Castle Country Radio is conducting weekly Legislative updates with Representative Christine F. Watkins while the general session is taking place this year. She will give a brief report on the dealings taking place on the hill twice a week, so she took time on Tuesday to speak over the telephone about House Bill 280 and House Bill 285.

House Bill 280 is Water Related Changes which Representative Watkins was not to keen on at this point, “So they want to have this board of water resources impose, that’s a big word there, impose a water use fee and to study the fee and consolidation of funds and accounts, and it names all these different things, so they want to have another fee on water users.” The interesting part of this bill is they don’t know how much it will be, nor do they have a timeline of when it will start. But they want this bill to pass and go into law without all the details known at this time.

“So there was a lot of push back by other representatives, so we’ve held the bill. There were people that are still real supportive of it, I’m not. I’ll have to come home this next weekend and talk to some of the water people in Emery and Carbon County, and Duchesne and see how they feel about it. As of right now, I struggle supporting something that they can’t even really tell me specifics,” stated Representative Watkins. Its unknown if the bill will be brought up again without all the particulars in place.

House Bill 285 is Labor Union Amendments which is a bill sponsored by Representative Jordan D. Teuscher. “He wants to come in and he wanted to stop the union/associations from being able to have payroll deductions for their dues to belong to their union/association. They want every union/association to recertify every five years and so this is quire a lengthy process, it’s expensive, and it takes away from obviously the daily work that they are doing for their members,” said Representative Watkins. She feels that this could get interesting once this bill hits the floor and anticipates that there will be a lot of discussion and debate on the matter.