SALT LAKE CITY — There’s going to be another special session of the Utah Legislature next week, the sixth since the end of the 2020 Legislature in March — and likely not the last, as lawmakers continue to grapple with the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
“I’m concerned about having so many special sessions. I do not want a full-time Legislature,” Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, told the Deseret News. “Quite frankly, I believe pretty passionately that Utah has done well because we have a part-time Legislature. I want to keep us part time.”
But Adams said lawmakers need to meet Aug. 20 because they need to deal with the “unintended consequences” of recently reducing the $20 billion state budget that took effect July 1 to $19.2 billion to handle the projected revenue shortfall as workers lost jobs and spending slowed.
Other issues that can’t wait include whether to extend Gov. Gary Herbert’s emergency declarations related to COVID-19, the Senate leader said. He said he believes the state “has done a really, really good job of managing” the deadly virus.
So does House Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, who also raised concerns about the Legislature all but working full time in recent months.
“I do worry about that. One of the benefits of being in Utah is we have a citizen legislature. In the time of the pandemic, everyone has risen to the occasion,” the speaker said, warning that it is “not sustainable” for lawmakers who also have full-time jobs.
He said the focus of the special session is making “decisions about how to position the state to manage the pandemic and the economic and health consequences of it. And to make the highest and best use of the state funds and federal funds that we have.”
The approach is like a barbell, Wilson said, with the weight of spending divided between health care needs and restoring the state’s economic vitality. There is $150 million in federal COVID-19 relief money still to be spent, he said.
Some will go to replenish a program created to help small, Utah-based businesses that ran out of some $30 million in available funds within hours, the speaker said, as well as assistance to nonprofits and some $20 million for schools that are reopening under new conditions.
Senate Budget Chairman Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, said some of the federal coronavirus funds that will go to schools, as an example, will support providing teachers with audio aides so they can be heard in the classroom while wearing face masks and protective shields.
There’s also plans to spend the federal funds on adding more intensive care unit hospital beds “just in case,” the senator said, adding it makes sense to plan ahead for a possible second wave of the virus later this year. Additional mobile testing capabilities for the virus on job sites is also a likely use, he said.
The relief funds may also be used for an advertising campaign to encourage Utahns to keep up with their regular medical checkups, as well as the ongoing effort to prod residents into voluntarily wearing face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Stevenson said.
When it comes to the budget, Stevenson said, “We’re just fixing the hot spots now,” adding that even though revenues haven’t been quite as hard-hit as initially anticipated, he’s not sure that will last. However, he said a few smaller programs cut in June could be restored.
That could include adding back funding to promote Utah’s 18-year-old Newborn Safe Haven law permitting mothers to safely relinquish babies at a hospital with no questions asked, now up to 30 days after birth instead of within 72 hours.
There is also expected to be legislation dealing with alcohol regulation in the special session, Stevenson said, but it will be focused on technical changes, such as allowing airport licensees to move to the newly built facility later this year without reapplying.
But there will be no loosening of the state’s liquor laws, he said, despite requests to lower prices and ease some regulations by the struggling restaurant industry, and concerns about the lack of contactless pickup at state-run stores.
The November election will also be a topic, with the restriction on in-person voting put in place for the June 30 primary due to the virus expected to be eased so it would be possible for counties to set up polling places for those who prefer that option to voting by mail.
“I don’t think we know what November will be like,” Adams said. “There will have to be flexibility.”
Wilson said much of what needs to be done next week is technical, such as a bill allowing wills to be signed electronically, since elderly and other Utahns living in care centers aren’t able to receive visitors during the coronavirus crisis. Lifting enrollment caps on online charter schools also falls into that category, he said.
Both the Senate president and the House speaker said some other issues that have been discussed for a special session agenda, such as giving parents a tax credit for the time their children were out of school, will likely wait until the 2021 Legislature begins meeting in late January.
Also not expected to be on the agenda is bonding for state projects to create jobs, they said.
“I think we need to look at bonding,” the Senate president said, but not at this point. At least one additional special session is anticipated. Utah leaders talked this spring about tapping into some $3 billion in bonding capacity to boost the state’s tourism infrastructure as a stimulus measure.
Wilson said that, too, may wait until the regular session in January. But the speaker said there is broad support for bonding “sooner rather than later.”
It is not clear whether lawmakers will again call themselves into special session next week, as they did for the first time in April under a recent change to the Utah Constitution. Before that change was approved by voters, only the governor could call a special session and set the agenda.
Gov. Gary Herbert had little to say Thursday about a special session.
“That’s yet to be determined entirely. I’ve had some preliminary discussions with legislative leadership,” Herbert told reporters Thursday. “I think there are issues that they would like to address, that they want to call themselves into session regarding.”
The governor did not specify what those are, other than that they deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, but said “they are issues that I would probably concur in and say, ‘Yeah, I’m happy to call them into session, too.’ So maybe it will be a mutually acceptable situation where we both call it.”
He said a decision will likely be made by next Tuesday.