- [Narrator] PBS Utah presents the Governor's Monthly News Conference, an exchange between Utah reporters and Governor Spencer Cox.

(bright music) - Good morning everyone.

Welcome.

I appreciate the members of the media that are joining us today, and those who are watching from home.

I wanted to start today just by talking briefly about our firefighters who have joined their colleagues in California.

The Department of Public Safety's Division of Emergency Management received an emergency assistance request from the state of California a few days ago.

And in record timing, the state of Utah was able to deploy three task forces, with 64 firefighters from 17 different local fire departments across the state.

All of this was able to be coordinated and deployed in less than 24 hours, when it usually takes about 48 hours.

These fires are obviously tragic and our hearts are with our friends in California who are suffering so deeply at this time.

I'm grateful to those firefighters and their families who are willing and able to step up and in such a short amount of time to put themselves in harm's way, to save life and property.

Our crews are working incredibly diligently, putting in 24 hour shifts just around the clock.

Some of the hardest work out there.

We shared this the other day, but I think it's worth reading if I could.

It's a short letter, but a letter that we received from a citizen of southern California, from Danielle.

She said, "Dear firefighters of Utah, on behalf of the people of Los Angeles, I want to extend our deepest gratitude for your tireless efforts in battling the fires around our county.

Your bravery, dedication, and selflessness in the face of such huge challenges are awe inspiring and deeply appreciated.

The people of LA are most grateful, more grateful than words can ever truly express.

Your willingness to leave your own homes and communities to help protect ours, speaks to the strength of your character and the spirit of unity you embody.

You are not only saving lives and homes, but have also given us hope and a profound sense of comfort during these difficult times.

Thank you for your hard work, your sacrifices, and your unwavering commitment to keeping us safe.

You are true heroes, and we will never forget the impact you've made on our lives with endless gratitude, Danielle."

That's the type of spirit that I think makes our country, the incredible country that it is.

And I'm grateful that the very best of Utah was able to step up and we hope that we'll continue to get better news out of Southern California.

With that, I'm happy to take questions.

- Governor, tomorrow is the deadline for Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall to submit a public, safety and homelessness plan to you.

I saw that you met with her earlier this week.

Did she share her plan with you and does it satisfy you and legislative leaders?

- Yeah, so she didn't share the entire plan.

This was a briefing, an opportunity for us to connect and look at progress.

And what I can say is, so the speaker of the house was there.

She had met with the president of the senate.

He was unable to join us in that meeting, but had a previous meeting.

And I can say that the meeting went very well.

And I think everyone that was there would say as much.

I appreciate Mayor Mendenhall so much and the diligent work that... She cares deeply about this issue.

And this is more collaboration than than anything else.

There's a role for the state to play and we talked about that as well.

More will be coming and we're anxious and looking forward to the full details of the plan, which will be released very soon.

- What was the state prepared to do if this didn't satisfy you?

- Well, I don't know that we had had in-depth discussions about what would happen if we weren't satisfied with it.

But that doesn't matter.

What we ultimately want is a plan that we can all work on together.

And she wants that as well.

And so again, just I wanna compliment the mayor and her team who have been putting just countless hours, diligent hours in, in putting this plan together.

Of course, the plan is nothing more than the paper it's written on.

It's the execution of the plan that's going to really matter.

And we look forward to collaborating on that execution as well.

- But you threaten state intervention in your letter.

- [Spencer] Sure.

Yeah.

- And I mean, can this be seen as micromanaging Salt Lake City?

- It can be seen as trying to solve a very big problem.

And that's exactly what we're trying to do.

And we always work with our local officials, and we'll continue to do so on issues all over the state.

And this is a... Salt Lake City is our capital city, and it's where the state government resides as well.

And so there's always going to be a unique relationship, always has been from the beginning of our state.

And that will continue going forward.

- Governor, there are some indications that school districts are sitting on a lot of money.

How concerned are you that districts may be hoarding money?

- Well, my only concerns when it comes to school districts are that we're educating our kids in the best ways possible.

I appreciate, we've worked very closely with previous state auditor, now previous state auditor, John Dougall, who worked with our teams and with the education system to put together some tools to look at where money is being spent and how that money is being spent.

We'll continue to work closely.

I hired a, just six months ago I guess.

I guess it's been almost six months ago now.

A new advisor, senior advisor for all things education, former superintendent, Rich Nye.

Superintendent of one of the largest school districts in the state.

He's well respected, has incredible insight into what it takes to run a school district, and we'll be working with the legislature as well on those things.

So look, we care deeply about funding education, but we also care deeply about how that money is being spent, and we wanna make sure that it's being spent in appropriate ways.

We look at the numbers and where the money's going or not going as the case may be.

And that's a school district by school district conversation.

- How confident are you that the money is being spent appropriately in districts across the state?

- Yeah, so I will say some districts are better than others for sure.

And again, these tools are publicly available that allow us to look at where the money is going and how it's being spent.

And every year we review those things.

There will be bills, I'm sure coming through the legislature, dealing with education and where the money's being spent.

I have tremendous confidence in our superintendents and our local officials across the state.

We have some of the best administrative leaders in education.

We also have some of the lowest administrative costs if you look across the 50 states.

Now, I will admit, it's been a while since I've seen these numbers, but I know a few years ago when I looked, we were number two in the state for the lowest cost of school administrators and administrations in the country, which I was very proud of and grateful for.

And so, again, always a conversation, always something that we're looking at.

But we do more with less than just about anywhere in the country.

- Should these numbers though, these balances, should they give you and the legislature pause when it comes to increases in education spending or, and I know this is a local decision, but when it comes to bonding for capital improvement.

- So look, saving money is a good thing.

And I don't wanna be critical about school districts that are not spendthrifts.

I would rather have them not spend the money than spend it on something that isn't having a desired outcome.

And so I think being smart about it is really important.

The funding of schools is incredibly complicated.

I think it's too complicated to be honest.

There are very few people in this state that understand where all the money comes from and where it all goes.

You talk to the school administrators who actually work on the finance side of things, it's incredibly complex and there's money that can only be used for certain things.

So you can't use all the money for capital needs.

And we have some school districts in rural.

In fact, part of our proposal this year in our budget, we have rural school districts that have schools that are 50-plus-years-old.

They will never have the tax base.

They can't bond to build schools.

So they have to save some money to be able to just repair roofs and keep the doors open.

And so we're looking at better ways to do that as well.

So, I do think it is a worthy discussion to look at not just how we fund schools, but where the money can be used and where it can't be used and where it is being used.

- [Brigham] Governor, will you be at President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday?

- I will, yes.

Yeah.

- And how soon are you expecting that the state will need to be ready to respond to executive orders on things like immigration or energy?

Are you expecting it on day one or next week or?

- Yeah, I'm expecting it on day one.

Honestly, Brigham, we've...

So I was in West Palm Beach just a week ago.

I guess it was, yeah, it was exactly a week ago with 24 governors.

There were 24 of the 27 Republican governors that were in attendance.

And that was one of the discussions that we had.

In fact, I specifically asked the question.

We're seeing orders, decisions coming outta the Biden administration that are clearly last minute, very politically driven, and just unseemly orders that are coming out.

And the question I asked is what is your administration's plan to deal with these last minute orders that they would never have done had they won, actually won the election?

And the message from President Trump was that literally on day one, that his plan is to leave the dais after being sworn in and go into the capitol and start signing orders to undo some of those things.

So I don't know what that will look like and, but we'll be prepared from day one to start working together on whatever that is.

- What's an example of one of those that would impact Utah the most?

Would it have to do maybe with the Northern Corridor in Washington County?

- [Spencer] Sure yeah.

- Any other examples you have?

- Yeah that's a great one.

The Northern Corridor in Washington County.

Again, a last minute decision that goes against everything we've been working collaboratively on and together on for years.

Also, we believe violates the statute, the congressional law that was passed that would eventually lead to the designation of the Northern Corridor.

We had decisions by the EPA that are affecting Utah.

We were having great discussions.

We were all on the same page.

We were headed in a certain direction and then out of nowhere, we just get blindsided with these types of decisions that impact, impact our ability to move forward as a state.

I suspect that we'll probably see some more in the next couple days and that sadly wouldn't surprise me.

- Governor, the legislature's expected to consider some significant changes to Utah's election administration, including possible limitations to mail voting, and possibly removing election oversight from the lieutenant governor.

Would you support changes or do you think election administration needs to remain in the hands of lieutenant governor?

- Well, let me just start by saying that we have an incredible lieutenant governor.

It's a position I've served in, a position Governor Herbert served in before me.

And running elections is not an easy task.

In fact, it's one of the hardest tasks we have in modern politics.

And our lieutenant governor has done an incredible job.

She does things the right way.

She always follows the law and has complete integrity in everything that she does.

And she has said, she's said, look, my job is to administer the law, whatever that law is.

And so I do believe that there are changes that need to happen.

I've mentioned that before.

I do believe that we should make changes so that we can count ballots on election night, so that we can have many more ballots available.

That we can have most of our races decided on election night.

There's no reason we couldn't do that.

That's just a choice that we've made to allow a large amount of mail-in ballots to come in after the, as long as they're postmarked the day before the election, they can come in for you know, a week or two afterwards.

We could make changes to that.

We could move those deadlines and move them up.

And that's something I would certainly support.

I believe that that's something that would add trust to the system.

I think one of the areas where we start to lose trust is when there isn't a decision on election night, and there's lots of ballots out there, and somebody may have been winning on election night and then five days later they're losing a race.

And that calls into question lots of things.

Even though, again there is no evidence.

And I believe because it has never happened we have complete integrity in our elections.

I would remind people that the lieutenant governor does not run elections in this state.

Lieutenant governor oversees elections.

Elections are run by our county clerks.

The lieutenant governor does not count or open or look at a single ballot, neither does anyone in her office.

That's not the role.

And so I have trust in our county clerks and our 29 county clerks who are the ones who are actually administering the elections.

But I do think that the getting a decision, again, in the vast majority of races, you'll never get all of them because some of them are too close and some of them will always need recounts.

That's going to happen regardless.

It happened before we had mail-in balloting, including my race when I was running for county commissioner the first time.

I didn't find out for two weeks whether I won or not, and that was before mail-in balloting.

So look, yeah, there will be some changes made, but we'll work closely with the legislature to decide on when those changes should be.

- But you will or will not support removing election oversight from the lieutenant?

- Yeah, I don't think we need to completely remove oversight there.

I do think, and this is something I was always worried about.

What happens when a lieutenant governor is running in a race?

So when, for the first time in our state's history, when I was running for governor, I did something very unique and that is I designated someone else to take any issues that would've impacted me and then make a written recommendation.

Because the law doesn't allow, didn't allow me at the time to delegate that authority away that I would still have to make the decision, but it would be, there would be a lot of self harm if a neutral third party made a decision and then I went against it.

And the neutral third party did have to make a couple decisions in that, in my election.

Lieutenant Governor Henderson did the same thing during our last election when we were running.

And I supported that.

So I think there are some things we could do around that.

Again, just the, if it looks bad, we want to avoid it.

Even if nothing wrong is happening, we wanna make sure that people can have faith in the election process.

And if that's something that is of concern to people, and sure, I can see why it would be.

I would also just recognize that all 29 county clerks also run for office and also administer their own elections where they actually do count ballots and that's the way it's been from the very founding of our state.

- Governor, we do have some reporters joining us remotely.

We wanna go to Parker Malatesta with KPCW.

Parker, go ahead with your question.

- Hey governor.

Park City has been the subject of national news recently.

A lot of holiday visitors to Park City Mountain were upset over conditions due to the ski patrol strike.

Any concern about one of Utah's biggest tourism destinations taking a reputational hit?

- Well, sure.

I don't think, we don't love it when that type of thing happens.

We try not to meddle in those situations and I'm glad that a resolution was reached.

We have lots of amazing ski resorts in the state, lots of amazing ski destinations, and I'm hoping that that was something that was a blip and we won't see again anytime soon.

I appreciate the patience of everybody who was involved and some who had their vacations that were disrupted because there were long lines and less areas open.

But what I can say is the ski industry is doing very well this year.

We've had great snow and we're right about normal, a little above normal in some northern Utah areas.

Southern Utah, below normal for sure.

And we're hoping to get more precipitation in southern Utah.

But again, the best snow on earth, the best skiing anywhere around, best snowboarding.

It's great that Utah is such a destination and I do believe that, that reputational hit will be short-lived.

- [Lauren] And Parker has a follow-up question.

- Yeah, sure.

- [Lauren] Go ahead, Parker.

- Yeah.

Relevant to the LA wildfires.

We've heard from insurers that Wasatch Back homeowners are increasingly dealing with higher premiums and a lack of coverage in some areas due to wildfire risk.

Does your administration or the legislature have any plans to address this issue?

- Yeah, we've been having conversations for sure.

We've been talking with insurers.

John Pike, who's the insurance commissioner for our state has been leading the charge here.

What I can tell you is that we are very fortunate that we do have, we have about a hundred insurers in the state of Utah that provide homeowners insurance here.

And while there are decisions being made, again by some carriers about what their pricing will be and what areas they're willing to cover.

So far, there still is an ability for Utahans to get coverage, unlike some places in California.

And I would just add that one of the reasons it's so hard to get coverage in California is because of decisions that politicians and the people of California made that may have seemed good in the short term in limiting the ability to raise insurance rates to actually cover losses.

And so they're providing coverage below market rates and below the risk that actually happens there.

And because it takes upwards of a year to get approval in California for any rate increases, and those rate increases have been limited.

It is true that Californians have been paying lower prices than they otherwise would've paid.

And now we see the end result of that is that the market can't keep up and so many are pulling out of the market.

That's bad.

So something that was meant to help Californians actually ended up hurting them worse on the backend.

And I'm hoping that we won't make the same mistakes here in the state of Utah.

And we again have to make decisions based on risk.

And as more and more people want to build in areas where wildfire is a danger, they're going to pay higher premiums.

That's just the nature of this.

And that's not a bad thing.

I mean, it is, again, nobody likes to pay more.

I understand that, but you'll like it a lot less when your house is gone and you don't have any insurance coverage.

- Governor Doug Burgum testified in front of the senate today, senate committee today.

I'm curious what you think of that nomination and how that could change how public lands are managed in the state?

- Yeah, well, how did it go?

I haven't had a chance this morning to see anything, any.

(laughing) - It seemed like it went well.

He did express some desire to maybe work with the state to change the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase.

- Yeah, yeah.

So let me just answer the question.

Again, I haven't had a chance.

I've been working all morning, so I haven't seen any of the coverage of his hearing.

What I can tell you is Doug Burgum as the pick for interior, secretary of interior was probably the single best decision that Donald Trump has made in his previous administration or this current one.

I like to tell people that Doug Burgum is so well respected by governors, both the right and the left, Republicans and Democrats.

I've joked that every governor likes to think they're the smartest person in the room until we get in the room with Doug Burgum.

And then we all know it's not us.

And Governor Burgum, soon to be Secretary Burgum is just a brilliant human being.

He understands these issues as well as anyone out there.

You know, one of my favorite moments, if you'll forgive me for just rattling on a little bit about how great I think he is.

We were meeting together as NGA, the National Governor's Association, and we had a meeting that was just the governor's a lunch where we can talk a little more freely.

And there was a debate broke out between two governors.

The governor of North Dakota, Governor Burgum and the governor of the great state of Washington, Governor Inslee.

You probably won't find two more different people when it comes to their views on the environment and regulation and everything else.

And the debate was incredibly respectful.

The meeting ended and they stayed there for 20 minutes talking to each other about these very issues.

And it, again it just showed his willingness to listen and to learn from others.

But also, again, the brilliant way in which he pushed back on what I believe are some of the most important issues of the day.

So, yes, Governor Burgum is a dear friend.

I talk to him regularly.

And I think he's gonna be a great help when it comes to the public lands issues, permitting reform, the things that we need to happen to continue to protect the environment, to save our most beautiful landscapes.

But also to unleash the ingenuity that exists in America and the value of our public lands in protecting, not just protecting the economies of the United States but also Homeland Security.

I mean, our reliance on other nations, hostile nations for critical minerals that are so important.

Our reliance on other nations, again our energy production.

It's crazy that we're outsourcing those most valuable and precious resources that we have to people who hate us and want to do harm to us, and who don't care about the environment at all.

So he will be a breath of fresh air in this space.

- Do you support shrinking Bears Ears again?

- Yes.

Yeah.

- Why?

- Sorry, question.

- Session just around the corner.

What are your biggest priorities?

- Biggest priorities?

The two largest priorities, one was our number one priority last year continues to be this year.

It's the price of housing and our ability to build more, and to lower the price of housing so our kids and grandkids can live here and can own real property and achieve the American dream.

And number two is energy, energy production in this state.

We have an energy crisis across the nation, across much of the developed world.

Through our Operation Gigawatt, we're working very closely with the legislature.

We know we need to double the amount of energy that we're producing in the next few years.

And we have robust plans to do that.

So that's a huge one for us.

And then helping our seniors and getting a tax cut for our seniors.

Making sure that we're able to eliminate the tax on social security.

One of only eight states that after West Virginia completely repeals theirs that we'll still be taxing social security.

That's a huge one for us, as well as some other issues around our seniors, making sure that we're helping them as some of our most vulnerable.

- Governor, Sundance is next week.

Can you tell us what the state is doing differently this year to keep the film festival in Utah?

And have you been involved in any recent conversations with organizers as they weigh a potential move?

- Yeah.

Sorry, Kim, I didn't mean to cut you off there.

Yes, we're working very diligently with the committee that is presented to Sundance.

I believe that Sundance is an important part of the state of Utah and has been for such a long time.

And so yes, I have been involved, I have had conversations.

I spoke to the Sundance executive committee and the committee that's responsible for eventually making that decision several months ago.

We'll have additional conversations going forward where there are several people that involved in trying to make this happen.

I think it would be a huge mistake for Sundance themselves to move.

I think it would be really a death knell for Sundance.

I talked to some people in Hollywood and some actors and some others who when they found out Sundance was considering moving, they couldn't believe it.

They were kind of dumbfounded and they laughed when they heard it, some of the potential destinations.

It's, again, it's just so ubiquitous with Utah and the opportunities it provides here.

Look, if Sundance decides to go, we'll be fine.

I don't think Sundance will be fine, but we'll be fine.

But that's not... We want them here.

They are an incredible driver for our economy and make a huge difference.

We're excited.

We've been working closely with them as well.

Look, these wildfires have impacted many of their people.

A lot of the movie industry is located in LA.

So many people from the southern California area come out here, people who work for Sundance and will be here, not just people who have movies that are showing, but of course, them too.

And so we've been proactive.

We've reached out to them to see how we can help with those who have been displaced or are struggling ahead of Sundance, which is coming up very quickly.

- And that's all the time that we have.

So, sorry.

That's all the time we have for our television broadcast.

Thank you so much for joining us for the Governor's Monthly News Conference.

- [Narrator] This has been the Governor's Monthly News Conference.

For video and more information, visit pbsutah.org/governor.

(gentle music)