The start of the 2025 session of the Utah State Legislature is right around the corner, starting on Jan. 21. For the Castle Country Area, this means Rep. Christine Watkins and Sen. David Hinkins are getting ready to make the trip to Salt Lake City to advocate for Eastern Utah. Rep. Watkins stopped by the KOAL newsroom to preview the 2025 session.
Entering the session, this year poses a unique challenge for Watkins and the rest of the legislature, as 18 new representatives are entering the legislature. “ We have them on both sides of the aisle, but most of them are on the Republican side,” explained Watkins,” It feels like I’m gonna end up with a whole class full of kids that I don’t know their names. And so, it will change the face of the legislature. Even though we’re still a super majority, we have a lot of diversity coming in. And that truly represents the urban areas, so it’s going to be a unique session.”
In terms of assignments, Watkins will be on the House Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Committee, House Public Utilities, Energy, and Technology Committee and serve as the chair for the Economic and Community Development Appropriations Subcommittee. “I’ve always been on Natural Resources. As long as I’ve been in the legislature, that’s an important one,” explained the Representative,” This year, I was put on Public Utilities. That’s new to me. I’ve been working with a legislative subcommittee about energy in Utah. And then my Economic Development one, it’s sort of the same committee, but they’ve changed the entities that we will be over.”
Watkins then walked us through two bills she’s looking to pass during the session,” I work in the Division of Child and Family Services area. After the tragic summer we had with kids, one of my bills will allow DCFS and the police to decide when they need to get a warrant to go into a home. And this is only if a family doesn’t answer the door, doesn’t answer the phone, and can’t get eyes on kids. So I’m not anticipating any problems with that one. And so that one’s going to be an important one.”
She added,” Another one is when we have families that DCFS takes their kids away from them, what they do is if they meet a certain income threshold, and it’s pretty low, they charge them child support. And so here we are trying to get a family to get their act together and do what they need to to get their kids back because it’s cheaper for the family to have the kids and be good, strong families in the community. We hit them up with child support, and a lot of times they just can’t do it. And it hangs over their head. So I want to do away with that and DCFS is supporting it.”
One topic that has dominated the talk of legislative leadership is higher education within the state, with House Speaker Mike Schultz aiming for a 10% budget decrease for the state’s public universities. We asked Watkins what her thoughts on the proposal were,” when we talk about it, and very specifically the speaker and a few others, what they feel and what they see is there’s a lot of money being spent on programs that are not great for a return on investment. So there is a great interest in our technology schools. And a lot of people want to be able to take some money from higher ed, put more of that into the technical schools.”
In closing, Rep. Watkins shared,” I will just tell you, they talk about all the things that we’re going to do. I just tell people,’ Hold on’, because we never know exactly what we’re going to do until we get up there and do it. And things can drop off the table and other things can be put on. So just hold on and I’ll try and keep you informed.”
The 2025 session of the Utah State Legislature begins on Tuesday, Jan. 21, and will last until Friday, March 7. For more information on the Utah State Legislature, you can visit its website here.