Jason Perry: On this episode of "The Hinckley Report."

In a special session, lawmakers avoid a ballot measure by repealing a controversial law.

As efforts to change Utah's redistricting process continue, lawmakers extend the filing deadline for congressional candidates.

And Utah leaders take the national stage as they speak on important issues.

male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund, and by donations to "PBS Utah" from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Hello and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

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

Covering the week, we have Doug Wilks, executive editor of the "Deseret News;" Representative Jefferson Burton, a Republican from Spanish Fork in the Utah House; and Representative Jennifer Dailey-Provost, a Democrat from Salt Lake City and Minority Whip in the Utah House.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Our legislature met this week in a special session, and a lot of political issues were brought forward, some from bills passed in the past, and certainly have some impacts not just today, but maybe on our district maps, and maybe even the next legislative session.

So I want to jump into a couple of those.

And Doug, if we can start with you, a little bit about a bill that got a lot of play in terms of a referendum, and then also a repeal.

This is the Labor Union Bill.

Maybe you give us a little context right here on this bill that was presented in special session this week that eliminated collective bargaining.

It was for a few groups: all government-owned organizations, including public ed, law enforcement, fire departments, and public transportation.

Doug Wilks: Well, first, I'm pleased to be here with these lawmakers.

They're up there and getting the work done.

Unions are interesting, right?

Unions at their best can represent, get a collective voice, and get something done, and help people not be oppressed.

For example, the Writers Guild in California trying to fight artificial intelligence, and they need a collective voice to do that.

Here in Utah, what was the purpose for the original bill?

When you have disparate groups like firefighters, law enforcement, teachers, and teachers's unions, what is the purpose to try and do that?

I've had some experience with unions in journalism.

I was on the management side, not the union side.

But one of the weaknesses is it's very, very hard to reward innovation and excellent performance.

Because if you want to do something outside the norm of something that's been bargained, it's hard to move forward with that because the union says, "Well, if you do it for this person, you'll do it for this person," so no one gets any of the recognition.

Or one other piece which is, "Okay, we'll do this for you, but how many parking places do you want to give up?"

And that kind of work makes it difficult to really move forward.

So, but in this case, yeah, now there's a repeal going on.

Jason Perry: Yeah, we'll talk about the repeal in just a moment, but talk about the original bill itself, Representative Burton.

This was not a unanimous decision.

There was a lot of dispute, even between the two parties on that particular bill, which set the stage for what happened next.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Yeah, this was a difficult bill.

And I will just say, from the outset, there is a place for unions.

And it's important that unions represent the people that they espouse to support and represent.

One of the challenges here with some of the unions is when you look at the percentage of members who were actually members of the union, that was problematic.

For instance, in some districts there are less than 35% of teachers that were part of the union, and so that was a kind of a disconnect that existed there, which fed into the reasoning behind producing this bill in the first place.

And then there were those that felt that government employees should not be able to collective bargain.

It's important to point out that very few unions do that in Utah anyway.

Collective bargaining doesn't really happen very often in the state of Utah.

Jason Perry: Representative Dailey-Provost, so these discussions sort of led to some groups of people getting signatures very quickly, which is the way you can get this referendum through.

Of note, you needed 140,000, just over that, and they submitted over 320,000 in a pretty short period of time.

Talk about that, the mobilization, and why that came together so quickly.

Well, it's not often the case.

Rep.

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: Well, I think that that's really a key part of the story, and probably one of the major driving impetuses for placing this bill on the special session to start with, because it garnered such broad support to put it on the ballot, to repeal it, that I think that there was a recognition that the public sentiment was not, perhaps, what they thought the bill was when it was originally run.

But I do want to go back to this, you know, this idea of why the bill was run, and this assumption that the legislature had an appropriate role, which I don't think is universally acknowledged or agreed to, that, you know, that the problems that make unions not perfect outweigh the benefits.

And historically, our nation, so much of our nation's labor laws and the, you know, ability for workers to have protections are the very foundations of the strong economy that built a middle class throughout the history of our nation.

And to disregard that outright, just because by saying there are some imperfections in our labor unions.

And yes, they're not perfect, and collective bargaining isn't used often.

It shouldn't be used often.

It should be a tool that is used sparingly when absolutely necessary.

And yes, many members are not, many people are not part of the unions, but everybody who is not a member of the union still benefits from the work that the unions do.

And so for someone to say that, you know, 65%, like you said.

You threw out the number 35%, or 65% of teachers are not part of their specific union, but are still gaining an advantage by the work that the union does.

That doesn't mean that they don't necessarily want to be a union, but they're certainly benefiting from the work that comes from collective bargaining, because it is a fallacy to assume that every single worker has the ability to fight for their individual rights.

It is very, very hard for single employees to take on very big administrations.

And this one of the problems, one of the fundamental problems with H.B.

267 was that they were saying any teacher, any firefighter, any police officer can go and fight against their employer if they have a problem, and that they would have an equitable playing field in that situation.

And that is not the case, and that is why unions exist.

Jason Perry: So this led to a repeal that had just happened in the special session.

Representative Burton, maybe you walk us through that for just a moment, because if it had not been repealed, it would have been on the ballot.

And I want you to talk about that in just a moment, Doug, what that means.

But talk about why the repeal happened now.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Yeah, that's an interesting question, and I think the way I'll answer it is to simply say that one of the things I love about being in the state legislature in Utah is if mistakes are made, they can be corrected very quickly.

This isn't the first bill that's been repealed.

Sometimes we examine policy, and decide it's not good policy, and decide to move in a different direction.

There's still a disconnect with some of the unions in Utah and public employees.

There's no doubt about that.

But I think it was decided that, at this time, that bill was not the way to correct it.

We hope that the unions will reach out.

When I talk to those that don't belong to the union, they say, "Hey, they don't represent our values.

That's why we don't join the union."

But I completely agree that unions benefit all employees, and they can, and they should, and there's a place for them.

At this time in the legislature, we just decided that this was not the right policy going forward, and that it was the right thing to do to repeal it, primarily because we have other fish to fry that I think we'll talk about maybe some more here today.

But that was part of the reason as well.

Jason Perry: Give us some of this historical perspective that leads to this repeal right now, Doug, too, because ballot initiatives can bring out voters also.

And you can take care of it up front, which is normally what happens.

We've not had a referendum in many years because, often, it's taken care of this way.

Doug Wilks: Well, I think that the number of signatures gathered did say something, right?

And so then the legislature can decide what to do with that.

And you can say--well, it's a basic question.

Was this a good law or not a good law?

And now you're to a place, well, maybe there's a better way to do this.

Governor Cox, it was interesting.

When he signed this, he said he had hoped that this would have been a compromise, and that there would have been compromise through this conversation, and there wasn't.

And I was at an event with him, it was a "Deseret News" event, where he was speaking to the teachers, and he basically apologized to the teachers for the way this came about.

So now you have a second go around.

And when you say other fish to fry, right, you've got a lot of other things out there that they're going to opine, the public's going to opine on, redistricting for one, right?

And so it comes down to a basic principle: what is the power of a referendum and the people to make a decision?

Does that rest unconstitutionally control away from the legislature?

Or does the constitution allow for that, and in what categories is that allowed for?

And just to note, I don't have a dog in the fight on unions.

I just have some experience with it and what happens, and it's been difficult to reward people, but unbelievably important.

If you look at from 1900 on, unions have been real drivers, have helped build the country.

It's been really tremendous.

But on the negative side, there's been abuses.

There's been tremendous waste of money.

There's been a lot of it.

But I am no expert on unions, and you know, hopefully the best law gets done for the best interests of all who are working so hard.

Jason Perry: Really quickly before we leave unions, Representative Jennifer Dailey-Provost, the future of these initiatives and referendums is something we'll be talking about, and it's not going to stop now, is it, right now.

So where do you see these going in the future?

Rep.

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: Well, I think that, at least on this, on H.B.

267, this referendum sends a message that Utah voters are continue to be engaged and continue, as they should, to hold the legislature accountable.

I continue to have a huge amount of heartburn that it seems every session we make ballot initiatives and referenda much harder, incrementally harder to accomplish.

And you know, I think that that is unfortunately, you know, a move in a direction that disenfranchises voters, and makes it harder and harder for people to be a part of the process.

Especially when the way that the legislature is set up, we do have a public comment mechanism.

And we are, we hope that we are each accountable to our voters as much as we can be.

But increasingly, we are seeing the public very upset with some of the bills that are passed, and so there are mechanisms to address that.

But the legislature continues to make those mechanisms more inaccessible, and I think that that's a trend that we need to have some serious conversations about.

Jason Perry: Representative Burton, last comment on this.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Yeah, I mean, think we'll see more referendums and ballot initiatives going forward.

You know, the citizenry needs to know that those of us in the legislature are the closest to the people, and so I strive to always answer my phone and listen to people when they have concerns.

And when we ignore those concerns, then we have challenges and problems.

And so we do live in a representative democracy, and the way that the people have a voice is to not elect or re-elect those that they don't think are functioning and serving them.

And so I think there's a place for initiatives and referendums in our system, but I remind folks, this is a representative democracy, and that's why you elect people.

And when they don't perform, you get rid of them.

Jason Perry: Okay, so let's talk about the people weighing in.

Let's talk about some redistricting, because we got several bills in this special session that did impact this particular issue in the state of Utah.

Let me go through a couple of these.

First was SB2001.

This was just this week.

Doug, let's talk about this for a moment.

Pushes the congressional candidate filing deadlines from January to March, just the congressional districts, so that was part of the bill.

Talk about some of the rationale for that.

Doug Wilks: Well, you have a legislative session where you're negotiating.

You're doing bills.

If you have to decide whether you're gonna run or not, does that impact the way you're gonna have that conversation?

And again, you have to live that.

So if you can kind of make the process a little better, then that allows you to do that, and a later deadline may make sense.

If you're doing it for a different reason, perhaps, because you're trying to deal with redistricting maps and that basic issue, what's the role of a referendum and the people?

What's the role of the representative government, who's trying to listen to the people?

And then it all got complicated because it landed in the judiciary.

And then there's a great argument about selecting a map from a judge that's trying to do their job, and then you get all kinds of accusations.

Jason Perry: Representative Dailey-Provost, this wasn't, this was going back to where it was in 2022.

This used to be the case.

You would file in March after the session ends.

How has this changed a little bit?

Maybe as a candidate, you can tell us that.

Does it change how you approach a session if you have to announce your candidacy before the session starts versus after?

Rep.

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: I think that there is some speculation, certainly, that filing before the session might change your behavior.

You know, you may be on, people may be perceived to be at risk if they take the right or wrong vote, and that if everybody's already filed, that you can vote on the bill, and not vote on the specter of somebody filing to run against you if you take a wrong vote.

And I think there's value in having conversations about that.

I like to believe that my behavior and the behavior of my colleagues doesn't necessarily change based on the specter of re-election, that we are all sincere in our job and the votes that we cast on behalf of our constituents.

But you know, it's really interesting to talk about, to go from, you know, things like this conversation about a referendum straight to redistricting because, you know, it's one thing to say that we try to represent our districts as best we can.

But when, you know, we've got districts that are arguably very gerrymandered, and we're disenfranchising voters, and then people run initiatives to fix that thing.

You know, this circular argument, I think, is really interesting within the context of having just spoken about referenda and ballot initiatives.

Jason Perry: These are connected.

Representative Burton, talk about that for a moment.

And in this bill, it also said for the congressional candidates, they can file their intent to gather signatures before the session starts, even though their candidacy filing won't happen until March.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Yeah, and again, you pointed it out, Jason.

Before 2022, that's the way it was.

I think it's semantics for most candidates.

We don't, I don't think it much matters.

Some may say that not filing before the session begins is negative because folks don't know if you're going to run again.

You thus could be a lame duck-type candidate.

But I think the reason this was done, in this case, is to give those potential candidates more time, to give the legislature more time, frankly, to work out the redistricting challenges that we have.

Doug Wilks: Can I ask a question you can ignore?

Do you think, with the repeal of the union bill, you have people running for election that are going to have to have the votes of teachers, firefighters, police officers?

And at the end of the day, you can see out there that the voters don't really like that.

"Let's take that off the table, try and do it again in a different way.

But that way, I have a different conversation in my district."

Would you agree that that's true?

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Well, let's say there are a few districts for Republicans that are of concern or challenges.

But I can tell you that those Republicans have had myriad town hall meetings and discussions with their constituents about that union bill.

A lot of discussion, free flow back and forth with citizens has occurred, so I think those candidates are going to be fine.

I know there's some conjecture that the repeal was somehow based in the 2026 elections.

I can tell you that's not the case.

Those were not the discussions on the Hill that I heard.

Rep.

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: I think that there is a lot of concern among people who were really passionate and worked so hard on the referendum that they've been robbed of the opportunity to vote on that.

And there, I think there's validity in that because people did work really hard to get those signatures.

But as Jason mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, there were a lot of people who really wanted to sign that.

I helped collect signatures, and I didn't have to work real hard.

The same comment was made on the House floor during the debate about this.

People were eager to find somebody to go sign that, those packets.

And while I regret that those people that worked so hard don't have the opportunity to vote on that on the ballot in 2026, there was no way in good conscience, could not vote to repeal a bill that I opposed from the get-go, that my district opposed from the get-go.

I, again, I like to think that legislators would not factor in re-electability in that.

But I think it would be insincere to assume that that isn't part of the calculus for some.

Jason Perry: Let's get to a couple more bills.

And Representative Burton, a couple of them are yours in this special session.

Let's talk about SB2002.

This is the appellate court jurisdiction amendments, which expedites the election-related cases directly to the Supreme Court.

Give us a little background on this particular bill and why you thought it was important.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: I'll just say that the original case was heard in the district court.

Jason Perry: The redistricting case?

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: The redistricting case, and testimony was completed in January of '25.

The judge elected to withhold the decision until September, putting the legislature in a pretty tight position to be able to redraw maps and respond to that.

So this bill is simply an opportunity to reaffirm the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for election cases particularly, so that it will increase the speed of appeal, and that's really what this was about.

Jason Perry: This is just election-related cases, so you wouldn't have district court, necessarily circuit courts, right to the Supreme Court, Utah Supreme Court?

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: It's, yeah, yeah, this bill just points out that it can go directly to the Supreme Court, those types of cases.

And when you're talking about election cases, again, you get into these filing deadlines and the timing.

It makes it very difficult.

You know, our citizens want a safe and secure election.

That's very important to citizenry.

And I think in the last few years many have felt that they aren't safe and secure.

And so election cases become, the timing of those cases becomes very important.

Jason Perry: Let's hit the next one, and then Representative Dailey-Provost, if you'll talk about this after this.

So the next one was also yours, or should I bring this up now, Representative Burton?

Joint resolution amending court rules and procedures, so you can appeal a redistricting case to the High Court, even without things like attorneys's fees.

Help us understand what that is, because some of these things hold up a case when people might not realize that's what's happening.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Again, that was to speed up appeals for those types of cases.

The concern was that waiting for attorney fees to be required could slow down an appeal process.

And what this does is, it just says you can go ahead with the appeal, even if the attorney fees have not been determined.

Bear in mind that in a case like this, the state would pay those attorney fees anyway, so it's going to happen.

It just wouldn't slow the case down from being appealed to the Supreme Court.

Jason Perry: Okay, Representative Dailey-Provost, your perspective?

Rep.

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: So I think that it would be, we would be remiss to not recognize that this also presents the legislature an opportunity to court shop if they want to.

If they feel like the Supreme Court is made up of justices that are more sensitive or friendly to the arguments that they want to make, then they get to leapfrog a jurisdiction in the court that they maybe don't feel they're going to get the outcome that they want.

So I do have concern about that, because I think that this just circumvents a well-documented, well-used judicial process that has been in place for a long time, and I think toes the line on, you know, perverting the separation of the three branches of government that has served us well for, since the inception of our state.

Jason Perry: Go ahead.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Can I just respond to that?

I have the utmost respect for Representative Dailey-Provost, and she knows that I do.

I really appreciate her, but I disagree.

In this case, what politicized this case was, why would a judge wait eight months to rule?

And that was all about timing.

And that's why we had a special session in the first place, was to address that timing issue that was created by the court.

Jason Perry: Doug, this certainly has put the courts in the spotlight.

And you start talking about some of these procedural things.

And when rules came out, including just this week when the legislatures asked Judge Gibson to certify her ruling, so they could move quickly on whatever is going to happen next.

Doug Wilks: I have a lot of faith in the institutions.

Maybe I'm unique in that.

But I think the judiciary, I think the judges try to follow the law.

Now, whether it's federal government appointees or others, you have to follow the law.

And so Supreme Court justices are appointed, and then they make a decision an administration doesn't like, and then they say, "Oh, we shouldn't have appointed that judge."

Okay, well, you can't be in that place.

Certainly with election law, there are things where you have to move quickly, Bush v. Gore, or where you have to go right to an appeal to the Supreme Court.

And there are places where you can go right to a higher court because time is of the essence.

It's debatable about this.

I agree that the process does something.

It brings out arguments.

It brings out people.

It gives you a chance to bring out coverage.

The media can go to these courts and try to do that.

If you take an appeal and go right to the Supreme Court, that is less transparent than if you do it the other way.

But what's the best to do?

I'm not sure, quite frankly.

But with election law and with these high profile cases, there is precedent to try and go to a higher court.

Court shopping, you know, that's a difficult principle.

I believe in the integrity of our judges.

I guess I'll leave it there.

Jason Perry: One last thing, because it does touch this as well.

There's one more.

It was the House Joint Resolution 201, this is Casey Snyder, that was intended to reaffirm the constitutional and statutory role of the legislature in redistricting.

This has to come, just a couple of seconds on this, is who is responsible for drawing the maps, submitting the maps, picking the maps?

I guess from this resolution, the assertion is it is the legislature.

Rep.

Jefferson Burton: Right, and that resolution did assert that.

And we believe that the legislature is responsible for that, per the Constitution Article IX.

That's debatable, obviously, because the courts had a different opinion on that.

But 39 states do it this way, and where the legislature draws and approves, selects those maps.

The word gerrymandering is thrown around a lot, but I've lived all over this country, and I can tell you that that term is thrown in other states that are controlled by other parties.

And so the word gerrymandering simply means, "You drew a map that I didn't like."

And if you drill into it, if you follow and you look, and I'll just finish with this, if you look at what happened in 2021 when the maps were drawn, the redistricting committee followed to the T the rules that were laid out by the United States Supreme Court at that time.

There were no hinky, strange, weird boundaries, cutting rivers in half, or homes in half, or 60 mile fingers on a map to bring certain voters into an area.

They were very clear delineated lines, and so that's just the assertion of the legislature that it's our responsibility, per the Constitution.

Jason Perry: Representative Dailey-Provost?

Rep.

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: So, a couple of things.

We need to be present to the fact that the constitutional authority of the right of people to amend the statute is affirmed in the Constitution.

And so we can have debates all day long about the constitutionality of the legislature having the authority to redistrict, and the states having the authority to build in Proposition 4, which created a redistricting commission.

You can get into semantics on this, whether or not the legislature has the constitutional authority to pass a map or to draw a map.

But I would also, I want to go back to the gerrymandering conversation-- Jason Perry: We're about out of time, about 20 seconds.

Rep.

Jennifer Dailey-Provost: Okay, in 2021, the State House went from 17 Democrats to 14 Democrats, even though the number of Democratic voters in the state continues to increase.

And so to say that those were objective maps is a fallacy because we know that they were drawn in a conference room in Florida at the RNC, and then imported into our state.

That is not how the process should work in the state of Utah.

Jason Perry: We need 30 more minutes.

It's gonna have to be the last comment on this.

But it shows why these are such important conversations to have.

So thank you, and thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund and by donations to "PBS Utah" from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ...