- [Narrator] Funding for the Hinckley Report is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Nichols endowment fund.

Tonight on the Hinckley Report, after a tumultuous year in politics, our panel weighs in and on the top stories that had the biggest impact on Utahns.

With new leaders in key positions, how have their policies impacted our state.

As debates raised over science and politics, what lessons were learned and with Curtis and Rancor at historic levels, is there any room left for civility - Good evening and welcome to the Hinckley Report.

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

Joining our panel tonight, we have Kate Bradshaw member of the Bountiful city council, Lindsay Whitehurst reporter with the associated press and Matt Canam, senior reporter with the Salt Lake Tribune.

Thank you for being with us.

This is an important show for us tonight.

This is our year in review.

We're gonna talk about the big stories of the year.

And what's interesting as, as we think about this, this particular show, almost any one of these stories we're gonna talk about tonight could be the story of the year.

So many talk about, but there are many that impact us on a national stage, the worldwide states, but particularly on the Utah stage.

And you all covered stories so well this year.

So I wanted to talk about what you think the big stories were and some of the implications, Matt, let's start with you.

You've done some, just some great reporting this past year.

When you put all these stories there, give us one that you'd like to talk about.

That was particularly impactful that you covered.

- I would say the biggest story of the year happened just six days into this year.

When thousands of pro Donald Trump protestors attacked our US Capitol, it was stunning to see.

Sickening to see.

I was a DC correspondent for seven years, and that's where I worked.

The Capitol police shot and killed a woman at the speaker's lobby.

That is where reporters interact with members of the house.

In a regular day, I was there multiple times a day.

It was stunning and there were ties to every state in the nation, including Utah, half dozen Utahns were among those who broke into the Capitol.

And now face federal charges.

You had the president, Donald Trump call Mike Lee on the Senate floor.

Now that might've been an accidental call, but reporting sense has shown that the president and his team were lobbying Mike Lee to try to overthrow the election.

And I will point out the Mike Lee voted to accept the electoral votes of every state.

He did not go into that, but he was getting pressured.

You had a Capitol police officer potentially save Mitt Romney's life by directing him away from the people who were storming the Capitol.

It was an absolutely stunning day.

- Yeah, it was Lindsey.

Talk about a Mitt Romney there for just a moment because it was, it was historic.

And the response that came and his response was particularly pointed.

- And I, and it came down to anger, frustration, and a little bit of, I told you so, That warning he gave years ago that this, he was afraid of perhaps not something like this, because I don't know if anyone imagined something like this happening, but this is where this rhetoric takes us as seem to be his message that day.

And this is one of many stories that we're talking about as a major story for it for this year.

It's not over yet.

We keep learning new information and charges are still new charges are still coming down against people who entered the building or suspects who haven't been charged yet.

And some of the lower level folks are being sentenced now.

And some of those higher level people who are accused of more serious crimes have yet to come to a head.

So we're still seeing those cases play out in the criminal justice system.

We're still seeing an inquiry in Congress and learning new things that the text messages that are coming out.

So we are definitely going to still be talking about this in 2022.

And I think I remember the feeling I had here in Utah was, was just going, trying to go about my day, but just feeling ill. Do you remember that feeling?

- Yeah, I agree.

I agree with you.

Long ago I interned in Washington, DC.

I remember looking at my office was in the cannon building.

And so I remember looking at those crowds and knowing exactly where that office was I worked at and being involved in Utah politics, I have a number of very good friends that are on staff for our Utah delegation and texting them to make sure they were okay and being very worried because a number of them were in the Capitol.

And so there was that, that added element of, of horror, but the a distance being here in Utah, but then knowing that I had people I deeply cared about that were inside that building, that I was really worried about that day.

- Yeah.

So there was the health and safety, which we fell also, but from the conversation for some of our elected officials, K2 is interesting.

So on the Mitt Romney side, it was not only are we risking lives, but this was in his words, an attack against our democracy, the foundations of our government itself.

- Yeah.

I mean we pride ourselves on that peaceful transition of power.

It allows us the stability, financial stability and political stability that even when you, when your team has lost that you can accept that and move on and continue to build for that next election cycle.

And that has allowed us to have tremendous prosperity for the whole history of our country- - (indistinct) - Yes.

And we, we almost weren't able to do that and I think it was scary as a citizen, for every level of government, whether you accept a city council race or a governor's race or a presidential race, we are layered on that system of those transitions.

And we came close to not doing that.

And I think that scared a lot of us in and was, I sent it around and he said something that struck at the heart of who we think we are and who we tell the rest of the world we are.

- Matt, as you interviewed people in the state of Utah, is this the feeling you're getting from them?

I'm just kind of curious when you're talking to them, the impacts.

- You know, the impacts change over time.

And there are people who don't look at it as a significant, whereas as a significant event, as it may be, I would, it's become political.

You had, there was a moment where Congress said, we need a commission to investigate this.

And you had representative Blake Moore and John Curtis from the Utah vote for that.

They were some of the few Republicans who did, but the Republicans in Congress blocked that commission from happening.

There's now a committee in the house doing that investigation.

It is bipartisan because there's two Republicans on it.

Most famously Liz Cheney from Wyoming, but the both parties are not treating this as the same sort of attack on the democracy at this point.

But it has soured relationships in Washington, even though I didn't know, that was possible for those things to become more tense it has and what it actually means for our country, how this goes forward.

Politically is still up in the air.

Criminally and the justice department has called this the biggest investigation in its history into hundreds and hundreds of people.

Thousands of people marched in there.

Some of them had weapons.

Some of them stormed the house and chambers.

They called out the names of politicians.

There was a, had a noose that they were carrying around calling for the vice-president.

It's there's video, it's stunning to see it, but the politics of it have overtaken that exact moment.

- Just one last piece on this, too.

Kate, talk about this because the election, the results were accepted.

The electoral college here, which is what's are the hardest some of this, but it wasn't exactly unanimous.

There were some states and some members of Congress.

- There were, there were some states that felt like maybe there had been irregularities.

Those are not necessarily proven out on a further analysis and study, but those ripples are still playing out, not just from that day on January 6th, but you have had different states that have had, Arizona, for instance, that have had their, their legislatures looking at, at election audits and wanting to do that.

And that has continued to kind of foment some of this trust in our election process.

And, Utah's, hasn't been immune, we've had, legislators that have wanted to have the, the Utah legislature do something similar.

There has there is now a legislative audit of, of the election process that we're moving forward.

And you have concern from our governor, our Lieutenant governor in particular, Deidre Henderson who's office is over elections, sounding of a note of concern and a note of caution about basing any of these things of unfounded questions.

And that starts to erode a foundation of trust.

And that that is, should be only undertaken with the greatest care.

- I spoke with her a little bit about this, and she's deeply concerned.

She's deeply concerned about that when you keep putting this out there as if there should be some sort of concern, you're creating a situation where people may feel like, well, if there's all this smoke, there must be some kind of fire, even though there's not any kind of evidence there.

And she is really worried that all of these questions from a few different people, a few different quarters will, will really wrongly erode confidence in our system.

- Yeah in the interest of this election security, as they're talking about the integrity of it.

Well we'll see what happens with our own legislature, as you mentioned, is we may see a bill on that very, that very issue going forward based on this audit, that's about to come, okay.

Lindsey, big story.

You've covered that of impact that we should be discussing.

- One, one straight that I was really proud of this year.

And I think helped start a big conversation was about the great Salt Lake this year.

That and of course our whole region, including Utah, is undergoing a historic mega drought and the great Salt Lake, one of our most well-known iconic natural features is shrinking hit its lowest level ever this year.

And, and that's, it's it has something like $1.3 billion of economic impact.

It's there are some potential dangers if, if that drinking continues of dust and things like that.

And, and that's something that's really kicked off a big conversation.

The governor wants to spend some money to save the great Salt Lake.

And there's a real tension there between how do we make sure the humans have enough water and how do we make sure that the great Salt Lake and all the other, you know, other iconic natural wonders in our state are also taking care of.

And don't shrink with the climate change challenge that we're all facing right now.

And so for me, that was, that was a big one that, that I think is important in a really, long-term as sort of a sort of sense of for our state.

- We've been in a drought for years, or you said, this is a mega drought, but this is the first year we had our political leaders say, you need to restrict your watering of your lawn to two times a week.

You need to take action.

This isn't just, this isn't just wait till the next rainstorm.

- This is a big deal for Utah because we like our green lawns here.

- I think this is gonna be a marker.

This will be a year that we look back and say, that's when it started.

That's when our government started taking more significant action.

That's when our government required us to take more significant action, to make sure that Utah continues to grow, and it will- - One of the fastest growing states and one of the driest.

- We can have enough .

- And it was impactful, not just, from the state leaders urging us to do caution, but from a local government perspective, I have never had more conversations with my constituents about how we were watering our parks, whether or not we ought to keep splash pads open, in a record hot summer as well, where people are still concerned about how they recreate and safely recreating with COVID outdoor activities, still felt safest.

outdoor activities in the summer are hot.

And so we had, we were having conversations throughout the summer with our residents about where we were cutting back, how we were handling golf courses, how we were handling splash pads, how we were watering turf that the kids were playing on for, for sports and trying to take care of high use areas, but let other, other areas inside parks and things like that go and become, proudly brown as part of those conversations.

But it was very much on the minds of, of local governments in a way that in my counselor service has not been a significant conversation we had.

- You work so closely with the legislature.

I put this into context about what they're willing to do significantly the governor, even when he released his budget this past week and a half, did it from the banks of the crazy.

- Absolutely.

And he has put money in his proposed budget to study to preserve that is a key signifier.

Interestingly speaker, Brad Wilson, whose district includes Antelope Island.

So it's a significant part of his district has announced that he's hosting a summit on the great Salt Lake for January 5th, which is the first time we've done that.

So you have, I think absolute interest and concern from the governor willing to put, you know, his budget dollars where his mouth is on saying, this is a priority.

You have the legislature signaling they agree.

So usually when you start to see that type of agreement, we can expect bills and action.

This coming legislative session.

Go ahead.

- Yeah.

I was just knocking on wood.

(all chuckles) - Yeah, I got it.

Before we leave that was really quick.

Just kind of talk about the arc of this issue Matt, because the Republicans are on board.

This has ended up being an issue that is not partisan necessarily, which has not been the case for well.

- Well, I mean, when you look at does climate change or water conservation, Utah has had, has not been overly aggressive as some states have been.

And but there has been increasing talk of what kind of state do we wanna have?

What kind of growth do we want to have?

We know we're marching forward with a bigger population.

We know the state's changing.

We can track the weather.

There's a point where it's, you have to take action and our government has acknowledged that.

And I think that's a great first step.

What that actually is, is it aggressive enough if you know, what does it mean for individuals or industries or companies?

These are the debates we're gonna see in our legislature and in the public sphere.

And as I said, this will be a turning point, because we're going to have these conversations for years, if not decades to come.

- It's interesting.

The arc that this has followed, because one of the big events of the early years of my life, where the floods of 83 and have always been this thing, we've talked about the pumps at the great Salt Lake, just the, the epic water and just to see us move from, we certainly don't need pumps right now.

We need the opposite.

And it's just an interesting arc to follow that we are now going to have this serious conversation and we, we desperately need to have it.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, Kate You're up.

- I had hoped that in 2021 that we wouldn't necessarily need to talk about COVID as a big story, but it continues to be something that is incredibly impactful in my life from a personal perspective, from a local government perspective.

And from what I'm seeing up at the Capitol, how we continue to handle COVID the, the, the incredible high numbers we still are seeing in our hospital systems, new letters of the Greek alphabet for variants that I didn't, I didn't know before got to, oh, and so that continues, I think, to be something that is so important and it, and it touches so many factors, but we were, I was talking about how I started holiday shopping in the summer because of those worries about how it is playing into our economic situation.

And so that, unfortunately, I hope someday we do this show in the new year and we don't need to talk about it, but I still think that is one of the biggest things that we have facing us.

And it has continued to dominate every facet of our lives in this year.

- True, true.

- And the impact on healthcare workers.

I mean, the hospitals are still full and how, that level of stress, and even, the politics also enter into it too.

You hear about healthcare workers who have some, some verbal abuse even kind of thrown at them because they're sort of associated with this pandemic that everyone feels exhausted by And some people feel like has, some all kinds of different implications for different people.

And, and that's one thing, one, one element of this that makes me especially sad is to see these folks who are working so hard, who are some of the heroes in all of this, at times be also on the receiving end of some of the anger people have about everything that's going on.

I think that's an aspect that I would hope if, if there's anything in 2022, we could, we so many things we wanna see improved, but that, that would be one that I would, I would love to see.

- I was gonna add that when I think of the coronavirus this year, I think about the vaccines.

And we have seen demographics and politics play into who gets vaccinated and who doesn't.

If you take Salt Lake County, the east bench in the more liberal areas are more vaccinated than people who live on the west side are lower socioeconomic status, more diverse, and people who live in the south end of the valley, which is more conservative.

And that plays out not just in Utah, but in the United States of America.

And I would think, I think it's very interesting when you have the governor telling people to get vaccinated, all of our congressional delegation, telling people that they got vaccinated and they encourage it.

You have the president of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, encouraging people to get vaccinated.

And we're below the national average.

It shows the power of politics in today's day and age, that it still there's people who are concerned about it, because what they get from the news they consume and that vaccination rate will play a role in to when this ends.

And it's a story that we've seen unfold during this year.

- Lindsey, I want to get to one more aspect of this too, which we've talked about it in the show, even with you, at some point is kind of brings up the question who makes the decisions, when it comes to vaccine mandates, as Matt was just talking about, it's just so interesting.

We had the president of the United States putting some mandates into place, which have been challenged of course, very quickly.

And most of them stayed.

Our legislature has some thoughts about who should the governor for a while had some questions about whether or not he was able to do a talk about that exchange.

That's a little bit too, but is it more clear now who gets to make these calls.

- And in some ways yes.

In some ways, no.

And of course the thing that's most unclear and well, that always feels unclear.

It's what should the calls be?

(chuckles) Is always, always hard like that.

It feels like the line is always moving, but of course, one thing, one big one we saw was about schools and masks at the beginning of the year, before a lot of school kids could get vaccinated.

And there was the law basically saying that school districts couldn't do their own masks.

And you saw the mayor of Salt Lake City basically take matters into her own hands and saying kids here are going to wear masks.

And there was some political infighting over that, although it's continues now, but may play out in the legislative season.

I imagine there are still some, some Republican lawmakers who are still unhappy that she did that the democratic mayor.

So there are the politics of this are very much, very much in play and people have very different ideas on how it should be handled.

- And, the moves and the counter moves are very interesting here because you see the president announced, he's going to put in place these different mandates and gives these different timelines, timelines.

You see the state legislatures swing the other way.

And then there's, there's been this counter swing playing out.

And it's a little bit maybe under the radar of some people dealing with Utah's state OSHA plan.

And so Utah has a delegated plan, the ability to make rules for health and safety for workers that are as effective, but maybe slightly different than what the feds would require.

And that was a lever that was pulled on Utah.

And some other states when it looked like we weren't going to adopt some of those rules, dealing with healthcare workers that then pulled in a whole bunch of non COVID health and safety plan issues that have, that have had a whole lot of, kind of different conversations behind the scenes as well.

And so it just goes to show that we are there, there are multiple levers that can be pulled to coerce different types of behavior and outcomes.

And those are still very much playing out.

- Matt.

So they're there.

Some of those are happening straight through legislation that will represent a Paul Ray did, or Senator Evan Vickers this past year, the end game bill, for example, when it comes to that, it seems to be a lever that our legislature does feel like it's their prerogative.

- Yes, our legislature has decided they don't like the power that the governor has wielded before governor Gary Herbert.

Now governor Spencer Cox, that they are the ones that decide if we're an emergency.

They're the ones that decide what, how do we respond to this?

And so they have clawed back some power, and the governor has expressed a little bit of concern, but he's largely gone along with it.

And so how that, the idea I think the legislature had was that we're at the tail end of a pandemic.

This is time to move on and, and reinvigorate our economy and march forward.

And we're here at the end of 2021.

And I don't think any of us have any idea when the end of the pandemic is gonna happen, but it's clear that the legislature wants that past.

- Yeah, absolutely right.

We got a couple more minutes.

Another big issue, another big story that you've covered, you talked about, I've got a couple of my own, but anyone else you want to talk about?

- We were talking a little bit before filming about all the things that were so important that normally would have been high, high profile.

I mean, we have a new governor, you know, we, the Utah are going to the Rose bowl.

- Thank you for bringing.

- That one.

I couldn't not.

And so there's all of these things that we've not gotten to talk about booming economy, because some of these other stories have just been so dominant for the entire.

- Yeah, absolutely right.

And any one of these are just stories that you would cover.

Normally they would occupy a lot of time.

Let me give you a couple of them.

I wanna talk about, let's get to the state of Utah for a second on what you just mentioned our economy record levels of of unemployment here in the state right here.

So if people want a job, they're largely able to get one, but Lindsey it's, it's resulted in some big decisions for our legislature because there's a lot of money left, also low unemployment issues with growth and then what'd, they do with the surplus of funds.

Talk about that for a moment.

- Some of these are good problems to have, right?

And, and low unemployment in some ways is, has been a little bit of a double-edged sword.

It's, good that people can get jobs if they want them.

But then there are some jobs that, that are going filled.

There's, there's a nationally, we're having a lot of conversations about the great resignation and labor shortages.

And we're not effected here in Utah.

And what's what is the solution that, especially at those service jobs that where people are front facing, they're public facing, and they don't necessarily pay tons of money, it seems like that's a sector that's having particular challenges around.

How do you get people into these jobs and keep them there?

And, and so that, that's a real challenge and that's gonna be, it's good to have growth.

It's good to have a strong economy, but it's not as an unalloyed good.

There's some other things that come along with it.

- One, if you're the legislature and you have this pile of money, and then on top of it, you have the federal government pass an infrastructure bill, like you're going to have even more money.

And so it's a lot, we're going to see a lot of conversation about affordable housing.

We're gonna see a lot of conversation about infrastructure projects, water projects, bridges, or if we're gonna, get another rail line for front runner, like there is going to be huge investment in our state, and it will attract more people.

And it will, low income unemployment will attract more people.

It just all feeds into this growth that we're seeing.

- Hey, Kate, maybe as our elected official here at the table, there's gotta be something you're hearing about this, this population, this, the growth that we are having.

- We're having robust discussions as local government and with state leaders about affordable housing and also incentives how, what, what industries we're locating here and why and how those two tie together.

And it is, it is very much a robust discussion that we expect to see legislation on in the session.

You know, we are bringing more people.

It is bringing housing problems that we have seen other states have and trying to figure out what other states did that works, that we should adopt what they didn't do that adopt.

I mean, I have a good friend who told me about, we all have experienced going to a restaurant and finding it close to they don't have workers, but a good friend that has with the manufacturers association.

Tell me about how many openings he's gotten those jobs, very high paying jobs in Utah, manufacturing that are, that are short.

And so this, this alignment of housing and how we address some of that density, which is always a, an uncomfortable discussion for, for some cities and how the state attracts more jobs and how locals play into that is going to be an ongoing discussion.

And my hope is of course, that we continue to have those really positive discussions, because there are these different local nuances that, that need to also be factored in about how we maintain the Utah quality of life.

Why we all love to live here?

- That's got to be the last comment on that.

These are big and great stories.

I'm so glad you were able to give us some context and for the way you've covered these stories too, and help there's an elected official to their account as well.

And thank you for watching the Hinckley Report.

The show is also available as a podcast on pbsutah.org/hinckley report or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

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