The two men who, between them, have the most influence over what Utah will look like for all of us opened the 2025 legislative session with their ideas.
Some of those ideas are good for us. Some of them are bad. A few are atrocious.
Legislative leaders see some real problems and offer solutions
House Speaker Mike Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams see some real problems facing the people of the state and propose, at least in broad terms, some solutions.
For the speaker, the problems include a lack of affordable housing, not only for those on the lowest end of the income scale but also for what we used to see as middle-class households who now can’t afford to buy even the simplest of homes. He favors state action to encourage construction of more entry-level homes.
Schultz also worries about how a college undergraduate education costs more money and takes more time than it used to, or than it should — five or six years instead of the traditional four.
He says the state’s colleges should find efficiencies and take other steps to lower the cost of a degree, including making more basic college-level courses available, at low cost, to students while they are still in high school.
The speaker is right to call on Utah’s higher education system to explore ways to be more efficient and more effective, especially in light of emerging technologies that may present new and innovative ways to teach and learn. But let’s also invest across the entire spectrum of educational opportunities, from K-12, higher education, the humanities and lifelong learning so that all of our citizens are not just prepared for the workforce of the future but are also informed citizens lifting our whole state.
Adams wants Utah to be about the business of creating more sources of energy to meet the needs of a 21st-century, tech-centered AI economy.
Utah’s population and economy are predicted to keep growing. Whatever you may think of that, more people and more economic growth will require more energy.
Adams is right to want to explore every avenue, to include sustainable energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and new and better forms of nuclear energy, to provide the power we need and to finally wean ourselves from dirty fossil fuels.
Speaker and president seek to frighten Utahns with scary stories
Sadly, neither legislative leader could resist threatening Utahns with scary campfire stories of non-existent boogeymen to justify their bad policy prescriptions.
For Schultz, the phony story is about how the federal government is a bad steward of all the land it owns within the boundaries of the Beehive State and how that land would be better managed and used if it were taken over by the state.
The feds have let a lot of their property go and owe Utahns, and all Americans, a lot more attention to this precious resource. We’d have a much better chance of winning such cooperation from Congress and the bureaucracy if our leaders were seen as honest negotiating partners rather than selfish scolds — or shills for miners, drillers and subdividers.
Adams, for his part, went on far too long haranguing us with his power-hungry condemnation of the Utah people’s right, enshrined in the state Constitution, to use the ballot initiative process to structure their government to serve their needs and principles.
His frightening image of a Utah turned into California, besieged by countless obscure, and expensive, ballot measures, has no basis in reality. It’s difficult to get such measures before Utah voters, and Adams’ image of the state’s electorate as a mob of easily swayed sheep falling victim to out-of-state con men disrespects our populace and tries to turn one of the most important ideas in history — democracy — into a dirty word.
Utah governor shows some welcome independence from Trump
For the many of us who were more than dismayed when Utah Gov. Spencer Cox appeared to go over to the Dark Side, throwing in with Donald Trump’s quest for a return to the White House, some hope.
As governor, Cox has less actual influence over policy than do the leaders of the Legislature. But he has a more visible platform, and the other day he used it to demonstrate a pleasing amount of independence, decency and courage when he publicly took issue with two of the first actions taken by the restored president.
Among a flurry of other executive orders was Trump’s horrific declaration that the provision of the Constitution of the United States guaranteeing citizenship to every person born in this country won’t count for children born to parents who are not here legally, nor to some whose parents are here as refugees, students or other form of legal authorization.
Cox, to his credit, isn’t buying it.
“I don’t think with the stroke of a pen that presidents can change the Constitution,” the governor rightly said.
That’s true of the entire document. And the birthright citizenship promise, added after the Civil War to ensure that former slaves would not have their rights discounted, is not only embedded in the Constitution but also part of what America has been all about since its beginning.
Twenty-two states, some cities and civil liberties groups have already filed suit in federal court to block Trump’s order. It is, apparently, too much to expect Utah to join in that legal action, even though suing the feds is our Official State Pastime. But our governor’s dissent helps.
Cox also openly denounced as unconstitutional Trump’s decision to delay enforcement of a bipartisan act of Congress — upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — requiring that the social media app TikTok either be divested by its China-based owners or be banned from the United States.
The governor rightly noted that he has called out Democratic presidents when they, in his view, either overstepped their authority or failed to faithfully execute the laws. But not everyone in Cox’s line of work (except, maybe, former Sen. Mitt Romney) is willing to apply the same principles to leaders of his own party.
It probably helps that Cox, unlike many other Utah politicians (looking at you, Sen. Mike Lee), does not seem to have a hankering for higher office, or even a third term as governor. He’s free to do what’s right. We should see more of it.
