Rep. Thurston hosted the State FFA Officers at the Capitol this week. (The President, Christina Nolasco, is from District 64!)
There are just nine working days left in the legislative session, but experienced colleagues tell me we are only about half way done with the work. Here is a brief update on a few topics you may be interested in:
Update on Bills I am Sponsoring
Let me start by noting that passing bills is not a contest or a race. There is no prize for the person who passes the most bills nor should there be. The end goal of proposing, vetting, and acting on bills is to come up with good policy. This is probably a good case where “less is more.”
I told many of you going into the session that I would probably not sponsor many bills if any at all going into this session. But as you can imagine, I kind of feel like a kid in a candy store. There are so many good ideas out there, especially those that have come from constituents. I am particularly interested in ideas to remove outdated and unneeded laws. A brief summary of each of my bills is available on the main page.
There is still a lot of work to do, but I think the process will work to get the best ideas moved forward and the others will get a chance to be refined over the summer and hopefully be ready for next year.
One bill in particular that you may want to keep an eye on is HB350 – Weapons on Public Transportation. A constituent pointed out to me the unnecessary felony enhancement for people that peacefully carry concealed weapons on public transportation. As I looked into it, this enhancement is both bad policy and not enforced, so this bill provides a needed correction to the code.
Has Medicaid Expansion been debated? Does it need more?
As you may have read in the newspaper (and I caution you to be careful about what you believe), the Senate has passed a bill to implement the Governor’s Medicaid expansion plan. I have written a lot about the risks associated with that plan, which could threaten the stability of education funding, transportation funding, and even the structure of our healthcare system. You will not be surprised to know that I hope we can come up with a less risky way to help the most needy among us and am working toward that end goal.
The latest talking point being pushed out to the public by the governor’s communications team is that the House needs to bring his plan to the House floor for a debate. I want to set the record straight on the “give it a hearing” issue.
To quote one of my colleagues:
Please know that there was nothing casual or knee-jerk about the Utah House’s decision not to debate Healthy Utah [on the floor]. The House’s bench on this issue is deep, and the debates were many, heartfelt, and the participants genuinely interested in doing the best we could for the State and the people we represent. We listened long and hard to advocates on all sides of the debate as well as hundreds of emails from and conversations with interested constituents.
At the end of the day, far too many doubts remained about whether the program was sustainable, affordable, and effective.
A few insider thoughts on this topic. First, it is false to say that the House hasn’t studied, discussed or debated this proposal. We have had hours of public presentations including arguments from the Governor’s team, House supporters and advocates. Medicaid expansion was also talked about in multiple public hearings including Governor’s Summits and the Health Reform Task Force (a legislative committee). It was also discussed in multiple House caucus meetings. As you know from SchoolHouse Rock, there are a lot of steps involved in a bill becoming a law, and it can be killed at any step on the way. It’s really hard (on purpose) to pass a bill, but just because a bill doesn’t make it to the House floor, doesn’t mean it didn’t go “through the process.”
Second, every single legislator in the House has a personal desire to care for the most needy among us. However, it is obvious to all House Republicans that there are not enough votes to expand Medicaid in the way the Governor would like. Rather than spend more time beating a dead horse, House leadership is working hard and using up a lot of precious time to come up with an alternative that could pass the House. There are many things we can do to help the most needy among us in a way that is sustainable, affordable, and minimizes the financial risk and disruption to the system. Let’s hope that the personal attacks have left enough room that we can keep people at the table for the next two weeks to come up with an acceptable proposal.
What’s Going to Happen with State School Board Elections?
Last week the House education chair dedicated an entire meeting devoted to figuring out how to propose we select State Board of Education members. It was the political version of a cage fight, except the committee really didn’t eliminate any options, effectively punting the issue to the whole House. Still alive are variations of political party processes, non-partisan elections, and gubernatorial appointments. Even my proposal to allow local school districts to select their representative is still around in some form (although it is “mostly dead.”) So, I have no crystal ball on this one. I suspect that none of the “Big 3” options have majority support in the House, so all bets are off at this point. Stay tuned.
Survey update on State Board of Education. As of today, 57% of you support open a process that allows anyone to get on the Primary ballot, 13% support gubernatorial appointment, and 12% support political parties determining who is on the November ballot. 34% would have supported my proposal.
What happened to the Wood Burning ban?
This was by far the most far-reaching issue in the district at the beginning of the session. The Air Quality Board has recognized that this was probably an over-reach and we have been told that they are scrapping the planned ban, but several of us are worried that it will come back again. To paraphrase a well-known quote, “Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.”
Keep your eyes on HB396.
