Kerry Bringhurst: It is Thursday. And we are speaking with Holly Richardson from Utah Policy who has been updating us throughout the Legislative Session about issues and bills that affect Utah families and children and women. We are getting close to the end of the Legislative Session and many bills are beginning to surface even on this late date.
Holly Richardson: You would think that this close to the end — we only have a week from tomorrow before the session ends — that they would stop sending out new bills, but they don’t; they're still coming out.
So there's actually a bill that will be heard on the Hill today about massaging animals. So it sounds funny, but the current law says that you have to have a license, a human massage therapy license, to be able to massage an animal. And this bill would say, you actually don't anymore. This is a law that I've been tracking for more than a decade and it's finally looks like it's gonna go away.
So there's some other bills too that are coming out. So we have over 920 bills now available for discussion. They're not going to get to all of them, of course.
But one of the bills that just came out and has already been discussed in committee and passed the House is a bill that would pull back the restrictions on abortion clinics that was passed last year. But what the intent of the sponsor is to remove confounding variables to the trigger law, which was passed a couple of years ago, which would basically do away with almost all abortions in the state of Utah. So this is a case; it's in front of the Utah Supreme Court. And it has been complicated. And so the sponsor of the bill try is trying to make it less complicated for the Supreme Court to be able to make a decision.
Kerry Bringhurst: And the sponsor is Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, and as you said, it would repeal this section of law passed last year. And this has made it out of committee or are we —
Holly Richardson: It’s made it out of committee and it was put right at the top of the floor calendar yesterday and passed the House yesterday. It'll be over to the Senate side. It's a bill that's moving very quickly.
Kerry Bringhurst: What else are you keeping your eye on?
Holly Richardson: You know, there's some there's some bills about childcare and an innovation from Sen. Luz Escamilla that would allow a public-private partnership to use abandoned state buildings for a business to then do a licensed daycare. That's one that I'm watching.
There's several bills that are good bills, but they're on hold based on funding. So Utah's revenue this year is up just slightly at $340 million, which people are considering basically flat. And so there are some bills that are going to be on hold pending the final decision on how they're going to spend money, which will all shake out next week.
Kerry Bringhurst: Is there a particular bill that is not going to proceed because of the financial restrictions that you thought would be something that should have or could have passed?
Holly Richardson: Yeah, for sure. So there was a bill by Rep. Ray Ward who’s a Republican. And that bill would have expanded the Medicaid coverage with money that the state already has for 7000 pregnant women. And they killed that bill in committee.
Kerry Bringhurst: Any talk of that being reintroduced next year?
Holly Richardson: I don't know; this is the second year in a row that has been introduced. Last year, it was run by a Democrat, this year it's being run by a Republican. But the response has been the same. We don't want to spend the money on that. But there is a request to spend $900 million on a new Major League Baseball stadium. So we'll see.
Kerry Bringhurst: That was going to be my next question. Have there been bills that have passed that you've been surprised have received the funding as requested and the support that might seem a little unusual?
Holly Richardson: Yeah, I think that's one of them. The professional ball stadiums and even this morning, there's discussion from some of the people who live on the west side of Salt Lake saying this is coming really fast, and it's going to raise our taxes. We're not sure we want this year. So anyway, we'll see about that one.
But there's another bill as well that talks about college athletes, which is kind of interesting. It's NIL, which is name, image, likeness. And this bill would basically keep those agreements private, they would keep them just with the university, but that means members of the public don't know is it only the football players getting them? We just won’t know, even at the public universities.
Kerry Bringhurst: Speaking of privacy, there's also legislation being considered that would keep private the personal calendars of our legislators and other state leaders. Where are we on that bill?
Holly Richardson: So that bill has passed committee? But it's that's another one that's surprising to me. Utah has for a long time prided itself on its openness and transparency and this seems to me to be a step backwards. There are several people who have weighed in from the media coalition or journalism instructors who are saying this session has seen more bills to decrease transparency than they can ever remember.
So it's interesting and somewhat concerning, right? They do the work for the people of the state of Utah. And I personally think that their calendar should be public.
