Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Utah's youngest female legislator is ready to fight for Utah's families

The Utah State Capitol with snow around it.
Al.Naumenko
/
commons.wikimedia.org
Utah State Capitol

Utah Republican Rep. Candice Pierucci of District 49 discusses her 2025 legislative priorities and Utah families are top of mind.

"So I represent the Herriman and Riverton area and I’m the youngest woman to serve in the Utah legislature. When the representative from my area resigned, my husband and I felt strongly like we need someone who’s going to represent young families and who’s going to go up to the hill and be a fighter. I don’t think people realize when we’re voting on bills the first week of session that they’ve gotten more scrutiny and time put on them than probably a lot of bills that pass later in the session because we’ve had months to talk about them. It is a forty-five day marathon," " said Pierucci.

She walks through three of her bills regarding two of her priorities: safety and education. First, the Criminal Amendments bill would increase incarceration length from 364 days to 365 days for individuals who are not in this country legally and have committed a class A misdemeanor. This increase allows for ICE to deport the individual. This bill would also crack down on non profits that may be assisting illegal immigration.

“All of the bills in our immigration package, save the English Language Learner, they’re focusing on crime. And so from a public safety perspective we absolutely should be cracking down on that and enforcing our laws. The best way to increase support for legal migration is to crack down on illegal immigration. I don’t ever want the message to be that we’re not welcoming refugees. We are a state built by refugees.”

The second bill enhances all penalties for human trafficking. The third was inspired by the countless schools who reached out when dozens of students were showing up on the first day of school without being registered and didn’t speak English.

“This bill would provide kind of an emergency fund, trying to get those resources on the ground level to our teachers so they can better handle this.”

At this session, she's looking forward to family night and encourages bringing politics to the dinner table.

“I always host a family night tour up at the capital. Everyone brings their kiddos up and we get to talk about the capitol building and the process, and I think that’s healthy. A lot of times people avoid politics at home and to me, that’s where we should be talking about it.”