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

(calm music) - Good morning everyone, it's great to see all of you again.

I appreciate those who are watching at home and members of the media who are here with us today.

I want to begin just by talking a little bit about the legislative session that recently concluded.

I wanna start by saying that this was a very good legislative session and one that Utahans can be proud of.

It was not a perfect one, they never are.

We certainly didn't get everything right.

We never do, but we made real meaningful progress on several issues that are the most important to Utahans, and we did it in a way that I think Utahans can feel good about.

This was, honestly, as I've said before, my favorite session since becoming governor and maybe my favorite in the 14 years that I've been directly involved in this process.

The House, the Senate, and our team and the executive branch worked very closely together, early, often, and in good faith.

We didn't always agree, but when there were concerns, people came together, worked together, worked through them, and made the bills better, and that truly matters.

At the end of the day, that's how you get better outcomes, not just for one party or one perspective, but for the entire state.

Now, I want to give you just a little sense of scale.

This was a big session.

They all seem to be these days, more than 1000 bills were introduced and we ended up with 542 that passed, less than the past couple years.

So that's a major improvement.

It's also a lot of work.

And behind each of those bills are real people with real problems and real attempts to move the state forward.

And while there were lots of debate about individual bills, and there should be, I think the bigger story is that we really move the ball forward in some important areas.

Let me just highlight a few of those, first, literacy.

And we know that if a child isn't reading proficiently by third grade, everything else gets harder.

That's why I'm so encouraged by SB 241 and the continued focus on early literacy.

This is foundational work.

It's long-term work, and it's going to make a difference in the lives of so many of our young people.

Second, homelessness.

This has been a priority for us for several years, and this year we made tremendous progress.

For the first time, we have ongoing funding and a more coordinated approach to addressing high utilizers and the chronically homeless.

This is going to be a landmark moment in how we respond to this challenge.

There's certainly still more to do and we're going to keep working closely with our local partners, but I'm grateful that the legislature stepped up and took this so seriously.

Third, protecting kids online.

This is something we've been leading as a state from school device restrictions, bell to bell to broader efforts around digital skills and online safety.

We're trying to help kids build healthier habits with technology, and we were successful this session.

We also took steps with targeted advertising and social media policy to start addressing the broader ecosystem our kids are growing up in.

We're not going to get this exactly right on the first try, but we're certainly moving in the right direction.

Fourth, housing and infrastructure.

We all know that housing affordability is a top priority and one of the biggest challenges that we face as a state and a nation right now for Utah families.

With HB 68 and other efforts, we're creating better coordination at the state level, including a new housing division and a statewide housing coordinator.

We're also continuing to invest in infrastructure, transportation, planning, and the systems that allow us to grow responsibly, because if we don't build, we know that we will continue to fall behind.

Fifth, Operation Gigawatt in our mission to double our state's capacity for affordable, reliable energy continues to move forward.

This session we took some some very important steps to secure Utah's energy future.

This includes a state permitting council to help projects move more efficiently.

A critical minerals council, advancements in nuclear energy, including regulatory capacity and reprocessing of nuclear fuels, and expanding our ability to work with federal partners like the NRC.

This is about making Utah and our country, make sure Utah and our country has the energy that we need to make life more and more affordable.

It's about innovating and it's about competing with other states and other countries.

Now, I also want to just say one more thing that I mentioned on the last night of the session.

There were lots of bills that didn't pass.

And I think some of those are just as important as the ones that did.

I would encourage all of you, especially those in the media, to spend some time there too, because sometimes the story isn't just what was passed.

Sometimes the story is the things that we don't do, sometimes no bill is better than a bill.

And I wanna close with this.

As I've said before, I certainly don't love every bill.

There are things I wish had turned out differently and things that I would've done differently if I was in charge, but I'm not in charge.

And that's really important.

We feel really good about where we landed.

We have a an incredible process where nobody gets their own way every time.

We debate the issues.

We compromise where we need to, and when things don't go our way, we live to fight another day.

Utahans can be proud of their legislature, I know I am.

I believe that's what good governance looks like.

And with that, I'm happy to answer questions.

- Governor, your thoughts on the ICE purchase of the warehouse in Salt Lake City?

- Sure, so as I've said many times, we were working very closely with the Biden administration on an ICE facility.

Many presidents have agreed that we need an ICE facility in Utah for years and years, the closest facility for us has been in Las Vegas.

It's really hard, transportation is difficult.

It's led to some just bad policy and bad decisions where we don't have enough resources to get people who have caused some serious trouble in Utah where they need to be.

And it's not just Utah, by the way, Idaho, Montana, lots of states that have to transport down there.

And that facility was routinely full.

It was full during the Biden administration.

It was routinely full during the Obama administration and Republican administrations as well.

And so we know we've needed this for a long time.

We've tried to work with different presidents to get something done.

We knew that they were looking at Utah.

When the sale went through, we were not given any notice.

No members of our congressional delegation were given any notice.

No locals were given any notice.

That's I think, a little frustrating for everyone.

We want to work closely together to get things right.

We have some other needs as well.

Federal courts need space.

I will say ICE has contracted with some of our local jails, but they also don't have a lot of space.

So it's something that we need to get right.

We've reached out to the administration to let them know that we wanna work with them on whatever that looks like.

Everything's kind of in a holding pattern right now because we we're waiting for a new director of the Department of, new Secretary of Homeland Security.

And so other states who have gotten notice as well of these types of purchases are also waiting to have these conversations.

So I don't have much to add from what is out there already.

Again, I think we need a facility if this is the right facility.

I'm not sure, I just don't have any information that I can share.

- What do you think this does to ICE enforcement in Utah?

Some of the criticism and concern is that it will ramp up this enforcement and create kinda some of the scenes we've seen in Minnesota.

- So I don't think it does anything to ICE enforcement in Utah that, you know, we have had conversations about.

I will say, and I think you saw this, I've been so busy reviewing bills that I'm a little behind, so I apologize.

I do need to go back and watch some of the confirmation hearings, the committee hearings on Senator Mullen's, the potentially new if confirmed director of Department of Homeland Security.

But I think from what little I was able, feedback I was able to get that there was certainly a different tone or a different approach.

I think you've seen that from the administration.

I think they were concerned, I think the president admitted that he was concerned about what was happening.

And he said as much when he met with governors, when we were all, when the NGA was back in Washington, DC Republicans and Democrats, he said he was concerned about what had happened in Minnesota and there needed to be a different approach.

So I don't know that those two things are tied together.

And again, the new director, the new secretary will have his own, I think his own ideas about enforcement and what that should look like.

And so we just, we really just don't know what that looks like going forward.

And I hope to have those conversations and be able to fill you in on more once we do.

- Governor, what about the location and the scale?

- Sure, yeah.

- Some reports say this could be over 7,000 detainees more than the number of inmates held in the Utah Department of Corrections facilities.

What about location and scale?

- Yeah, those are all things that are important to us.

And that's been the conversation that we've had is, look, we want to get this right.

If you're gonna put, and again, just from a federal spending piece, now, let me back up a little bit.

Immigration is the purview of the federal government that the Constitution is very clear on that.

So I mean, I think it matters what I think, and I think it matters what local government thinks, but the federal government can do this.

Whether Salt Lake City likes it or not, they have the ability to do that.

But what we want is something that will last longer than a year or two.

And that is effective and is a good use of taxpayer dollars.

I don't think anyone wants us to waste taxpayer dollars on something that's just going to be around for a year or two, and especially something of that scope and size.

So we want to work to get the right location and to get the right size.

But until I have some conversations about what their plans are, I really don't, can't weigh in on that.

Go over here.

- Arizona just filed criminal charges against Kalshi.

Will Utah follow suit?

- Well, I know that we're looking at those, certainly having those conversations.

I've been pretty, pretty blunt about how I feel about what these companies are doing, these gambling companies that are pretending to be something else.

It's, you know, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

It's a duck, and I think everybody agrees with that, except the people who are making billions off of trying to destroy our kids.

And so I'm excited about what Arizona's doing.

I mean, that to me is a very clear violation.

You can't bet on local elections in Arizona.

You can't do that here in Utah either.

So, the attorney general I know is taking a look at it, and I'm hopeful that if there is a violation that he would follow suit.

- Governor.

- Go ahead.

- Are you worried about any repercussions from President Trump?

He has ties to some of these companies.

He's already given his take on our AI policy.

- Sure, yeah, yeah.

No, no, look, I don't have any concerns.

We haven't heard anything from the administration.

You know, I came out very strongly.

It's been several weeks ago now, and there's been no pushback at all on that piece.

Ultimately, the courts are gonna decide this, and I think there's a preliminary decision in Ohio, maybe, sorry, again, I'm still in the fog of the legislative session reviewing 500 bills.

But I feel confident that once the courts have a chance to look at this, they're gonna agree with us that this is gambling pure and simple and they need to follow the same laws that are in place for DraftKings and other organizations.

I think there was a. Yeah, please.

- Back to the ICE detention center.

There has been a lot of backlash from residents here in Utah, a lot of protests.

One of the governor's mansion in yesterday at the center.

What are your thoughts on this?

They have been asking you to do something about it.

- Yeah, well, again, I think I've already shared my thoughts on this.

My thoughts are that we need an ICE facility.

We need to get the right kind of ICE facility.

Again, Democrats have been working on an ICE facility here for a long time.

This isn't just a partisan thing.

I understand the concerns that people have about the size and the scope, especially after what happened in Minnesota.

But this is important, securing, I just wanna reiterate the reason we have this problem is because the Biden administration did an awful job of securing the border when they could have, we have millions of people here that should not be here.

They knew it, they admitted it.

President Biden admitted that they shouldn't be here, and yet they did nothing about it.

And so now we're picking up the pieces because every single state systems got completely overwhelmed.

And now we have to process millions of people, and many of them should not be here.

And that means we have to figure out a way to get them back, which means there has to be a detention facility.

Now there's a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that.

And that's, I think we're working much more closely together.

Again, President Trump said very vocally that there were mistakes made in Minnesota.

And so we're trying to figure our way through this.

I, again, I understand the concerns of those protestors.

We're gonna work to try to get this in the best possible place.

- Governor, do you share any concerns with Mayor Mendenhall about specifically the ICE facilities potential chilling effect on economic development within the inland port?

- I don't, we haven't received any feedback from people that are worried about that.

There's tremendous interest in the inland port, and that seems, all that seems to be moving forward.

So again, the infrastructure piece is something that the city has argued.

I don't have insight into what the infrastructure looks like in those places.

And so those are things that we'll have to work through.

- Governor, the latest reports from government entities are suggesting a pretty bleak water outlook, when it comes to across the state, reservoirs are gonna be strained.

So I wanna know, are you looking at any drought declarations or any restrictions as we head into what could be a very hot, dry summer?

- Yeah, look, I hope people are enjoying the beautiful weather this week.

It's way too early to be having 80 degree weather.

And of course the snow pack is a concern.

It's been a really fascinating water year in that, on the one hand, we actually have had a good water year.

If you go back, the water year starts in October.

And if you look at precipitation from October to now, we're really close to normal.

It hasn't been bad, the problem is snowpack and of course our snowpack is at record lows, and most of our reservoir storage comes from snowpack.

So some, if you're looking for any silver linings, the ground is more saturated than normal.

That means that what little snow we have should get to the reservoirs.

That's really important instead of going straight into the ground.

But we just don't have enough to fill our reservoirs this year.

We know that, I think we're sitting at about 68%, which is right around normal for this time of year.

But only because we had a couple really good years and we've been conserving well, we, you know, last year this time we were 80%.

So that shows you kind of how far down we are right now and our inability to build up is gonna be a problem.

So, Ben, yes, we are concerned.

I anticipate that sometime in the future, not right now, but as we look at what our final reservoir capacity is, and we look at what April and May, you know, what happens there.

Those are two wettest months, traditionally April and May.

So we're hoping for a very wet spring and an early monsoon this year.

But we have already had conversations about what drought declarations would look like if we get to that point.

And I would remind people that all of the decisions around cutbacks happen at the local level.

And so every, we're in constant contact with our water managers all across the state.

They know what they need to do to, they're doing their calculations right now to make sure that we're not releasing too much water from our reservoirs too early.

And I do anticipate that there will be restrictions through most of Utah when we get into the summer months.

- So Idaho's house speaker is now advancing a resolution staking claim to developing its share of the Bear River, with this, what happened to that memorandum of understanding that you signed in a pretty public ceremony?

And Idaho was supposed to sign it.

Now we've got this resolution.

It appears it didn't materialize, so what happened?

- Well, it's not, it hasn't materialized yet.

And that's the important thing.

Again, we have speakers of the house who have been battling each other in both states a little bit.

We have a great relationship with our friends in Idaho.

I think things ended up in a really good spot here for both of us as on the gas tax piece where we're working.

I so appreciate Speaker Schultz and his great work to put together a bill that actually will increase supply and lower the price of gas for Utahans and for Idahoans and for Nevadans, this matters for all of us.

It's good for our country and good for our people, for our consumers.

And so I'm excited about that.

We will continue to work very closely with Idaho on water.

Of course, they have the ability to develop their water.

Utah also believes that we have the ability to develop our water.

And yet the Great Salt Lake matters from a regional perspective as well.

And so that Bear Lake drainage is something we share.

And we've always had a great relationship, still do.

We're having conversations with water managers there, conversations with their governor and his team, and conversations with the legislators.

So I think we'll all feel better when all the legislative sessions are done and we can get back to working closely together.

- Does their efforts, if this comes to pass, does this threaten the Great Salt Lake?

- I don't think it threatens it.

It's, you know, again, it's a resolution.

We have a lot of work to do on our side, and I'm gonna worry more about what Utah's doing than I am what Idaho's doing.

And we can do this and we'll, again, I feel confident that these relationships are much longer lasting than any legislative session.

- Governor, the housing here.

- I'll go here and then I'll come over.

- Your senior housing advisor said in terms of your goal for 35,000 affordable homes over five years, you're well behind, those are his words.

He thinks you can catch up in the next couple of years.

How do you catch up?

- Well, we catch up with some of these bills that we've passed.

Two things that I think are important.

We've been working with some local municipalities on some of the biggest developments that have been in planning for a few years, and we're getting approvals and closer on those.

So these are thousands of homes in places that will make a big impact very quickly.

We're excited about that.

And number two, one of the biggest problems we've had is infrastructure.

So we have places where homes could be built now, they're available, they're papered lots.

In fact, we have by last count, I think over 190,000 lots that are available to build on today.

But they just don't have the infrastructure.

And so one of the biggest wins this legislative session was more money for infrastructure for our local communities.

And part of this housing committee and the housing director will be working with locals on where that money goes.

So we'll prioritize that infrastructure money on where we can get the biggest investment, the biggest bang for our buck.

And that's one of the ways that we do this.

Another way is around ADUs, accessory dwelling units that we had another law passed this year to make that, more of those available so people can start building those right now on where they exist next to their existing homes.

And that's gonna make a huge difference as well.

So we're really optimistic coming out of this legislative session that we can unlock some big progress when it comes to lowering the price of housing.

- Just a quick follow up, do you think you hit the goal?

- I do, I think we hit the goal.

It's gonna be really close, I'm very positive.

And if we don't hit the goal, that's okay.

The next governor will continue this process but I like our chances, I really do.

Everybody's involved, that's the thing.

The locals came to the table in a big way this session.

The legislature really cares about this.

If you, I'm sure you've seen the polling, some of you have done the polling and reported on that.

This is the number one issue that Utahans care about today.

It's the price of housing and the price of everything.

But shelter is included in all of that, not just for our kids and grandkids, but for, you know, everybody.

So we've gotta get this right.

And it's not just a Utah problem, it's a United States problem.

The president has an executive order, Congress is working on this too.

So it's, I think we can get this done, I really can.

We just have to start building again, Lindsay.

- The repeal of Prop 4 is 150 signatures away now from not qualifying for the ballot, it appears that that's gonna happen.

If it does, do you plan to call the legislature into a special session so they can put it on the ballot?

Do you support that, what would be the plan?

- No one's asked me that question, and I haven't even thought about it.

So I mean, again, you know, we would have to look at, I think what the one thing we're working on is a constitutional amendment.

And I think that that's certainly where my focus has been.

I think that that's really important to get that right.

I think that would help with some of the issues that I have around Prop 4 and around the process for the map that was adopted.

And so I, you know, again, I don't know that both of those things, I mean, again, I supported the effort to remove Prop 4.

I signed the initiative.

And so if it fails, it fails.

Again, we've pushed, we've tried to make it really hard to get initiatives on a ballot.

I think that legislating the initiative is terrible.

I think it's bad for our state.

I think the states where they do more of that, even again, I have democrats in California and Oregon who tell me all the time that this is awful.

And they hate how easy it is to get ballot initiatives on.

It should be really hard and you should have to get a tremendous amount of support.

And so we've made those laws in Utah.

And so I have to stand by those, whether I, even if it's for something I want, it doesn't always work out that way.

But I'm, again, I'm hopeful that it gets on the ballot.

And so, we'll, again, I haven't had any conversations about that.

- If the legislature were to then say, we're gonna call ourselves to put the repeal on you, support that effort.

- I, again, I haven't had a thought about it.

I would need to have that conversation.

- Governor, what's your position?

Governor, what's your position on the SAVE America Act to increase voter citizen verification?

I know the Lieutenant Governor has raised concerns about it.

- Sure, yeah, so look, I commend Senator Lee and Congress for looking at this issue.

Every American should support the making sure that we don't have people who aren't citizens of our country voting.

That just seems like a no-brainer, it's foundational.

We have passed several bills in Utah to prevent that from happening.

Just this session, Cory Maloy, Representative Cory Maloy ran an excellent bill that we worked on very closely with the Lieutenant Governor's office worked on it as well to add protections to make sure that foreigners cannot vote in our elections.

The federal government.

Because federal elections are different than state elections, that law that we just passed, we had to bifurcate between state and federal.

Arizona has done something similar, that's a problem.

We should be able to apply this to federal elections, and we have the ability to do all of those things.

I'm really grateful that Senator Lee was able to have the debate, this is how Congress should function.

We should have debate and we should have feedback.

I know there are a couple concerns that lots of states have, even states that very, very, very much support this, including Utah, where we do support this to make sure, the other side of this is we also have to make sure that people who are citizens aren't prohibited from voting.

And I think that's the piece.

I look at the right to vote, like I think of the Second Amendment, and I'm very cautious about anything that infringes our right to do that.

And so I think it's more about the, just the practical ability to implement that and make sure that citizens get to vote.

And so I feel very confident, again, if the congressional legislative process works like our legislative process, that with maybe just a couple tweaks that it could get even broader support and make it easier to implement and make sure that people who shouldn't be voting aren't voting.

So again, I'm interested to see what comes of this.

I'm supportive of the concept of it.

We just need to make sure that we get it right.

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

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

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

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

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