Over the course of their 45-day session — one of the shortest state legislative sessions in the country — Utah lawmakers introduced a record 959 bills this year. Of those, 582 were passed by the Legislature and sent to the governor’s desk for his signature or veto.
But as he assesses the mass of legislation, Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday that “in an era of DOGE,” referring to President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency run by businessman Elon Musk, there were “too many bills,” and he called on lawmakers to prioritize in an effort to limit costs to the state.
“There is a cost to administering these bills that sometimes gets left out,” he told reporters during his monthly news conference. “We’re barely, barely getting through last year’s bills and getting them implemented, getting them to where they need to be, and now we’re just overwhelmed. We’ve had to add positions in state government just to implement bills.”
“I’m just saying that we made it through last year without these 582 bills and did really well,” Cox added.
Previously, the governor said, the Legislature would pass “about 300” bills a year. When he served in the legislature in 2013, he said lawmakers were asked to pick three priority bills, and said he remembered that the body passed “somewhere around” 480 bills that year. “Now we’re 100 more than that routinely,” Cox said.
According to the Legislature’s official tracker, lawmakers passed 524 bills during the 2013 general session, when Cox served in the House.
Additionally, although lawmakers introduced a record number of bills in 2025, they ultimately passed nine fewer laws this year than last year, when 591 bills were sent to Cox’s desk.
“We were named the best state in the nation without those 582 bills. Surely, there’s 80 or 90 of them that we could have done without this year.”
Part of the reason for the influx of bills, the governor said, is because the legislature and drafting attorneys who help write legislation have become more efficient.
But there are, he noted, rules the Legislature could implement to limit the amount of legislation, though he understands that could be difficult. “They could do that, but it’s hard. I get it,” Cox said. “Who do you say no to, right? Everybody thinks they have the best ideas.”
And last month, Republican Senate President Stuart Adams said he felt he did not have the power to stop his members from running as many bills as they like. “I wish I did,” he told reporters. “One thing I do know, they’re all independent contractors. They’re elected, and we don’t control a lot of that.”
Adams did add, however, that he thinks the legislature has a good “sifting process” for deciding which bills end up on the governor’s desk, and said, “We do control how they’re sifted.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox conducts a news conference in Salt Lake City, Thursday, March 20, 2025.
Cox also acknowledged Thursday that he could put his foot down as governor and limit the number of bills he will sign into law.
“I could just say, you know, I’m only going to sign 500 bills this year, so ... there will be 82 vetoes this year,” he said. “I haven’t done that, and of course, they could just override those 82 vetoes, and so it may not matter much. But what I hope to do is to help people see the true cost, in an era of DOGE… government efficiency and cost-cutting.”
Cox added that he does plan to veto some bills, though he would not comment on which. He also said that he plans to sign a number of bills he may have chosen to vote against were he still a member of the Legislature.
“Something that is hard for people to understand [is] just because I sign a bill doesn’t mean I like the bill,” he said. “There are probably 50 bills that I would have voted against that I will sign, and there are lots of different reasons for that. Some of those we negotiated on to get them in a better place, and if we do that, I feel obligated to sign it, even though I don’t like it.”
And sometimes, the governor added, he signs bills he doesn’t like because he thinks vetoing would be futile: “Sometimes,” he said, “I know that vetoing it would just get it overridden.”
