The 2019 Legislative Session ended on March 14 and after 45 days of meeting Representative Christine F Watkins is back home. She took a moment to share with Castle Country Radio her thoughts on what the big topics were at this year’s session.

“I guess important for our people, who are involved in education, we were able to do a 4 percent increase to the WPU (weighted pupil unit) – that’s where the teacher’s salaries come from and some other things. We also gave them $250 million ongoing for public education because we have new growth,” said Representative Watkins. The school districts and the Teachers Association will negotiate the salary portion as they see fit.

There was funding awarded to our area specifically, as Watkins explains, “We got some good money down here, we got the Coal Country Strike Team $500,000.00. We hope if they win this contest, they will bring more to the table with that and that’s for Carbon and Emery to work together to diversify to add things education wise in our two counties and to try and help us in our future endeavors.” The Utah Coal Country Strike Team is one of five proposals that has advanced to the final round of the $1 million Alliance for the American Dream Competition.

“I did get my $25,000.00 for Helper, I was excited about that. This is their 25th Anniversary and they wanted to do some extra fun things and that is really good,” stated Representative Watkins. The Helper Arts, Music Film Festival is scheduled for August 15 through August 18.

Watkins had five of her bills pass which she was thrilled with but the one bill that stood out to her was the House Bill 431, Expungement Act Amendments. “A lot of people make mistakes when they are young or anytime and those records can haunt them forever. There’s going to be a three, five- and seven-year expungement process and instead of paying thousands of dollars these are going to be automatically looked at and if this person has had no other issues that can be expunged and they can move on with their lives,” stated Representative Watkins. Presently, individuals have to apply for eligibility, upon approval have 90 days to petition the courts and pay fees where the offenses were committed. If the process takes longer than the allotted 90 days the process must be completed again from the beginning.

Any new bills are to be filed in May for the year 2020 so if any individuals have issued or concerns are to contact Representative Christine F Watkins at (435) 650-1969 or by email at christinewatkins@le.utah.gov.