everyone who wants to vote has that opportunity.

And I'm happy that this bill at least maintains that accessibility through the mail-in system.

Jason Perry: Last word on this one, Professor.

Damon Cann: You know, the research on vote by mail shows that, yeah, there might be some very small effects in general elections on voter turnout and participation, but there are very substantial effects in municipal elections, primaries, and special elections, and we've seen that pattern here in Utah, and I think the compromise position that this legislation has come to has the best prospect of anything we've seen so far of maintaining the gains we've made in voter participation in Utah.

Jason Perry: Representative Peterson, another bill.

Representative Ryan Wilcox, House Bill 351, aims to make the first Monday in November, it's Election Day, a holiday.

Karen Peterson: Not Tuesday?

Monday, Tuesday?

Jason Perry: The first Tuesday.

I said Monday.

The first Tuesday.

Thank you very much.

Karen Peterson: I don't think we're gonna change Election Day.

Jason Perry: We're not doing that, okay.

Karen Peterson: No, we're not.

We're not gonna do that.

Yes, so this bill's passed the House.

It's more of a recognition holiday.

It's not, unfortunately, we all don't get the day off work, but I think we just want to really highlight the importance of voting and we want to make sure people have the opportunity.

You know, we've allowed our state employees two hours that they can request off already on Election Day so that they can make sure that if they want to vote in person, they have the opportunity.

So, this is just kind of an expansion and recognition of the importance of voting.

Jason Perry: Okay, so let's turn from elections to the judiciary.

There are quite a few bills impacting our judiciary right now.

In fact, there are nine that we know of that includes some resolutions as well.

Damon, let's start with you for a moment because we had something sort of unique this week.

Nine hundred lawyers signed a letter and the chief justice hand delivered a letter to the legislature.

Give us some context for this.

Damon Cann: Well, you know, a lot of the Utah Supreme Court and our state courts have been involved in some high profile decisions in the last year and that's drawn a little more scrutiny on the courts than we would typically see here.

But judges and people who work in the legal system tend to be very, very strong advocates of the independence of the judiciary trying to set up our court system.

So rather than being another branch where we're just playing politics, the people who are working through the justice system have a shot at fair trials and fair hearings.

Sometimes, that's going to mean they're going to, the judiciary is going to make decisions other people don't like, but because they have strong legitimacy, especially in Utah, surveys show, then I think a lot of people are going to want to side with the judicial branch on many of these pieces of legislation.

Jason Perry: I want to get to one of the bills in particular.

This is the one that got the Chief Justice Durrant on "The Hill."

This is House Bill 512, Judicial Retention Changes, and I want to read this graphic, and then, Representative Miller, we'll give you the first comment about this.

This is the graphic.

This is from Chief Justice Matthew Durant.

"This unprecedented approach is not only dangerous but also detrimental to the public's trust in a fair and impartial judicial system and ultimately harmful to the citizens."

What this does right here is it creates a judicial performance evaluation committee.

So this is the legislature working on the performance evaluations.

Talk about this.

Grant Miller: Yes, what this bill would ultimately do is bring district court judges, appellate judges, Supreme Court justices before legislative committees for review, and then those committees would make a recommendation.

And as the bill currently is, that recommendation, we print it on the ballot by the name of the judge when they're running from a retention election.

And the fear, particularly from my party, is that this can disrupt the independence of the judiciary and further politicize it.

The idea being here that jeffs--or sorry, judges are referees in a sense, and when a ref throws a flag on the field, you don't get to fire the ref.

You have to reevaluate the play.

You could be frustrated with the ref, but you can't undo the whole process.

The whole point here is the checks and balances.

Our judiciaries's naturally revered and we want to protect that independence.

Karen Peterson: So you know, I've had the opportunity to work in the executive branch, now I'm in the legislative branch.

There is always natural tensions between all three branches of government, and those should exist.

That's part of our system.

That is how our Constitution is set up, so that there is some tension between the branches, and I think that you're seeing some of that play out and that's okay.

It's okay for us to have these conversations and have tension between the branches of government.

I will say that there's a problem to be solved here, which is, you know, every time there's an election, I get phone calls from a lot of my constituents and they say, "How do I vote on these judges?

I don't know anything about them.

How do I know who to retain and who not to retain?"

And we do need to find out a way to get more information to voters so they can feel like they're making an informed decision when they vote on judges.

And I know that's a little tricky because maybe 50% of people that went before a judge weren't happy with the outcome, that's kind of how these things work.

But we do need to make sure that voters can have the information that they need, because what I don't want is our state to become a state where we have to have judges campaigning.

I don't want a sign in my yard that says, "Vote for Judge so-and-so."

I just don't want us to go there with the judiciary.

And so, I think we do need to find another way to make sure that judges have--we have good information about judges out if we're asking voters to vote in retention elections.

Jason Perry: Damon, give us a little context with the state of Utah and other places because currently we do have what's called JPEC, the Judicial Performance Evaluation Committee.

This is the group that evaluates the judges, takes public comment.

This is establishing another group in the legislature that would look at these judges.

Damon Cann: Yeah, and I think in general, much like Representative Peterson said earlier, when most people are thinking about the information they want to have when they're trying to vote for a judge, they're not thinking, Hey, I wonder what my elected state representative thinks about this judge.

Most of them are thinking, Is this judge well qualified?

Are they making good decisions?

Are they serving with distinction, honor, and impartiality in the office where they serve?

And that's the kind of information that JPEC, our Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, provides.

But getting to that information is a little bit tricky.

You've got to get to your sample ballot on VoteUtah.gov, then you've got to click through to the judges, you've got to find your judge, and then you've got to review it, and then you've got to digest and remember that information and bring it with you into the ballot box.

Cognitively, it's a pretty demanding task that we're asking of voters.

But if you want to inject politics, if you want people to make decisions on the basis of political party and stuff, there's a route for that.

You do the partisan judicial elections that they have in Texas, in Alabama, and a number of other states, but that carries its own set of issues and challenges.

And if we want to stay with people making these decisions on the basis of nonpartisan information involving qualifications and performance on the bench, then we should be focused on promoting the information that JPEC provides rather than adding information directly on the ballot as to the legislator's opinion about a particular judge.

Jason Perry: Go ahead.

Karen Peterson: Well, I would just say with all of these bills probably that we'll talk about today, they're kind of in the same situation as the elections bill, which they start in one place and we see where they land and we still have one more week.

So there's been a lot of conversation around this one and all the others, so we'll see where all of these land, but we've appreciated everybody weighing in.

Jason Perry: Go ahead.

Grant Miller: Well, I think we got an opportunity with JPEC.

Right now, I'm an attorney myself, and every November people reach out to me, they're like, "Hey, what do you think about this judge?

What do you think about this judge?"

And people often have uninformed approaches.

People tell me sometimes they vote against all judges.

A lot of people tell me they vote for all judges.

My favorite mechanism is sometimes people will look at what law school they went to, BYU or U of U, and vote for the judge accordingly.

I think that we can do better in creating transparency with voters about what judges are doing, and I think in that there is an opportunity through all of this tension that we're experiencing now.

Jason Perry: Some of this does play out in one more bill I think we should talk about, Damon.

It's House Bill 451, Jason Kyle, judicial election amendments, which requires the state to appoint judges and justices who earn 67%.

Right now it's the majority, but this raises it to 67% for that retention or that election.

Damon Cann: Yes, so this is a really interesting bill.

It would put Utah in a fundamentally different place.

So, retention elections are a very common and popular way to keep judges or swap them out and give people a chance to weigh in on it.

The unique thing about a retention election is you either vote yes and the judge stays, or you vote no and the judge goes away, and it starts a process for the governor to select a new judge who serves a brief period before coming up for retention themselves.

In almost every state that does retention elections, the threshold is 50%.

New Mexico pushes it a little bit to 57%.

Illinois pushes it to 60%.

There is no one in the territory of 67%.

Now, I get that people say, you know, "What should that standard be?"

And maybe it should be a little higher than 50%, but are we prepared to hold every elected official in Utah to that kind of standard?

Because while some do meet it, most don't.

One other piece that's interesting on this particular point, people point to the fact that there's like two judges in the history of Utah that have ever not made the retention threshold, but the piece that we miss is when JPEC does their performance evaluations, they share those performance evaluations with the judicial candidate, and then that candidate can make the choice, based on the way they were evaluated by their peers, whether to go forward with their candidacy or not.

And it is not uncommon for a judge to make a decision at that point to retire.

So, the accountability process and system in Utah is not just based on who makes it through the voters or not, but based on judges who say, "You know what?

Maybe I'm not doing as well as I should have been doing.

I'm going to choose a different path and not have to go through a bruising retention election."

And that's why it seems like our outcomes are so favorable for our judges on this one in Utah.

Jason Perry: I want to get to a couple more bills, but maybe a couple ideas about what's coming.

Representative Peterson, you in particular are an expert on education.

There's even some big announcements even this morning when it comes to education and teachers.

Karen Peterson: Yeah, so this morning there was announcement both jointly with the governor and the legislature about a direct teacher raise for every teacher in our state and a bonus for every education support professional.

Sometimes we talk a lot about teachers, but we don't always think about the bus drivers and the people in the administration and other people that are making it happen at our schools.

So, that's an exciting thing.

We've already funded a 4% WP for education, which is fantastic.

I'm super excited that we'll start with that base, and then in addition to that a teacher--a direct raise for every teacher in our state, so I'm excited.

Jason Perry: What what else do you see coming this week?

Grant Miller: A lot, the last week of legislative session is a really intense time, but there are a lot of good bills that I see.

I know that the good bills don't always make the top of the list in the media and we always kind of focus on the most concerning.

But I'm personally excited, I've got a court fines and fees bill that credits, any sort of treatment or class you do as as a criminal defendant will be credited against your fine that you have in the court system, and that's currently in the Senate floor and I hope it goes to the governor.

I'm really excited about it.

Jason Perry: I can't wait to watch.

I want to talk about sort of a theme that even as you're working on legislation is what's happening in Washington DC.

We're talking about this a lot, and Damon, I want to talk about what's going on with some of these executive orders and some of the uncertainty that exists.

I thought it was interesting, Representative Blake Moore, one of our members of Congress, had a town hall this week and he had tens of thousands of people attending this, and a lot of these people are connected to jobs with the federal government.

Damon Cann: Yes, so Representative Moore expressed a lot of concern about the manner in which some of this is unfolding, not super surprising.

Relative to most congressional districts in the United States, the Utah First Congressional District has an inordinately high percentage of the population that are employed by the federal government.

When you account for Hill Air Force Base, the IRS Center in Ogden, there's a lot of federal workers.

And so, it touches a lot of people here in our state.

So, not surprising to see Representative Moore expressing some current concern and wanting to look out for his constituents on these issues.

Jason Perry: So Representative, this is your district.

Talk about--give us a sense of the scale of the federal employees, et cetera, that are in your district.

Karen Peterson: So thousands, thousands and thousands.

I would say like if I looked around my neighborhood, across the street, behind me in my own home, federal employees, right?

Because my district is right across from Hill Air Force Base.

That is the area that I represent in the legislature, and so there has been a lot of angst, I would say, over the last couple of weeks, a lot of uncertainty.

I understand a federal government that needs to be more efficient, that there are definitely things we can do better, but I also think there are probably better approaches to approaching this to make sure that we're really not just casting a wide net and making sure we're being strategic in where those reductions happen.

Jason Perry: I want to read a graphic really quick and have you respond to this because this is--gets to the heart of it, from Congressman Moore.

This is what he says.

"Demonizing a workforce that is a strong workforce that works hard for not a lot of money, that is not the direction that we need to be going.

(Federal workers) want to be a part of the solution, and the communication that's come out of the DOGE world has been antagonistic.

And it's not helpful.

And I have over-communicated that."

Interesting strong words from Congressman Moore.

Grant Miller: I couldn't agree more.

It's particularly interesting because he's a Republican, the White House is Republican, and there appears to be some tension there.

I know that we all care about our federal employees, they're government servants, and there's some issues, particularly when the White House cut out all of the probationary workers, the people that had just started in the federal sector.

And it was an easy thing, I think, for the White House to say, "Hey, we can let go of these people and save some money," but that put out the federal government some of the hardest working employees, the people that get paid the least but work the most.

And if anything, those are the people they should have kept.

I understand that they're trying to save money here and, you know, when you're trying to look at your personal utility bills, "How do I save money?

Well, maybe I'll save on this, kind of, buying off brand cereal or I'll stop watching Hulu," or something like that, but this is pretty much throwing everything out of the house all at once, and it's an inappropriate way to do it.

Jason Perry: We're gonna be watching this one very closely.

It has impact, of course, not just on these industries but our national parks and across the state.

Thank you so much for your insights, we appreciate it.

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.

♪♪♪ ...