By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
Following a 45-day session that saw 959 bills introduced and 582 passed, the 2025 general session of the Utah State Legislature has come to an end. Rep. Christine Watkins joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss what happened during the session, the bills she had passed and the impact this session has had on the general public.
“It’s so nice to be home; you just have no idea,” joked the Representative, opening our conversation.
Outside of the large number of bills passed – second to only 2024 – the legislature welcomed an abnormally large freshman class of 19 legislators. “You get there and you don’t know that we have traditions,” explained Rep. Watkins,” we have rules, whether they’re written down or not. There are written rules, and we change them. Sometimes, we change them because people get out of line, and we have to make rules about something. So, it was a training session for a lot of them because we normally don’t have that many new legislators.
To close the session, Rep. Watkins was awarded the rare honor of serving as Speaker Pro Tempore,” It was so much fun. And it was something that, honestly, is a rare privilege for any legislator, and I was never expecting it. And when the speaker came down and knelt beside me on the floor and said, ‘Would you like to do this?’ I said, ‘well, heck yeah.” Watkins continued,” And so I went through about a five-minute training, and then it was just a matter of when he decided he wanted me to do it. And I’m telling you, we all get excited for the person who gets that privilege. And so they were all excited for me. I got all these pictures, and it was just a once-in-a-lifetime honor. And I found out what the speaker has to do all day when he’s up there and I don’t know how they do it, because there’s a lot of moving parts to being the speaker.”
Bill-wise, it was a successful session for Watkins, introducing 12 pieces of legislation and successfully passing 50% of them. She first introduced HB04, which set the economic and community development base budget. Watkins explained why this is necessary:” It’s just a base bill so that if something happened where we had to shut down, we would have a base budget. We make sure that we have that budget done very early on to the session. And we have those base bills so that if something happens, the state moves ahead and we don’t fall off any cliffs.”
Recently signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox, HB33, which Watkins introduced, modifies how child welfare reports are handled,” That’s the bill that will hopefully stop the weaponizing of DCFS because what we had were ex-spouses, ex-girlfriends, boyfriends, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, who were calling DCFS, leaving an anonymous tip saying this person is neglecting their child or children and not feeding them, et cetera, et cetera. So then DCFS has to go check it out. Nothing’s wrong, but we’ve wasted their time. And this happens all over the state.” Watkins continued,” So now you can’t just call in an anonymous call. You have to leave your name and your phone number. And if they find out that you’re doing false reports and they just have to figure out that you’ve done it, they send that report to the police office and they’ll send you a letter and say you’ve been charged with a second, I think it’s a Class B misdemeanor, and they can either fine you or put you in jail.”
Also during this session, Watkins ran HB79 or the adaptive driving equipment amendments – a bill cosponsored by the Castle Country’s state Sen. David Hinkins. This bill removes the sales tax on the purchase of adaptive driving equipment. However, with the removal of the sales tax, the bill was hit with a fiscal note, posing a potential problem in its passage. “I’m gonna tell you, I was really surprised it was funded and passed. And just so everyone remembers, if you buy the equipment brand-new, you don’t have to pay sales tax, or if you buy a car that has already been equipped with it from a dealer.”
The Representative was able to amend how technical colleges are allowed to design new facilities through HB91,” they couldn’t do anything unless they came to the legislature if they wanted to build a new building or think about building a new building. So what we did was we changed it. They can plan, they can have drawings, and they can figure out how much it’s going to cost. They can do that now. And then they come to the legislature with that information and see if they can get the funding.”
Switching focus to energy production, Watkins and Hinkins again teamed up for HB212, which deals with advanced transmission technology. “This bill just says to any of the large utilities that look at the software programs that are coming online, that are available, that will make it so that you can use transmission lines even better. You can actually increase their ability by 20%. And then if you have to buy, you choose that, and you can go in front of the Utilities Commission and ask for permission to recoup that cost.” Watkins added,” This is a biggie because it costs a lot of money, takes a lot of time to build new transmission lines. So if we can use the ones we have to their best ability, then that’s what we want to do.”
One bill that succeeded without passing was HB181, which instead of going through the legislative process was instead adopted by the State Office of Education, with Watkins emphasizing,” We all know the best bill or the best law is the one that we don’t have to do.”
The last major legislation Watkins passed was HB352 or the Geologic Carbon Storage Amendments,” a couple of years ago, we passed a bill saying that Utah could apply for primacy over class six gas wells. And those are the things that we have in Duchesne and Uintah County. When they applied to the EPA, they wrote back, saying there has to be a fine or punishment if someone’s doing something wrong. So we had to come back through the whole process of running a bill to add that if they do something wrong, they can be fined up to $5,000 a day until they get it fixed.”
One failure Rep. Watkins faced during the session came at the hands of a fiscal note, with HB83 unable to gain funding. “If I want to do that one, I’m going to have to figure out where to get the money from and that can be done. So I’ve got a while before the next session to see if I can figure that one out.”
Speaking on the legislature as a whole, Watkins covered this year’s state income tax changes,” we reduced the state income tax rate to 4.5%, and we’ve been doing a little bit every year for the last couple of years. So I liked what some of them said when they were writing in an article that Utah is taking a very cautious approach, which is a little bit every year. Some states just wipe it out, and then in a year or two, they’re back reinstating it because they couldn’t make it without that. So we’re being cautious, trying to help the people who live here.
Additionally, the legislature modified Utah’s social security tax:” Now a couple can earn up to $90,000. If they make $90,000 or less, they don’t have to pay taxes on social security. For an individual person, I believe it’s $55,000. And the governor wanted to do away with it, period. But again, we have to be cautious.”
Finally, the body approved several raises for teachers and other educators,” The teachers got a 4% to the WPU (Weighted-Pupil unit). They also all got a $1,400 increase, which is part of it, most of it is salary, and a little bit goes to the benefits that they have to pay on that. Then, the other employees in the school -and there’s a list of which ones qualify – get a one-time $1,000 bonus. But for the teachers, this is permanent on their salaries.”
In closing, Rep. Watkins stated,” We did some good things in the legislature this year, and we stopped some things that should not have gone through. And some of the bills, I’ve received emails from people saying, ‘oh, you shouldn’t have voted for this bill’. One of the things that happens is that some bills will pass no matter what, because they belong to the Speaker or the President of the Senate. But we make sure if it comes to us and it’s really not great, that they make the changes that we need done.”