By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
With the 2025 session of the Utah State Legislature at its halfway mark, Rep. Christine Watkins joined Castle Country Radio to provide this week’s legislative update. In an education-focused conversation, Rep. Watkins covered bills that could both benefit education and a few that could harm it in rural areas.
Saturday, Feb. 15, was celebrated as Susan B. Anthony Day, honoring the famous suffragette who fought for women’s right to vote. Utah is unique in that it legalized voting for women not once but twice. The first was in 1870 before being stripped away by the Edmunds-Tucker Act, but it was reinstated in 1896 when Utah officially became a state.
As a part of this celebration, Rep. Watkins explained what it’s like being a woman at Utah’s Capitol Hill: “For me, it’s been a unique experience because when I first went up on the Hill, there weren’t many women in the legislature. When I went back in 2017, there were six or seven Republicans. And over the last couple of years, we have made significant gains. And we’re now at about 25% of women in the legislature.”
She continued on the importance of having female representation on the Hill: ” We bring out bills that sometimes the men won’t think about. There are bills that women will go to women and say, you know, we have a problem with this. We’re still fighting for child care and some of those issues. But it’s a big responsibility. And we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.”
Moving onto current legislation, Watkins first spoke on HB181 or the School Week schedule amendments. “that came about from some constituents in another county, and they felt like their voices were not heard in the process of the district taking a couple of their schools and going to a four-day school week. So we put together a bill with some things that we wanted the state school board to do when a school or a district comes and says we want a four-day school week.” She added,” Thursday, I met with five wonderful women from the state office of education who, most of them were attorneys, and they work with the process of the four-day school week. They let me know that in their rule, they had about 75% of what I had put into the bill, but they loved the other parts I put into it. So we had a great discussion, and they agreed to put the requirements that my other constituents and I wanted into their own rule.”
Another education-based bill covered by the Representative is HB91, which amends provisions relating to capital development projects for technical colleges. “In current law, it says that a technical college can’t do anything about planning for a new building. They can’t draw up what they want it to look like. They can’t do anything without first coming to the legislature. And all of the technical colleges were like,’ We need to at least be able to plan and know what we’re looking at and how much it is going to cost before we come to the legislature.’ So that’s passed through the House and the Senate, and it’s technically sitting on the governor’s desk waiting for his signature.”
Initially, the bill was much larger, but Rep. Watkins explained how she was able to trim it down,” Now, originally in that bill was a whole section on funding because in the northern technical schools, most of their students are people who have graduated from high school and are moving on with their education. In our more rural areas, we have a lot of concurrent students. That is the kids that are in high school. So the urban ones were getting full funding for their students, and we’re not getting funding for our technical schools for these concurrent students. And so we took that part of my bill and put it in with Rep. Karen Peterson’s higher education bill. And that’s the one that’s everything in higher education.”
Moving onto other bills signed into law, Watkins discussed HB267 – which removes the ability for public employers to engage in collective bargaining with unions – and was recently signed by Gov. Spencer Cox. Watkins has been outspoken about the negative effects of this bill and stated,” I was hoping the governor maybe wouldn’t sign it and allow some more negotiations, but he did. So I’m just like the rest of you. I watch on TV, and I think they’re talking about getting the signatures and doing an initiative, but they have to do a lot of signatures, well over 100,000 in about a month. So we’ll see if they can do it, if they decide to do it. And I know there were some things said up on the Hill about unions, but I’m telling you, they’re not true. So, I voted against it all the way through. I’m sorry that it was passed, and we’ll just have to see what happens.”
One bill currently being worked on has caused concern for teachers as it would change how money is distributed across the state. “We do have one that was started on the House side by Rep. Val Peterson because we didn’t get a chance to vote on Amendment A in the last election; that was the one that would have taken the sales tax off food if we could have changed where property tax would have gone. So what they’ve done, and it’s kind of like a shell game, if this bill passes, it will take money, all the property tax money, take it up to the state, put it in the general fund, and then give the same amount of money back to the school districts from the education fund. They won’t lose interest. They won’t lose any money. It will be as if it didn’t happen. This will allow a little bit more freedom in how other money is spent in the state. So I had a lot of school people calling, and they were panicking. So I checked into it, and they’ll be basically held harmless.”
In closing, the Representative shared,” I want you to know we had our Eastern, Rural Eastern Leadership Academy people come up this week. And it was so much fun to see people from home and have dinner with them one night and take them on a little bit of tour of the Capitol. We have great people in our community. And I appreciate them taking the time to come up.”
*Photo Courtesy of the Utah House of Representatives