Throughout the session, Republican lawmakers sought to flex their muscles and extend legislative power over a wide span of policy areas — and even over other branches of government.

They included efforts to exert control over the judiciary. Control over public unions. Control over higher education. Control over transgender students. Control over cities and counties — especially the state’s Democratic capital of Salt Lake City. Control over voting by mail and elections. Control over energy development. Even control over what kind of flags can or can’t fly, not only in classrooms but also on city or county properties.

Some of these efforts succeeded — while others were either watered down through negotiations, were abandoned or did not survive.

Still, the session left Democrats shaking their heads.

Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch

“Yeah they’ve watered down bills, but why do we have the bills in the first place?” House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, told reporters this week. “Why are we telling Salt Lake City what to do? Why aren’t we being more of a partner?”

While efforts to insert legislative influence over various parts of the judiciary eventually resolved in a compromise, Romero said lawmakers this year were “not respecting the three branches of government.”

Yes, some of the “worst bills were fended off,” said Rep. Doug Owens, D-Millcreek. “But those were not foregone conclusions. There were some hard fights.”

Legislative leaders chalked this year’s conflicts up to a natural result of a form of government that’s built to have tension between different branches — rather than an overstep. They argued many of the contentious issues reached common ground through the legislative process, which at times can be messy. And some lawmakers disputed the control concept entirely, saying it’s only natural for lawmakers to want to exert their legislative power.

“I think we pass bills. I don’t know how anybody can construe that to (be) control,” Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, told reporters.

House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said that’s the legislative branch’s job — to pass laws — and he argued lawmakers worked fully within their constitutional constraints to enact policy, including bills that impacted the judiciary.

“We stayed within our constitutional bounds on every issue that was brought forward. These are things that the Legislature has the constitutional authority to discuss,” Schultz said. “That’s important. I’m very proud of the way the Legislature came together … and very proud of the way the judiciary came together on those issues.”

Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, said he gets “this complaint a lot” — but he bristled at characterizing the session of one that was underscored by the pursuit of control, saying state lawmakers at times clamp down on local governments not to restrict freedoms, but to enshrine them.

“The best kind of local control is an individual and a family, and part of our job is to protect individuals and families from government overreach and interference, either from us or from the locals,” Fillmore said. “So I always chafe at the framing that if we place limits on the power of political subdivisions of the state government, that that is the Legislature taking control. We are giving individuals the control instead of the government.”

But House Minority Whip Jennifer Dailey-Provost, D-Salt Lake City, challenged Fillmore’s comment, arguing the GOP-supermajority Legislature focused its energy on freedoms for some — not for all.

“They’ve paved the way pretty effectively for some people to have a lot of individual liberties but maybe not everybody,” Provost said, adding her Republican colleagues like to talk about preserving freedom, “but it seems to be targeted to preserve the personal liberties of people who think and look and act and believe and vote like many of the people in this Legislature. And that’s not necessarily reflective of the entire state.”

During a sit-down interview with Utah News Dispatch on Friday, Gov. Spencer Cox acknowledged there were “some fair criticisms” from this year’s session as it related to control — and he said he did have concerns, especially when it came to moves against the judiciary.

“I definitely would have vetoed some of those judiciary bills,” Cox said, pointing to at least one in particular — HB512, which would have given legislators a say in judicial retention elections — had it not stalled as it did due to negotiations with the judiciary.

But it didn’t come to that.

“That’s the process,” Cox said. “Legislators didn’t support that one either. And I think that’s a really positive sign of a healthy republic, a healthy democracy and an opportunity for ideas to work their way through and end up in a better place.”

However, Cox added “I suspect that I will have some vetoes,” though he wouldn’t name any.

Lawmakers worked all the way up to their midnight cut off Friday night, capping off their $30 billion budget that included a fifth year of tax cuts totaling $127 million, while passing a grand total of 582 bills. That was yet again one of Cox’s biggest complaints.

“There are way too many bills. I think I say this every year. But I’m saying it again this year,” he said. “We have to do something differently.”

While debating literally hundreds of bills, here are some of the biggest issues lawmakers tackled this year:

Banning collective bargaining for public unions

Arguably the most controversial bill to pass this legislative session was HB267, which prohibits the state’s public unions from engaging in collective bargaining. Cox signed the bill late on Valentine’s Day despite mounting calls to veto from thousands of Utah’s teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees.

The bill’s sponsors, Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, and Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, tried to strike a compromise with the state’s public unions, creating an avenue that still allowed them to collectively bargain, with caveats. But the compromise was ultimately abandoned.

Cox, in an interview Friday afternoon, said HB267 stands out as one of the bigger disappointments of the session.

“Didn’t love the bill, thought we had a compromise, thought that was done, and then it fell apart at the last minute,” said Cox, telling Utah News Dispatch that he tried to push for a middle ground with unions and lawmakers, but it never materialized.

So if he didn’t like HB267, why sign it?

Let us know what you think…

“Just because I don’t love a bill doesn’t mean I veto it. I’m going to sign 100 bills that I don’t love,” he said, adding that he decided to sign the bill even though he could have let it become law without his signature because he had already told lawmakers in behind-the-scenes negotiations that he would sign it.

The bill takes effect on July 1. After that, a teachers union, for example, would no longer be able to negotiate terms of employment with a school district. Teuscher and Cullimore say it will help protect taxpayer funds while giving a voice to all public employees, not just union members.

Unions beg to differ. The bill was protested at every step this session, and now a coalition of teachers, police officers, nurses and other union advocates plan on launching a referendum to attempt to overturn the law.

Election security vs. convenience

Though there were a whopping 59 bills proposed that would have impacted elections, a flagship bill that carried the most substantial changes was HB300 — a bill to require voter ID and to phase out automatic voting by mail by 2029.

The Utah House and Senate gave final approval to HB300 on Thursday after it went through a roller coaster of alterations. It was one of the biggest examples of legislation that started out extreme in the House, but by the time it made it through the Senate it was dramatically scaled back.

Its first iteration would have restricted voting by mail and required most Utahns to return their ballots in person at either a polling place or a drop box manned by at least two poll workers while showing their government-issued ID. But by the time it reached final passage, it became a bill that instead would require Utah voters to write the last four digits of their ID on their ballot’s return envelope beginning in 2026 and slowly phase out Utah’s current automatic vote-by-mail system, setting a deadline of Jan. 1, 2029 for Utahns to opt in to receiving a by-mail ballot.

Democrats and pro-democracy groups decried it as setting an unnecessary expiration date on Utah’s popular election system that automatically sends ballots in the mail to registered voters, while Republicans supported it as an effort to increase election security while maintaining convenience.

By the end, Cox said he was “very supportive” of it. While polls show that Utahns are overwhelmingly confident in Utah elections, Cox also said at the same time there has been an “erosion of trust in elections.”

The bill also came on the heels of a divisive presidential and gubernatorial election that brought more scrutiny on Utah elections than ever before.

“I believe there are people here in Utah who know better, who have lied about elections, and have destroyed that trust in elections,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter who did it or why they did it. It has happened. And so I think it’s really important for us to help restore trust in elections.”

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said even though it was a challenging session, “I actually feel like my office did pretty well.”

“I’m very happy to say that we saved vote by mail,” Henderson said. “That’s a big deal.”

From ‘broad attack’ on the judiciary, to a compromise

One of the most high profile and divisive issues of the session was an onslaught of bills that, in their original forms, would have collectively exerted an unprecedented level of legislative involvement in Utah’s judiciary.

Utah’s legal community — including even Utah Supreme Court justices — forcefully pushed back. Chief Justice Matthew Durrant even called it a “broad attack on the independence of the judiciary.”

But after Durrant met personally with Republican legislative leaders, lawmakers and Utah’s judiciary struck a deal. The most concerning bill, HB512 — which would have given legislators a say in judicial retention elections — would not move forward.

However, another — SB296, which would let the governor and the Senate pick the Utah Supreme Court’s chief justice rather than the court’s five justices — advanced. The House gave final legislative approval to that bill Friday.

Even though for weeks the judicial bills sucked much of the air out of Capitol Hill, by the end of the session most of the controversy fizzled.

Universities mandated to cut inefficient programs

After an audit revealed that a few programs in Utah public universities were “inefficient,” enrolling and graduating under 20 students across the entire system, legislative leaders made a commitment to make cuts in some of those underperforming degrees and allocate that funding to expand high-demand programs.

Democrats and even some Republicans worried this would mean a substantial overhaul of liberal arts in Utah schools. There were also members of the minority caucus who agreed with the budget changes that were approved.

“I do love the idea that we prepare students for the workforce, but I also am a little bit concerned that we’re blurring the distinction between a technical college and a university, and what makes a university different,” North Ogden Republican Sen. John Johnson said in an appropriations discussion in January.

Ultimately, HB265, which provides instructions to the Utah Board of Higher Education on the reallocation process, establishes a multi-year system to cut 10% of budgets for courses in public colleges and universities. Schools can choose whether to make reductions on staff, or increase operational efficiencies, said Rep. Karen Peterson, R-Clinton, the bill sponsor.

The legislation passed on Wednesday and is waiting for the governor’s signature to become law.

With schools advocating to limit the size of the reallocations, the Legislature agreed to mandate a $60 million cut in total among all universities and add it to a “strategic reinvestment account.” Colleges and the Utah Board of Higher Education will now have three years to implement a reallocation plan to get back the ongoing $60 million.

Most Democrats voted against the bill. However, Dailey-Provost whose district includes the University of Utah campus, said that while she still had concerns, she supported it because she’s “cautiously optimistic” that universities will get it right and university leadership will be able to address “very real problems,” like skyrocketing tuition.

There was also a big push for unconventional educational paths, with the establishment of a first credential program and state-sponsored expansions on “catalyst centers” to boost technical education for students interested in trade careers. Both bills passed in the last week of the session.

Locals fought to keep power in energy decisions

With the announcement of Operation Gigawatt last fall, Cox and legislative leaders made public their intentions to pursue a nuclear energy future, promising an energy-heavy session.

While Utah probably won’t see the fruits of a nuclear reactor in the next couple of decades, the Legislature passed HB249, the flagship nuclear energy bill of the year. The legislation establishes the Utah Energy Council and sets guidelines for cities and counties to designate “electrical energy development zones.”

The bill initially had a smooth run, until the Senate updated it to make collaboration between the new council and municipalities on energy projects an option and not a mandate. That was a hard line for cities and counties, said Brandy Grace, chief executive officer of the Utah Association of Counties, since it would have taken away their seat at the table to negotiate land use authority and property tax.

Ultimately, after lengthy discussions, the Senate and House resolved the issue, granting cities and counties their request for a mandate, but denying Democrats’ quest for representation in the council.

“We’ve come to the party, we made a good decision,” Albrecht told the House before the last vote. “It’s a great bill, we’re going to enter the nuclear generation.”

But, with the expansion of opportunities for nuclear came limitations for intermittent renewable resources, such as solar and wind. Some of those bill proposals were softened from original stricter versions. Lawmakers ultimately approved HB378, which would levy a substantial tax for wind and solar, while HB241, a bill to remove incentives for solar power projects, didn’t get a Senate hearing.

A big proposal drafted during the interim session and meant to address high electricity prices by eliminating how Rocky Mountain Power funds its Energy Balancing Account, a market adjustment fee covered by ratepayers that can be used to make up for the utility’s deferred costs, didn’t even receive a Senate committee hearing, despite being one of legislative leaders’ priorities.

Control over cities and counties, especially Salt Lake City

Every year, lawmakers grapple with how much they should or shouldn’t exert their control over localities. But this year, the debate was especially prominent.

Their favorite target? Salt Lake City — the state’s Democratic capital that’s often referred to as an island of blue in a sea of red.

Before the session even started, Cox and legislative leaders made it clear they wouldn’t be taking it easy on Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall as frustrations about homelessness, drugs and crime in her city boiled over. In a December letter, they demanded she come up with a plan — or else they would intervene.

Mendenhall answered their call, unveiling a multi-pronged plan and directing her police department to immediately act. Still, Republican lawmakers filed a bill that would have originally taken a forceful stance, threatening to withhold state funds if Salt Lake City leaders didn’t formally partner with the state to police camping and drugs.

However, after negotiating with city leaders, HB465‘s sponsor, House Majority Assistant Whip Casey Snider, R-Paradise, proposed a watered down version that still requires Salt Lake City police to enter into an agreement “related to public safety concerns” with the state Department of Public Safety by July 1, but without the threat of withholding state funds.

The new version of the bill — which received final legislative passage late Friday night — also included a provision to allow the state to “use eminent domain to condemn unincorporated property owned by” Salt Lake City “for the public use of constructing a new facility on the land for homelessness services.”

That eminent domain power could be used to help the city and state site a 30-acre property meant to host a “transformative campus” to increase Utah’s emergency homeless shelter bed capacity by up to 1,200 beds.

In a separate but related effort, lawmakers also exerted pressure on Salt Lake County to jail — and hold — more criminal offenders. HB312, which won final legislative approval on Wednesday, sets limits on when sheriffs can release inmates due to overcrowding, among other provisions.

Salt Lake County leaders were also pressured to raise taxes in order to expand their county’s jail capacity, which hadn’t been expanded in more than 24 years, all while the county’s population has increased by 300,000 people.

Other bills exerted control over Salt Lake City, including SB195, which inserted the Utah Department of Transportation’s oversight over Salt Lake City’s ability to manage its own streets. And lawmakers even restricted what flags city or county governments can or can’t hang on or in their own buildings by passing HB77, which has special implications for Salt Lake City because it hosts the Utah Pride Festival and Pride Parade every year at Liberty Square.

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.