Entering the 2025 session of the Utah State Legislature, several seats were filled by new faces following the 2024 election. Within the Castle Country, one new Rep. was picked up as Logan Monson works to represent House District 69 consisting of Emery, Grand, Wayne, Garfield, Kane and San Juan counties.

Rep. Monson called into the KOAL newsroom to discuss his first weeks in the legislature as well as preview what his points of emphasis for future legislation might look like.

Previously serving as a city council member and mayor in Blanding, we asked Monson how these positions have helped him transition into the legislature,” it’s been fast and furious. It’s been busy, but good. I mean, the government runs at all kinds of speeds and different levels, and most times it’s slow, but the legislative session is busy. So it’s been great. It’s been a good transition coming from the city government side of things and then moving to the state side of things. It’s a big district to cover, but it’s good.”

During the 2025 State of the State address, Gov. Spencer Cox joked that” During this first week, you’ll wonder “how on earth did I get here?” By your second week, though, you’ll settle in and instead start to wonder, “how on earth did the rest of these people get here?” When asked if there was any truth to this statement, Monson replied,” there is a sense of feeling like, how did I get here every time I pull up to the Capitol? It’s just such an amazing experience, such a beautiful place to be, and a great opportunity to represent people that I love. So that is true.”

He continued,” And then as far as everyone else goes, everyone’s been great. All of the previously serving legislators have been excellent to work with. The staff has been great. There are times when you hear of something and you’re like, ‘I wonder where that came from or I wonder where that idea came from or how that person came up with this.’ But honestly, everyone’s been really good to work with.”

Switching gears, Monson discussed his only current piece of legislation. HB275 or the First Responder Volunteer Tax credit. “Living in rural Utah, we have a lot of people that love to volunteer. They love to spend their time doing things that they love, whether that’s search and rescue, firefighters or any emergency responder. They’re usually doing that because it’s something they have a passion for. They have to make a living doing something else, but they love doing it. Things are getting expensive for people. And I wanted to try and find a way that we can still incentivize people to be volunteers, but also give them a little bit of a break financially when it comes to just life and making things work.”

Monson then spoke on the challenge of representing such a widespread district which covers six counties. “The culture is different. And it is because I think that every one of those counties has communities that fall within it that are very tight-knit, close communities. I think that that’s what makes the cultural difference the biggest thing. But the mentality is the same. People want things to be, they don’t want the government involved in everything that they’re doing. They want to be able to go and do the things that they love in the rural places that they live in.” He added,” So my focus has been to try and get information out to people by email, by social media. We’ll keep that going. We’ll have weekly updates for everybody as far as how things are going. So if you haven’t seen that, then you can subscribe and get our weekly newsletters. We’ll post stuff in papers and things like that. But it’s just trying to communicate and effectively represent everybody within such a big district.”

Moving forward, we asked Monson what his focus will be for the rest of the session,” I’ve done a lot of work and time on prevention efforts, especially with youth coalitions. The land issues that we deal with in rural Utah are a big deal to me. So we’ll focus on those and see if we can piece some of that together. Education is a big piece. That’s public education. That’s home-school. That’s higher education. And then health care. I think those are the things that I’ve focused on because it naturally fits my background. As a nurse, health care falls in line. My wife’s a teacher and I have kids.”

In closing, Rep. Monson shared,” Just be involved, be active, be engaged, reach out, call, text, email, come up to the Capitol. If anybody’s up here ever, we would love to show you around. We would love to show you kind of what a day is like, an hour is like. Be engaged, be part of the process and get involved in making some changes.”