Utah's legislative session has come to an end. Here's what your lawmakers did

SALT LAKE CITY — Another 45-day legislative session is in the books, dominated early by rancor over a bill stripping public unions of bargaining power and concluding with Utah lawmakers revamping the state's election system while butting heads over a series of lower-profile bills.

An inch of fresh snow that fell overnight was reminiscent of the early days of the session in mid-January, but within the marble walls of the Capitol, lawmakers worked with the urgency of early March as they raced against the clock to accomplish all they could before adjourning "sine die" at midnight Friday.

The public union bill took up much of the oxygen during the first couple of weeks, as teachers, firefighters and police officers filled the halls to protest — angrily, at times — the measure. It's a familiar strategy lawmakers have employed in the past several years, addressing some of the most controversial issues on the front end.

That's not to say the second half was devoid of drama. There was the typical partisan fighting, but this year also saw significant sparring between Republicans in the House and Senate, resulting in several clashes between the chambers in the final days.

And though many in the GOP majority entered the session with ambitious plans to put their foot down on illegal immigration, remake the court system and overhaul elections, many of the most contentious bills were watered down after facing pushback from stakeholders or lawmakers in the other chamber.

"That's what I think is most important: I don't think any side gets its way all the time," House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, told reporters. "There's some things that I didn't love as part of the compromises. There's things that the Senate didn't love as part of the compromise, and I'm sure there's things the governor's office didn't love as part of the compromises. But working together is what I think we're really trying to focus on."

"I always say that how we do things is almost as important as what we do. It doesn't mean we always get it right," Gov. Spencer Cox said before adjournment. "It's messy. It's called sausage-making for a reason. It's ugly, but it works. And I love that we have this process."

Lawmakers ended the night with 582 bills having passed, which Cox will have until March 27 to take action on. Here's a brief look at some of the biggest issues lawmakers tackled this year:

Utah to phase out automatic vote-by-mail

On the second-to-last day of the session, lawmakers passed the biggest reform to how Utahns vote in years. Following the contentious 2024 election cycle and after a pair of critical audits, House leadership backed a bill, HB300, that would end universal vote-by-mail and would require in-person photo ID for most ballots.

Instead of rejecting the proposal, Senate leadership engaged in intensive negotiations over the seven-week session, producing a compromise solution that county clerks did not oppose asking voters to place the final four digits of a state ID on their ballot, making vote by mail op-in by 2029 and requiring ballots to be received by 8 p.m on election night.

A dozen other election bills — dealing with runoff elections, voter roll cleanup, the lieutenant governor's election oversight, county clerk reporting deadlines and transparency surrounding voter information — mostly failed to gain traction across both chambers.

Fifth consecutive tax cut

"Again, again, again and again now."

That's how Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, described the effort by lawmakers to slash the state's income tax last year for the fourth consecutive year. Well, Adams can add another tax cut notch to his belt, after lawmakers further reduced the income tax rate from 4.55% to 4.5%, giving the typical Utah family savings of about $45 a year. It may not seem like much, but in addition to recent cuts, lawmakers say it amounts to a significant benefit to Utahns.

That same tax package — worth about $127 million — also expands the state's child tax credit to cover children age 5 or younger and creates a tax credit for businesses that invest in child care.

A separate proposal will remove the state tax on Social Security benefits for about 90,000 Utahns by raising the income cap from $75,000 to $90,000. That's less than Gov. Spencer Cox asked for — he wanted to eliminate the tax entirely — but it's seen as a compromise as Capitol Hill Republicans have always eyed another income tax cut, even in a relatively meager revenue year.

Public transparency gets more expensive

Lawmakers passed bills that will make it more difficult and expensive for Utahns to access government records. They created more exceptions to the state's open meeting laws and eliminated public scrutiny of the process for selecting public university presidents.

SB277 wiped out the long-standing State Records Committee, the seven-member volunteer panel that resolves disputes over whether records are public or private. An administrative law judge appointed by the governor will replace the committee.

HB69 prevents someone who successfully gets access to records on appeal from recovering court costs, unless the government showed bad faith. That means they could incur an expense opposing the government even if it's decided they should have been given the records in the first place.

Another bill, SB169 makes it a crime to destroy a record that is subject to a pending public records request and requires more training of GRAMA records officers.

Lawmakers avoid final week showdown with courts

Republican legislators entered the legislative session with chips on their shoulders after being rebuffed by the Utah Supreme Court in several cases last summer. Citing what lawmakers described as a lack of efficiency within the state's appellate courts and Supreme Court, they floated a slew of proposals targeting the judiciary by potentially expanding the Supreme Court, significantly raising the threshold for judicial retention and giving lawmakers oversight of judicial performance.

Though the lawmakers insisted the proposals were meant to improve the inner workings of the court, some of the top justices disagreed and took the extraordinary step of publicly weighing in.

Supreme Court Justice Paige Petersen said the bills were "obviously retribution," and Chief Justice Matthew Durrant called one "an attempt to influence and exert legislative control over the chief justice."

The bubbling tension between lawmakers and judges appeared on track to explode over the final week of the session, until Monday, when lawmakers announced they had reached a compromise with the judiciary and would abandon three of the most controversial proposals. The dramatic reversal allowed several other bills to move forward — including several that had already been watered down. Durrant praised the agreement and said the Judicial Council would adopt a "neutral" position toward a proposal to let the governor pick the chief justice after previously opposing it.

That bill, SB296, remained the highest-profile judicial reform bill once the cards fell. It passed on the final night of the session.

Salt Lake City in the spotlight

Leaders of Utah's largest city braced for a potentially impactful session the moment Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall received a letter from state leaders asking her to present a public safety plan ahead of the 45-day legislative extravaganza.

HB465 was the biggest proposed law tied to the letter. It required cities like Utah's capital to enter an agreement with the Utah Department of Public Safety on public safety issues or risk losing out on state public safety and even transportation funds. It would also apply to St. George, Sandy and West Valley City.

The bill ultimately passed late on the last day with a substitute introduced with 90 minutes left in the session, which opened the door for the Utah Division of Facilities Construction and Management to use eminent domain "to condemn unincorporated property" owned by a city in Salt Lake County to construct a building for homelessness services, which Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, the floor sponsor, said drew no opposition from the city.

Several other bills also impacted the city in some way. Most notably:

• HB77 likely impacts the city's ability to raise LGBTQ, Juneteenth or any other cultural flags flown to celebrate the city's diversity, as it has in years past. A last-second amendment that would have exempted the cities and counties failed on Thursday.
• HB267 bars collective bargaining with public sector labor unions. Over two-thirds of the city's employees are unionized, meaning the bill likely impacts its future contract negotiation with employees should the law remain in place.
• HB505 bars unsanctioned camping on state land, including lands in Salt Lake City. While the state had pressured cities to crack down on unsanctioned camping, city officials said previous laws made it difficult to enforce unsanctioned camping in some areas because it had no jurisdiction.

Yet, SB195 may have been the most dramatic of all the city-related bills. The omnibus transportation bill includes a study of state roads in Salt Lake City, but one version of it may have prevented the city from continuing any road safety projects for at least a year while the study took place.

The city reached a compromise that was briefly discussed before the state and city finally agreed on a bill that the city was OK with on Thursday. Still, city officials weren't thrilled about being roped into the situation to begin with.

"The premise of this bill is yet another example this session of the state intervening in matters that are better addressed by those elected by city residents," said Andrew Wittenberg, spokesman for Salt Lake City Mayor's Office.

That's essentially how the city felt about most of the legislation tied to it this year.

Public lands

Several public lands bills were considered this year, including HB34. The bill allows the Utah Division of State Parks — in consultation with local entities — to create and manage state campgrounds similar to the way the Bureau of Land Management does at federal lands.

Great Salt Lake received a few appropriations this year. H446, sponsored by Rep. Jill Koford, R-Ogden, also gives the Great Salt Lake commissioner's office "more flexibility" in negotiations over water leases to the lake along with other tweaks, the lawmaker explained.

However, some of the more ambitious public lands bills failed to go anywhere.

SB236 aimed to create Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon parks, while HCR12 set up a process to review more state parks from federal lands. It would also have launched initial conversations for the state to take up deferred maintenance projects on federal lands. Neither passed.

There were many environmental bills, as well.

HB81 is perhaps the most notable of those. It removes fluoride from public water systems and allows pharmacists to prescribe fluoride as part of the change. Barring a veto, Utah would be the first state in the nation to outright ban the practice of adding fluoride to the water.

Also on the topic of water, HB274 creates a system of tiered water rates

HB420 requires the Utah Division of Air Quality to complete an annual report on halogen emissions to the Utah Legislature, including chlorine and bromine. It also can compile a "control technology emissions reduction plan" to reduce halogen emissions from key sources.

A federal study published in 2023 pinpointed a Great Salt Lake magnesium plant as a key source of bromine during a research period in 2017.

"The passage of HB420 marks a major achievement in the state's efforts to address environmental pollution and protect public health, particularly during the winter months when inversions can worsen air quality," Stewardship Utah Air Quality officials said.

Immigration enforcement

Illegal immigration has been a central focus of the session with consideration of several measures aimed most notably at toughening the penalties immigrants here illegally face for breaking the law.

• HB38 focuses on a broad range of illegal activity. But with regard to immigrants, it enhances the criminal classification of certain violent crimes, property crimes and sexual offenses when carried out by two or more people. That's down from the current threshold of three or more people, a change meant to tackle activity of gangs, including international-based gangs.
• HB87 takes aim at immigrants here illegally and others who traffic fentanyl by making trafficking more than 100 grams of the drug, much of it made in Mexico, a first-degree felony. SB90 mandates tougher sentencing for criminal immigrants here illegally who have been previously convicted of criminal entry into the United States after being deported. If they've previously been convicted of certain crimes, they'd face mandatory sentences.
• As federal authorities handle actual enforcement of immigration law, state officials have a limited role in detaining and deporting immigrants here illegally. HB226 increases the maximum sentence for more serious class A misdemeanors by a day to a full year, aligning with federal guidelines related to deportations and making it easier to deport immigrants who commit such crimes, whether here legally or illegally.
• HB42 would allocate $500,000 to help school districts contend with growing numbers of students with limited English proficiency.
• Lawmakers discussed a measure that would make more businesses use verification systems to make sure potential hires are here legally, HB214, but it fizzled.

LGBTQ+ issues

For the fourth year in a row, Utah lawmakers approved legislation related to the transgender community.

• HB269, already inked into law by Gov. Spencer Cox, prohibits transgender students at Utah's public universities from living in single-sex dorms that align with their gender identity. Only biological females or biological males may reside in single-sex dorms designated for the respective genders. The measure stemmed from an uproar over a transgender resident assistant at Utah State University.
• HB252 would prohibit Utah Department of Corrections facilities from initiating certain surgical or hormone treatments to help transgender inmates transition. It would allow the department to provide mental health care for patients with gender dysphoria.
• HB77 would limit the display of banners in school classrooms to flags of the United States and other countries, states, universities, U.S. military branches, Native American tribes and a few others. Proponents say the measure aims to maintain political neutrality in schools while critics in the LGBTQ community say it's aimed at keeping gay pride flags out of schools. The measure would apply to public places in state and local government buildings as well.

Utah lawmakers last year approved legislation restricting restroom access for transgender people. They banned gender-related surgeries for minors in 2023 and passed a prohibition on transgender girls participating in high school sports in 2022.

Reinvesting in higher education

HB265 — a divisive bill that would establish a strategic reinvestment fund for Utah's eight degree-seeking colleges and universities — passed the Senate Tuesday, bringing it one step closer to Gov. Spencer Cox's desk for approval if it passes the House floor.

Co-sponsored by Rep. Karen Peterson, R-Clinton, and Sen. Ann Millner, R-Ogden, the bill has been touted by Republican lawmakers as a way to ensure wise use of tax dollars. At the same time, Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns that liberal arts programs could be on the chopping block when it comes to reallocation decisions.

The state's base budget, approved by the Legislature in January, removed $60 million from the combined budgets of the eight schools, with each institution's "cut" being different.

For example, the University of Utah had $19.5 million pulled from its budget while smaller schools like Utah Tech University had $2.5 million pulled.

Public unions bill sparks backlash

Though not explicitly an education bill, HB267 garnered a lot of attention from the education community and beyond this legislative session. Signed into law by the governor last month, the bill bans public sector collective bargaining, much to the dismay of unions and workers around the state.

On Wednesday, a coalition of labor partners — including the Utah Education Association — announced it would file a referendum to get the issue on the ballot and then later issued a statement saying the Utah Lt. Governor's Office had "wrongfully rejected" its application.

For its part, the lieutenant governor's office told KSL.com that state law requires an application to be filed "within five calendar days after the day on which the legislative session at which the law passed ends."

On the funding side, top Utah lawmakers last week voted to finalize their funding proposals as part of a nearly $30 billion state budget.

Education highlights include:

• $50 million for a one-time bonus for K-12 teachers, in addition to a previously announced increase to educator pay.
• $27 million for careers in technical education credential programs.
• $2.5 million for free school lunches for low-income children.
• $40 million in ongoing funding for the state's school voucher program, officially called the Utah Fits All Scholarship.
• $65 million for House Speaker Mike Schultz's proposed catalyst campus programs.

Contributing: Brigham Tomco, Dennis Romboy

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