It’s that time of year again for Castle Country Radio to conduct weekly Legislative updates with Representative Christine F. Watkins. She took time to speak over the telephone about what the legislation would be up to this 2023 General Session.
“We start the morning a little bit later, we always start at 8:00 am, but on the first day we start at 10:00 am. We have a little bit of ceremony going on and families are there. We get sworn in, everyone gets sworn in, those of us that have been there for awhile we get sworn in, and then they have all the new ones go up to the front and they get sworn in,” said Representative Watkins. Right now, they have 17 brand new representatives and will be adding another one in a week or so, making it a total of 18 new representatives this year.
The first few days of the legislation is going over various bills that may be needing to be extended or are expiring. “We call them Sunset Bills, and so in the bill its says that this program or this law will sunset in 2023. So it’s been around for five years or ten years and so in committee meetings we discuss the merits, its it doing what we wanted it to do, is it time to let it go, do we want to extend its life. If we don’t do anything it just goes away,” said Representative Watkins. The Sunset of Bills portion of the legislation is always done the first couple of days so that they can move on to new bills.
The One Size Fits Utah is going up for discussion on the hill this year, it mirrors a program that is taking place in Arizona as of last fall. “So this one is called One Size Fits Utah and what it’s doing is its attaching to this Voucher Bill, because that’s what it is, a raise for teachers. If you don’t vote for that bill, teachers are not going to get the big raise and I will tell you leadership on both sides is very supportive of this,” said Representative Watkins. As legislators its hard to see where everyone stands as there are so many new faces this year. There’s a lot of things involved in this bill so its definitely one to keep an eye on this legislative session.
If you would like to listen to the interview in its entirety please click on the link below.