Gov. Cox signs 74 bills from 2024 Legislative Session
Gov. Spencer Cox has began to sign bills from the latest legislative session starting on Tuesday.
These bills include, House Bill 14, which increases the penalties for making threats against a school, and House Bill 453, which addressed multiple actions affecting the Great Salt Lake.
Some bills go into effect immediately with the governor’s signature, while others have specific start dates.
Gov. Cox has signed 103 pieces of legislation so far this year out of the record 591 passed in the 2024 session. He has until March 21 to sign or veto bills; if he does neither, they will become law.
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources pushes for safer recreation in Utah
As temperatures warm and Utah enters spring, wildlife officials are reminding Utahns to keep their dogs from chasing wild animals when recreating outdoors over the next few months.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources stated in a statement on Tuesday, that many big game animals are vulnerable and weak in spring due to the difficulty of finding food in the winter.
When off-leash dogs chase these animals, it uses up energy the animals may need to survive, as well as force them to move away from where they’re trying to feed.
Though there are many places in Utah where pets are allowed off-leash, the Division of Wildlife Resources encourages owners to still secure their animals to protect not only big game, but other wildlife and nesting grounds.
Utah Supreme Court rules COVID-19 doesn’t qualify businesses for property tax break
The Utah Supreme Court has recently ruled that major businesses cannot qualify COVID-19 as a “disruptive event” to justify a tax break.
A coalition of businesses and property owners, led by the Larry H. Miller Company and several mall operators, had been seeking relief from property taxes, citing the massive disruption of a global pandemic as disruptive under the state’s “access interruption statute.”
However, that statute doesn’t explicitly list a pandemic as a disruptive event to qualify for tax relief. The Utah Attorney General’s Office and the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office argued that since the governor at the time, Gov. Gary Herbert, never really shut down businesses during the height of the pandemic, there wasn’t an entitlement to any tax breaks.
The justices agreed with the argument in a unanimous ruling.
