♪♪♪ male announcer: Funding for the Hinckley Report is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

Jason Perry: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report," Governor Cox signs into law a slate of new bills as the legislature wraps up a crucial special session, embattled leaders on both sides of recent initiatives armor up for another round of fights, and Utahns react as national leaders push through a major infrastructure package that could have a big impact on our state.

♪♪♪ CC BY ABERDEEN CAPTIONING 1-800-688-6621 WWW.ABERCAP.COM Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week, we have Kate Bradshaw, member of the Bountiful City Council; Max Roth, anchor with Fox 13 News; and Jason Nguyen, reporter with ABC4 News.

Thank you all for being with us this evening.

We've got a lot to get to, but I want to start with our legislature and actually start with you.

Several bills were passed, there was some conversation about whether or not the governor would sign all of them, he has.

I want to talk about what just one or two of those, but in particular there was some pressure on the governor to potentially veto the redistricting maps that were given of course, he said no way am I gonna do that, fool's errand.

Talk about that for a second and why there was a push.

Max Roth: Well, the push is because the maps are clearly favoring Republicans by such a wide margin in every district that it's pretty much a fait accompli that the Republican primary is gotta be the real race for each one of these seats far more than it has been especially with district four thus far, and so that is a concern, and it's also--with the governor's potential veto of the bill, I think that became far less of a possibility.

Once you saw those voting numbers, it passed by well over a two-thirds majority in both houses, so they would have easily overwritten them.

Jason Perry: So true, it's a veto-proof majority, but it was interesting that some people were saying in the interest of bipartisanship you should say something about this.

He commented about how he had talked to many members of the legislature, he talked to others, but ultimately the constitution gives this power to the legislature, and he said I'm going to defer to them.

Jason Nguyen: Well, it's kind of the truth right now, because you've got a certain party that's in power, and then you've got, you know, people that want the change to happen, and when you look at the demographics of Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County in itself, it's always gonna be divisive because there's people on both sides.

That's what makes the city great.

The problem is is that we do have to rely on the constitution, and what the Governor says is what legislators said the entire time is that we were elected, and we're gonna make the maps, and they did that, and you can't really argue anything along those points because they did what they said they were going to do.

Max Roth: I think the concern that I was hearing from people more than anything was that there was a new aspect to the process that we've experienced every 10 years, and that is this commission that was created with the approval of the voters through the initiative process and the fact that that commision's power was so watered down that we really knew all along that it was--that the legislature wasn't going to consider those maps as something that they had to consider.

They didn't vote on those maps, and in the end the map that they chose was what the chairs of the legislative committee drew and had no resemblance to what the commission had drawn.

Jason Nguyen: But Jason, I do think that there are two other important maps that, you know, the governor pointed out to yesterday was the House and the Senate, and those were bipartisan.

And when you look at how those were divided and where the battlegrounds really need to be, it's in those districts.

So when we're talking about changing of power, we've got to look a little bit lower than the congressional maps, because those are the maps that can really change the dynamics of Utah.

Max Roth: And I think the reality of that, too, is that when you're looking at the localities, the House and the Senate, the state House in the state Senate, you just can't get around the fact that there are liberal areas of Salt Lake County especially.

You can't draw yourself out of those maps, and so you're going to have Democratic seats there.

Jason Perry: Absolutely, every once in a while we get a preview of what's going to come during the next legislative session, and we did get that this time during the interim.

Kate, let's talk about a couple of bills that--some ideas that came up.

Some are gonna--we'll see definitely as bills during the next legislative session, but since Utah's experimenting a little bit with other ways of voting, for example, I want to talk about rank-choice voting in just a moment, but we had another proposal that came up just this week, it's what they're calling approval voting.

This is sort of like rank-choice voting without the ranking.

It's you have eight candidates, vote for all the ones you like, and then whoever gets the most votes, well, that's the winner.

Kate Bradshaw: Yes, it was interesting.

That was presented in an interim committee hearing, but it didn't make it out of the hearing.

I think legislators were feeling like we've just engaged in this experiment with rank-choice voting on a larger scale.

We're still seeing that play out.

You know, we don't know yet who's the mayor of Sandy, and so you know, maybe we're not quite ready to confuse voters with a whole bunch of different options that take place in, you know, one municipality, having a rank-choice, one having a traditional, one having this approval system, so I think that the legislature and this committee in particular just kind of wanted to pump the brakes just a little bit while we let, you know, the end result of this election cycle and the final canvass really play out.

Jason Perry: Kate, you're the one elected official in this group here today on this panel, your thoughts about some of these efforts to maybe expand the options for voting in the state.

Kate Bradshaw: Well, I'm definitely in favor of anything that helps drive turnout and helps make it so people can easily vote, but it is and interesting system.

I have an office where I'm elected at large.

I represent all the residents of Bountiful, and my council colleagues do the same.

We don't have a district.

You know, in a mayor's race or in a district council seat, doing the rank-choice voting does kind of make a lot of sense.

You know, am I happy if my number two gets it, you know, if my number one choice got knocked out early.

You know, we look at Draper, I was watching my friend Mike Green's race in Draper, an at-large seat, two of those seats were open and so he had to wait quite a while to see how that rank-choice option played out.

You know, Salt Lake City I was watching district two candidate there that I know well, Alejandro Puy, who, you know, his race--because it was districted, that plays out a little bit differently.

So you know, cities are very different in that you have both at large cities, where everyone represents all residents and the districted cities, and so those different methods probably play out differently in those races, and they can be confusing to residents depending on whether you're doing and at-large.

We've got, you know, two or three candidates up in that cycle for everybody or, you know, a number of candidates that are just playing out in one specific district.

Max Roth: You know what I think is kind of strange, Kate?

I agree with what you were saying there, but what seems strange to me about this is that the concern that rank-choice voting addresses is that you are able to possibly winnow the candidates down to those who are more moderate, it's not as polarizing.

We're not so worried about polarization in our city councils.

You know, that's--we're using rank-choice voting with city councils, but that seems to be the level of government where it's all about practicalities for the most part and tends to work pretty well.

We're worried about polarization at in some ways the state level and even far more at the national level, and you know, you sure don't see that on the horizon there.

Jason Perry: We don't.

Jason, what do you think the future is?

These are just really great points.

We had 23 cities that use rank-choice voting in this last election cycle.

It's interesting that Sandy City went to Max's very good point right, there Monica Zoltanski currently leads by 21 votes, and just this week they've decided they're going to do a recount.

Jason Nguyen: Well, I think it's important to do the recount.

Just get it done with, because that's one of the things that I think everybody is going to pay attention to.

But when it comes to rank-choice, I agree with Kate.

It's one of those things where you just kinda have to let people do what they need to do, and when you're looking at the actual votes and who's there, I mean, it kind of goes back to traditional voting, right?

The top person's still going to get the job.

Max Roth: It's interesting, though, because when you look at that Sandy--I live in Sandy, and it was--first of all I'm glad that it's mail-in voting, because that ballot took a whole lot longer for me to do, because I have to--I'm not just choosing number one, but then through number eight, and that is--that's a lot of research.

Jason Nguyen: Didn't get rank quoting in my distress.

So, it's you know, I had one person.

It was the mayor of Holladay, and that was it.

Max Roth: But you wonder what Jim Bennett is thinking who's currently in second in that running with Zoltanski.

You wonder what he's thinking, like wait a minute, what if I was the first choice of more people?

Are those 21 votes for-- are those 21 votes for her?

Are those fourth choices, and I have--you know, you just-- he must be thinking about those things and she too.

Jason Perry: Yup, digging into this data is going to be so interesting after this.

Kate Bradshaw: Max is right.

Max is right that it teaches your campaign strategy, depending on if you're in a rank-choice race or a straight-up race or who knows what the campaign strategy might be if you're in an approval system.

So that also is different.

And I do you want to stress that I had voters in different areas that I don't live in but that called and said, hey, I don't understand how this works.

What does--what do I do?

And I was not best situated to help them, because my city was not doing rank-choice voting.

So I don't ever want to turn off voters for fear of the ballot feeling too complex.

Not that voters aren't bright and smart, but just as we shift, we need to make sure there's proper education and understanding, and if half of us are doing one system and half are doing the other, you know, that does kind of lead to some of that confusion.

Jason Nguyen: But I do think it's gonna get diagnosed, and I think it's gonna be one of those things where everybody--where these campaign managers, you know, we as reporters, we're gonna look into this a little bit more because it's so new and so fresh.

Jason Perry: It may mean that we wait to see about some of the approval voting before we get through this one, but interesting concept.

Max, another bill that did come forward with a rally, one that looks like it has likely success with our legislature, that's called the Period Project, and it's free period project-- products in all elementary schools and charter schools in the state of Utah.

It was an interesting big rally, the lieutenant governor spoke Karianne Lisonbee, Representative Lisonbee has agreed to run the bill to make sure these products get into all these public schools.

Talk about that for a moment, because it seems to have a lot of momentum.

Max Roth: You know what, it's one of those things where you realize as a man that you don't--you can't diagnose issues that are very, very real for the other half of society.

And because the notion that you can--a place where you spend the majority of your day and you have something that's happening and you need to address it and instead of just being able to go to the restroom like for anything else, you have to go to the office and talk to somebody about it is, that's just not okay.

You know, I think that's what people are realizing, and boy, it's amazing it's taken this long.

Jason Perry: Yeah, Kate, that's seems to be what a lot of legislators said on the hill, including at this rally which was we're not doing this already?

That seems to be what I heard from several of the elected officials at that rally.

Kate Bradshaw: You know, there isn't a woman who hasn't had the experience where you need a product and you were surprised and you need to go find one and there may or may not be something available in the restroom, and so I think, you know, women feel this issue deeply and are making sure that our our male counterparts are aware of this issue, and they just may not have been.

You know, because we don't often cross over into each other's restrooms to know what products we've each got, so I think making sure, you know, the other half of society, as Max put it, is aware of this issue and of the impact it has on on girls, in particular, on women, and that it doesn't need to be something that is divisive, that we can make the products available, and that way learning can continue in schools.

We don't have to have an interruption for those girls who are worried about cost and being able to, you know, not have an embarrassing moment in their class or having to ask a classmate if they have any spare products in their backpack.

It's happened, it's happened to every woman that you might need to, you know, ask a friend if they've got a spare product.

So this project is really getting the attention of a lot of women in Utah politics, and hopefully our male counterparts will come on board and be equally supportive as well.

Max Roth: Yeah, Kate, it's why it's important that there's a woman in the room, isn't it?

You know, like a Deidre Henderson or whoever or in the House or the Senate or city council.

Jason Nguyen: I'll tell ya, I love this project personally, 'cause I grew up in an area where, you know, we're--first of all, we're talking about periods on "The Hinckley Report."

I need to throw that out there, 'cause I think that's very important.

And two is I grew up in an area where, you know, this was readily available to students, you know.

And I remember being in elementary school and it being available to students.

So when I came out here to Utah, knowing that some of these things were a difficult thing because, you know, my girlfriend grew up in Utah, and these are some of the issues that she had to face, and to have women and have young girls have the things that they need to get them through the day and to even have the educational process and having us talk about that is the most important thing.

And I think just being able to bring that to light here in Utah is very important.

Jason Perry: Great points, one more bill that brought up that I feel like we should talk about is the transgender athlete bill.

And Max, I want to talk about this for just a moment.

Representative Birkeland presented a modified version of what we saw last legislative session.

Essentially, it requires transgender teens to change their birth certificate and go through a year of hormone therapy during that transition to be able to play on the team that they most identify with.

Max Roth: Yeah, you know, it is--I mean, there has--there was some compromise there, and there--this is a tough issue, because you're dealing with in some ways basic human rights while at the same time, you know, you can understand concerns about someone who may be bigger and stronger, you know, going into it.

One of the things that I--it's almost like a solution in search of a problem right now.

We haven't really had issues pop up in Utah where this has been a problem, so I wonder a little bit about whether this is just trying to get to a hot button cultural issue rather than addressing other problems that we see.

But the other thing that that is that's really tough, and it resembles the Period Project discussion we just had is that these are intensely personal things that we're asking students to be very public about, you know, in talking--in revealing to people the medical procedures they've undergone, revealing to people--and their birth certificate.

I mean, these are--I don't know what the answer is.

I mean, I think--because it is a complicated discussion, but I think part of it has to be compassion for the people impacted because they're already pretty vulnerable people.

Jason Perry: Kate, talk about these changes considering the fact that the committee did pass this out, a little bit about what you're hearing for this next legislative session with, I guess, with the new language we're going to see, if it's going to be more likely to be successful than last year.

Kate Bradshaw: So, I was excited to see--this is an issue I've closely followed as a former high school and college student athlete.

I was excited to see the language moved closer to what the high school activities association is already doing.

That seemed to be a very fair policy and one that, you know, mirrored what was happening at other higher levels of sport beyond the high school level.

You know, things that I--it seems like there still may be some wiggle room on is this changing of the birth certificate.

Once you know, if someone's a minor, that process and that pathway to getting that change in order to have that completed in time for high school season to start might be difficult, so I think there will still be probably some discussions there.

Also maybe some discussions about the best medical advice and science on length of time, a year, six months, what makes the most sense, but as Max mentioned, you know, this is moved, this is--has hopefully become more of something that is thoughtful about those transgender students, those women that are playing.

I think the girls and the women that are playing sports didn't really enjoy being pitted, you know, in some ways politically against our transgender sisters, and so something that takes that emotion out and recognizes that, you know, we all wanna play, we all want to compete.

The spirit of competitiveness is important to foster in our girls, and but--you know, making sure we can do it on a level playing field so that we can have fair competition is important.

So taking some of that drama and energy out of it and moving closer to some of these established standards, I think, is a positive.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about some things that happened federally that have a very local impact.

The infrastructure investment and jobs act.

Jason, let's talk about for this for just a moment, because it was largely negotiated by our own Senator Mitt Romney.

It's a 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill, and a considerable amount of money would be coming to the state of Utah.

It's 3 billion for roads, 219 million for clean water, 200 million for water to the Navajo nation.

There are some impacts to the positive extent in the state of Utah, but we were not completely uniform in our state in the support of this act.

Jason Nguyen: Yeah, no, we really weren't, because Mitt was the only one that kind of voted for the whole thing, but he did work across the aisle for all of this, and I know that it was tough because when you look at the bill and what we're getting and what he was able to bring to Utah is kind of an important chunk of money here.

I mean, we know that UDOT needs to fix a lot of our roads and a lot of our bridges, and that money's gonna go directly to help doing that, especially in the valley here, where we just continue to grow and grow, and a lot of people don't know that there are some state roads that UDOT takes care of that they think that little municipalities take care of, and that's where that money really goes.

And then you talk about the water infrastructure and the things that we need.

We're in a drought, we have water issues, and if we can update the equipment to conserve some of this water, you know, fix some of our pipes, be able to give Navajo nation more, you know, build roads down there.

Let's talk about building roads to people's houses in Navajo nation, because that's what this money is going to go to, and when we think about that infrastructure and being able to get people to where they go, we also talk about the jobs, because those people will now have something to go work for and work on.

Max Roth: And I think very important to all of this to is broadband, especially when we talk about places like the Navajo nation, but other parts of rural Utah, and I know that Kate even is interested in the possibility of making it more affordable as well, but in terms of what's happening in rural Utah, the economy's so different than--you know, we have this booming economy on the Wasatch Front and in our populated areas.

It's not booming in the same way in Garfield County or in San Juan County or in Uintah County, but people who love those places--and they're places that deserve to be loved.

They're some of the most amazing geography in the world.

People who love those places, if they have broadband, the world we're living in now, you can do a lot of jobs from the edge of Bryce Canyon.

Jason Nguyen: You're talking about the gig economy, right now, so I mean, it's a big, big money thing.

And let's not forget about all this stuff for climate change that they're doing.

I mean, I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of cities have already moved to those electric charging stations.

I mean, it's not just Salt Lake, Murray has invested in ChargePoint.

We know ChargePoint is a part of this big new deal that's going through the House that's supposed to be voted on and sent to the Senate maybe even get approved by Christmastime.

That's another big chunk of money that's coming in, and some of it is in this infrastructure deal.

So cities will benefit moving forward with some of the stuff.

Jason Perry: Kate, talk about the the other side really, to really get to where some of our delegation was.

It was not so much about this particular bill, it was about some spending bills that might come next particularly when it comes to reconciliation, which is several members of our congressional delegation said is why they voted against.

Talk about what that means and why they're concerned about really that next step.

Kate Bradshaw: Yeah, so you know, the infrastructure bill was kinda like the first course, and what's coming next is build back better, and the House is actually working on that, you know, today, and you it will have to go through reconciliation process.

It still has to go through the Senate where different elements are likely to be worked on significantly.

It'll look a lot of different.

You know, our delegation does seem to be concerned about the amount of spending by and large, that while there is definitely a need for infrastructure--and no one understands how unfun infrastructure projects are, they're not as sexy to the public, you know, as someone who serves in local government-- but it's a lot of money, and it will be paying for this for a long time.

So the question, I think, for our delegation is how are we paying for it?

Is there potentially some support in this build back better proposal?

Are we really aiming at, you know, the things that will help us continue to launch out of this pandemic and continue to succeed as a nation?

You know, Utah has--our economy's booming, and so maybe our feelings are a little bit different because of that that some other areas of the country.

Jason Perry: So, Max, it was John Curtis who kinda put the idea together that this funding is coupled with reconciliation spending, and talk about that for a second what that means, because-- Max Roth: The reconciliation is something that the Senate can only do I believe twice a year.

I'm not sure about that.

It's once or twice a year.

Has to be on things that are only related to budgets and taxation, and the--and because those things have to--you know, you have to fund government.

A reconciliation bill requires only 50 votes.

You don't go through the filibuster process, and so you can't block it in the minority if the majority is all on board.

That's the big if, and that's what Kate was getting at there is that Senators Joe Manchin from West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona have both been hemming and hawing about this, the price tag for this next bill, and so it's it's far more questionable.

But yes, I think the concern is the amount of spending.

There's concern about giving a Democratic administration a win, and there's also some genuine concern about inflation, that you inject this much more money into the economy when we're already seeing some significant inflation, it could cause that to go up.

Jason Perry: You talked to Senator Romney, what did he say about those points?

Max Roth: Okay, so he said, first of all, he was among 19 Republican senators who voted for the infrastructure bill, that included Mitch McConnell, the majority--or the minority leader now in the Senate, but still a minority of Republicans voting for it.

For him, what he said is, you know, I don't mind if it's-- I don't mind working with the Democrats if we're getting things that are reasonable and that we need, and these are things we need.

And he is going full bore in terms of promoting his work on this bill.

This is a big deal to him.

I don't know about you guys, but my inbox for--is getting you know, a press release or two a day from the Romney office saying Utah's getting this, Utah's getting this because of this bill, and it's, you know, that's how he sees himself right now is he's the practical one who will reach across the aisle if it makes sense to him.

Jason Perry: One last thing with our last minute or so, Jason, Governor Cox, press conference this week talked about how we're going to start allowing people-- booster shots, or covid booster shots, everyone 18.

Jason Nguyen: Starting today.

Jason Perry: Starting today, that's exactly right.

Just talk for just a second about the impact of that announcement has, what you see when you're talking to people.

I know you're interviewing them.

Jason Nguyen: You know, the booster shots are a big conversation and especially in our newsroom.

I don't know about yours, Max, but there's a lot of people talking about it.

I got the Johnson & Johnson shot, so I've got the one dose.

So I've been looking at different boosters myself.

The problem I think with boosters is that if you look online--if you're not going to, you know, some of the pharmacies, it's a little bit difficult to get signed up for boosters.

So I feel like that needs to be addressed, too, while we're trying to rush out these boosters, but do I feel like it's an important thing?

I think, listen, whatever side of the aisle you're on, you're going to be able to move forward here.

So if you want the booster shot, get the booster shot.

If you want to play it safe with what your beliefs are, you should do that too.

Jason Perry: We're gonna be watching this one very closely in the state to see people go into those offices and start getting those shots for sure.

Thank you so much for your comments this evening, very insightful, important issues.

So thank you very much.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show's also available as a podcast on PBSUtah.org/HinckleyReport or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us, we'll see you next week.

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