03/17/2016
Senator David Hinkins has phoned in to the KOAL 103.9 News Room each week since the 2016 legislative session began giving community members in Carbon and Emery Counties updates on the entire legislative process.
He made his final phone call to recap on the entire session. “The largest budget we ever had that was over $15 billion that we appropriated to different things,” stated Hinkins. “A lot of it going to education, of course our health and human services has gone up a lot and we also have had some bills were we have expanded a little bit of Medicaid.” The expansion on Medicaid will help fund individuals that are just uninsurable and the neediest.
Hinkins explained the biggest victory at the session, “For me personally it was just the appropriations to help get some money down here to rural Utah. We’re able to get more money for rural roads, so hopefully they’ll get them on the list, so we’re going to see a lot more of road development, highway 10, highway 6, hopefully see some double lanes as well as making sure they don’t deteriorate by getting resurfaced.” This should help free up money that rural cities have been using to maintenance roads in their own area.
Big talk at this year’s session was the marijuana bill. Hinkins said, “Spent a whole lot of time on the marijuana bills and of course they made it through the senate then got over to the house…..I thought the one would go the one Senator Victors had, a lot of time was spent on it, especially the sponsors of the bill, I sponsored that over to the house and ended up not carrying through.”
Overall the session is going to bring major projects to our area. “Just to be able to get some things funded down here was quite crucial for me be able to get some money to finish looking at our reservoir there in Carbon County and also in Emery County we’re able to get some money over here for the Millsite reservoir, we’re going to have a big project that’s going to be quite a few jobs this fall,” said Hinkins. There will also be a huge project in Green River to rebuild the damn to benefit the farmers.
It is election year and Hinkins is planning to run for re-election.