After 45 days of the Utah’s legislative session, Representative Brad King stops in to the KOAL 103.9 FM News Room to talk about the highlights of this year. “Starting off with some good news, we paid off $335 million of debt most of that for transportation, we authorized no new debt, which is really good and also provided for a pay down of $300 billion for next year. If we’re able to not authorize any new debt in the next five years, the state will be pretty much debt free,” stated King. If all goes well and as planned any future transportation and building can be paid with cash.
There was 3 percent added to the WP (weighted pupil unit) for public education which is how they pay per pupil in the schools and $60 million was also set aside for the education Rainy Day Fund.
The newly Justice Reinvestment Act, increased the number of Adult Probation and Parole officers and an increase in jail contracting monies will be paid to the counties that house state prisoners.
Legislators have set aside $6.5 million to go to counties for mental health and substance abuse treatments. King said, “Especially, in rural Utah, Carbon and Emery County who have very high overdose rates. One there was two resolutions that will help get education out there and one that provides an anti-opioid to be more widely available, this is something that if someone has overdosed they can give them a shot and if given in the right amount of time they will completely recover.” Utah is ranked as one of the top 5 states in America in both suicides and opioid addictions, this money will be a huge investment to educate and treat this epidemic.
Other items include money for rural tourism, $10 million for the homeless which could really be beneficial for our area because we do not have facilities or programs to help the homeless like they do on the Wasatch front.
A few things that were left undone was a Medicaid expansion program for the homeless, those drug dependent and mentally ill, although it can help some it’s nowhere near what was needed. “The bills that got the most attention, I guess from a pure number perspective are medical marijuana and on the last day it was not brought up in the house and was not funded so that will be left undone. I’m certain there will be more talk about in the future because it really did have a tremendous amount of support,”
On the heels of the port project okay $1 million was set aside per year for clean coal research. “The go head to continue to look for our coal port in Oakland which is a huge step forward if we can do that. Now all I have to do is attract some investors and see if that can go to exporting coal and many other commodities that are produced in Utah,” stated King. Overall, the session made headway on several items and started the conversation on others to be looked at further.