The first week of the Utah Legislature’s 2022 general session began with a remix of last year’s greatest hits — tax cuts and coronavirus.
“This is the year of the tax cut, again,” Senate President Stuart Adams told The Salt Lake Tribune of the focus of this year’s annual lawmaking effort, parroting his statement last year which called 2021 the year of the tax cut. “Isn’t that exciting,” he added.
In his opening address, House Speaker Brad Willson repeatedly summoned the spirit of the “Utah Way” — the idea that Utah politics, with powerful Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate, is actually a bipartisan and collaborative endeavor.
Wilson said the state government would not “nanny” its citizens and Utah wouldn’t embrace “high taxes or burdensome regulation that saps the energy of our industrious people.”
The Legislature has identified $160 million for tax relief this year and has expressed an interest in reducing income taxes. Several icome tax bills were proposed during the opening days of the session.
But Gov. Spencer Cox has a different idea for the tax cut. In December, the governor outlined a plan to spend the same sum on a “grocery tax credit” the administration said would target low- and moderate-income households in Utah.
“Right now, we are seeing rising inflationary pressures, and we believe that a grocery tax credit would do the most for the people who need it the most,” Cox said when he rolled out the plan in early December.
And like last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has loomed large over the session.
Senate president test positive for COVID, while claiming negative result
About a week before lawmakers convened for their annual session, Adams began to experience pandemic symptoms and tested positive for COVID-19. On Tuesday, he assured lawmakers that he’d fully recovered.
During his opening remarks, the senate president told lawmakers that he’d again tested positive for COVID-19 that morning and then quickly clarified that he’d meant to say the test had been negative. But that wasn’t true.
After The Tribune pressed senate officials for more information about Adams’ tests, they released a public statement that said the senate president had in fact tested positive for COVID-19 before addressing the Senate floor without a mask on Tuesday.
“Here we are three days into the 2022 legislative session and, frankly, we’re not off to a great start. We’re seeing legislators show up testing positive for COVID-19 and refusing to wear masks to keep the rest of us safe,” said Salt Lake City Democrat Sen. Derek Kitchen at a news conference Thursday.
This is Adams’ second bout with COVID-19, he first had the virus in June 2020.
And he wasn’t the only person on the hill to test positive on day one. Officials said several legislative interns — who are required to undergo biweekly rapid testing — also came up hot.
Each chamber of the Legislature has different rules on COVID-19 testing during the session. In the Senate, testing is optional for lawmakers and their staff, while the House requires twice-weekly testing.
Lawmakers move to overturn mask mandates
Regardless of signs of the virus in the Capitol building and record case numbers across the Beehive State, lawmakers immediately made moves this past week to begin overturning local and county masking orders.
On the opening day of the session, the Senate passed approved SJR3, a resolution that would terminate mask mandates in Salt Lake and Summit counties and a school-based mandate in Salt Lake City.
“I liken this requirement to wear a mask like trying to wave your arms out the window of a car to try and slow yourself down,” said Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, the resolution’s sponsor.
The success in the Senate was along party lines with Democrats in opposition. Opponents argued that Salt Lake County’s mask order is broadly supported in the community and that the resolution was an overreach by state lawmakers.
“My constituency was begging for a mask mandate before the mayor acted and the council,” said Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City. ”Not having that was for many irresponsible and a lack of leadership from the county.”
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said on Twitter after the Senate vote that she had “no regrets” about issuing a mask mandate in the capital city.
The resolution now sits in the House waiting for a vote, where Republicans have remained mostly silent. If passed in the House, which is expected, lawmakers would end those mask requirements without involvement from the governor.
Test to Stay up to Utah’s top politicians
Lawmakers also moved quickly to expand their control over Utah’s Test to Stay program in public schools. By Wednesday morning, HB183 had flown through the House.
The proposal, by South Jordan Republican Rep. Jordan Teuscher, would ensure the governor, speaker of the house, senate president and state superintendent have the final say on whether schools could go to remote learning — regardless of the wishes of local school boards.
“This was a program implemented at the beginning of the pandemic and actually worked pretty well to get our kids back into school. Our approach has had to evolve,” Teuscher said during Wednesday’s floor debate. “Test to Stay isn’t practical and isn’t working right now.”
Ahead of the session, Cox has already put Test to Stay on pause because of waning testing resources in the state and a desire to keep kids in classrooms. He suggested anyone who was experiencing symptoms should forego testing and just stay at home.
The Senate overwhelmingly passed a preliminary vote on identical legislation on Thursday.
The Legislature will begin hearing legislation again on Monday morning.
Tribune journalists Bethany Rodgers, Bryan Schott, Kim Bojórquez and Robert Gehrke reported this story.
