Election Process Reform

• Is there enough oversight for adherence to current laws and codes. From one day voting in a booth to the extended timeframe of a robust and secure vote by mail system.

• The process should be constantly reviewed and the amount fraud going on would be statistically irrelevant. This means that if any weaknesses are found, that they should be fixed.

Representative voting districts

• Voting districts are established by the legislature but with Utahns being a co-equal legislative partner, made their visons clear with Prop 4 creating non-partisan maps.

• Rather than work to incorporate these districts into the selection process, the Prop 4 maps were immediately superseded with the legislative map.

• Prop 4 has been upheld by the courts and reviewed by the Utah Supreme court with possible appeal to the US supreme court.

Representative Voting Methods

• The vote by mail process could be reviewed, maintained and strengthened where needed

• Utah’s current mail in voting has been tried and tested and it works. This was seen during the Covid years where in-person voting was suspended and mail-in voting performed just well.

• It can always be improved where needed when issues are identified.

Campaign Finance Reform

• Local issues should to be decided at the local level. While these may align with other groups outside of Utah, there should not be an abundance of out of state monies attempting to influence what should be a local decision with local impacts.

Expand Voter Participation

• This could be more of an outreach effort.

• The voting process is well established as to the when and how. The problem is not necessarily voter access than it is effort. Gone are the days where voting was 1 day out of the year and only at an in-person specific polling location. This placed an undue effort to know where to vote and with time constraints. Utah’s mail in voting was one of the first in the nation and is a very robust process that is looked at as the mail -in voting standard. Outside of ensuring that people have the information they need on how to vote by mail and finding the candidate statements.

Government Transparency

• During my tenure on the State Records committee, I was exposed to the laws and regulations that control the amount and types of information that is available to the public. These controls help protect the government entities in areas that should be protected but by and large, the government is supposed to be for the people. Outside of specific personal aspects, such as personal calendars and doctor appointment or kids soccer games, the government's business is the people's business. The access to the information about how our government operates and well as the finances and contacts that are made during this business should be available.

Limit Partisan Influence

• The nature of governance is such that there should be a type of like mindedness grouping of ideas and opinions. This should be a good thing, however when the power balance is lopsided, it makes it too easy for outside influence to bias the decisions and the people making them. Going along to get along just helps to continue this and when our local decisions are influenced by outside members, just due to party affiliation.

Separation of Powers

• There are clear definitions of the roles and responsibilities of each branch of government. This is in place at the national and local level. Lately we have heard about judicial overreach by Utah's courts regarding legislation. This can be interpreted different ways. If the legislation is written with clear intent, then the courts can define its applicability to the subject that it is before them. If the language is not clear and the intent is not well understood, then is falls to the courts to interpret the legislative intent.

• This also is evident at the executive level. Too many times, when laws are passed but the intent is not clear, then the executive office adds another level of opinion that influences how the laws are interpreted.

Government Accountability

• A government that is not accountable to its constituents is not accountable at all. The actions we have seen recently are testing that premise.

• Prop 4 is a great example of this. The citizens put forth a proposition and obtained the required amount of support. Since passing in 2018, there has been an unending amount of effort to weaken or replace what the people voted for. Ironically with their own proposition to negate propositions and make the legislature supreme.

Fiscal Responsibility

• When allocating the publics funds for the various programs, we need to make sure that there is a reasonable amount of accountability. This is not only to ensure that the funds were spent according to the rules given, but there must also be metrics involved.

• Did the funds provided bring back the returns predicted? This is not always a monetary return like an investment; it is mostly a return for the community betterment. Did the funding results do what it was purposed for.

Taxes and Regulations

• Taxes are how our citizens pay for the infrastructure that are beneficial to the population at large. Those are the key word here 'at large' They are not intended for unique individual needs that do not benefit the general population. The being said, there are certain areas of taxation that should be addressed. There far too many entities with taxation authority that complicate the overall effect that taxes have at the individual level. It makes tax statements confusing and difficult to understand.

• Taxes should not be used as a punitive tool or for retribution. Taxing entities should have a better grasp on their budgets and better accountability of how those funds are used.

• Lately, county governments have announced double digit tax increases citing the higher costs of material and payrolls of service employees. In addition, making claims that they haven't raised taxes in years and they just cannot sustain the current level of service without these additional funds. The bottom line for the taxpayer is that taxes are raised every year and every year, more and more money is requested. Review of spending would give better control of governmental budgeting.

Housing Availability

• Historically, developers over built so they were over cautious this time which lowered availability of stock and made affordability the issue.

• There should be a reasonable path to home ownership. But along with this there need to be a reasonable discussion of the growth that will ultimately come with that.

• It seems lately that again there are only two choices, build for the sake of building to accommodate the growth or maintaining the current inventory and the infrastructure that is in place.

Education Funding

• Currently, it is property taxes that fund the K-12 schools and some Utah charter schools. Like taxes in general, as long as the funding is providing measurable and tangible results, then it could be considered a sound deal that is for the benefit of the population at large. Other funding sources can and are utilized like the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands, but these funds also flow to higher education so their impact is reduced for the K-12 schools.

• K-12 education is the most impacted area where families are hit the hardest. I feel this is due to the other resources that families need to keep their children in class like lunch money, after or before school day care for the younger students along with keeping up with the homework responsibilities.

Healthcare

• Ideally, the general need for basic healthcare needs to be generally applied and affordable. Today, many plans are through an employer which is good because it keeps costs down, but there needs to be a better plan for just general well-being care. A child sick with the flu should be able to see a general physician for general care and not a trip to the emergency room just due to a lack of basic health coverage. Will it cost more than if you had insurance, sure. But it should not be so financially burdensome for the basics, this would include preventative care. It's always cheaper to fix something early on when it's simple rather that another trip to the ER.

Immigration

• We should be in a better place with our immigration than we are now since immigrants are so important to our economy. Politician knew this was a problem but it was so big they just did not do anything. When the amnesty of the 1980's happened, this should have been the prime opportunity to make those changes with the least number of repercussions. But legislators did not respond in a timely fashion until we are where we are today. There was a bi-partisan bill that could have been passed if it had not been for the political election pressures at the national level that basically stopped it in its tracks. Now we have military style tactics being employed to 'correct' what should have been fixed. This is a lose-lose for everyone.

Homelessness

• My view of the homeless is a mixed bag. There is an entire population of people that do not have a place to call home, but it is the social dynamic that makes this one of the hardest to evaluate. Being homeless can mean different thing to different people. Sometimes, it is a family the just hit a rough patch and other times it is a person who just has no desire to be 'tied down' to the responsibilities that home life provides. In the first case, some simple assistance to get through what they are going through will work, but others need special assistance including mental health services that should to be addressed.

Environment

• From the global perspective, the environment is changing. There is no dispute. We know that the earth has always been in a dynamic state and will continue to do so. The issues that I see are the human impacts. While I don't believe we are causing all of the environmental issues we see today, but there is no doubt the we are accelerating the process. Take a look at the history. We see ice ages, warming trends, droughts and so forth. We know that this is the natural cycle of the planet. But when we add in the activities of humans to this we see that the frequency and severity of these events are becoming more frequent and more severe.

Great Salt Lake

• Our city and county's namesake are at risk. I lived back in the 80's when the lake level was at unprecedented high levels so much so that pumps were built to mitigate the high levels. Those pumps have not been used or needed and now we see the opposite. The Great Salt Lake impacts our livelihoods at so many levels; it helps bring the snow to the mountains and then back though the community for use. The excess was fed back into the lake to start the cycle again. Now with the growth of the state, that return water is not there. This will soon affect the snow pack during the winter and with the continued growth, the lake will get lower and lower. This will also disturb the lakebed dust that will eventually blow back into the community with the associated health risks.

Energy

• As people have progressed from before the industrial revolution to today, their energy needs have increased as well. We went from burning coal for heat and candles for light to the technological energy sources that we have today. Right now, these sources rely heavily on fossil fuels. While early on this was welcomed, but as communities have grown, so has energy use. So, in response, the reliance on these carbon-based fuels has grown to a level that is now affecting our health and way of life. We humans are a smart people and there are newer and more intuitive ways of still maintaining our lifestyles with the energy we use. Just as we have progressed in the past, we need to progress in the future. Carbon based fuels are a finite resource. They are not going to regenerate themselves, now or in the future, and once the resource is gone, it is gone. What will we be left with. We need to plan now to innovate and bring to market these newer and regenerating fuel sources to sustain our lifestyle and not impact our health.