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Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Cattle rancher being compensated for damage caused by elk
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. (KDVR) — It's called the Eagle Rock Ranch, located near Jefferson, Colorado. It's situated just a stone's throw from Kenosha Pass. Home's door heavily damaged in what homeowner believes is a TikTok trend That's where you'll find cattle rancher Dave Gottenborg. 'We run about 300 acres, and we run several hundred head of cattle,' said Gottenborg. In addition to Gottenborgs' cattle, there is another animal that loves to pasture there as well, the elk. 'When you've got a herd of five hundred elk on your property eating ten thousand pounds of grass a day that you have set aside for your cattle in the spring, then it causes a lot of anxiety,' said Gottenborg. Elk have been grazing on farms and ranches in Colorado for generations. It's been a financial and emotional challenge for landowners like Gottenborg. 'Migrating wildlife like deer, elk, antelope — causes damage to fences. They get tangled up in them or they run through them and break them,' said Gottenborg. That's where the brand new Elk Migration Agreement comes in. 'What the agreement does is it compensates Dave to leave half of his ranch ungrazed in any given year. And what that does is it leaves a ton of forage behind for the elk and makes it a little bit easier as they are migrating through it. Gives them some of that food and protections they are taking through their migration route,' said Travis Brammer, the director of the Property and Enrollment Research Center Brammer will be paying the Eagle Rock Ranch an undisclosed amount of funds to allow elk to pasture there in the winter. 'This is paid for entirely by unrestricted donations to PERC. No government money was involved in this,' said Brammer. Is your name Ryan? Denver meetup seeks to set world record at Rockies game Gottenborg said this first-of-its-kind agreement boils down to preserving the public interest and wildlife interest as well. 'I think it's a great step in the right direction. I want it to kind of serve as another tool in the toolbox for ranchers around the state,' said Gottenborg. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Utah legislators disagree: Should cities charge transportation fees to churches?
The Utah House and Senate are barreling toward a collision after taking opposite positions over whether religious organizations should pay city fees tied to property ownership. On Thursday, the Senate narrowly passed a House bill that would regulate city transportation utility fees after amending it to carve out certain religious properties, with Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, serving as the tie-breaking vote. Days earlier, the two chambers approved nearly identical bills distinguished only by whether they exempted churches from city fees that function like taxes. As lawmakers rush to pass hundreds of pieces of legislation, the overlap between fees and taxation, and church and state, has led to a last-minute scramble with just two days left in the 2025 legislative session. Rep. Karen Peterson, R-Clinton, came to the state Capitol this year determined to find common ground between local governments and faith groups to regulate how municipalities levy so-called 'transportation utility fees.' But on Tuesday, House lawmakers roundly rejected Peterson's 'compromise' proposal to exempt church meetinghouses, church administrative buildings and church welfare centers from road-use fees imposed by cities to fund transportation infrastructure. In a 70-3 vote, representatives opted for the original version of Peterson's bill, HB454, which would allow cities to implement transportation utility fees on all property owners if they conduct a study to ensure fee rates are 'reasonably related' to road use and follow the same truth in taxation process required for property tax changes. 'Whenever we exempt somebody, the tax doesn't go away, it just gets shifted on everyone else,' said Rep. Norm Thurston, a Republican from Provo. 'In our city that is a real problem because it's already concentrated.' One hour earlier, Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, saw his almost identical bill, SB310, pass with large margins in the Senate, but with one major difference; it would require cities to exempt all religious organizations from transportation utility fees. Whereas Peterson's failed substitute would have let cities impose these fees on church-owned stadiums, office buildings and other commercial endeavors covered by property taxes, Brammer's bill would exempt all property owned by religious organizations, including their 'auxiliaries' and 'associations.' On Thursday, Brammer, as the floor sponsor to Peterson's bill, introduced almost the exact same substitute that the House had rejected on Tuesday. The bill passed 15-14, with Adams tipping the scale, after a debate over whether churches and other nonprofits — which are also exempt in the substitute — should do more to 'pay their way.' Brammer pointed out that Utah's Constitution prohibits the taxation of religious, charitable or educational nonprofits, and that despite a 2023 Utah Supreme Court ruling, transportation utility fees effectively function as taxes because they are not directly based on the fee-payer's use of a service and are tied to property ownership. 'I don't think they're properly measuring the usage of the public asset by the religious organization,' Brammer told the Deseret News. 'We have long found that we save far more taxes by enabling religious and charitable organizations than we do by taxing them.' Cities started implementing road-use fees a decade ago, beginning with Provo and spreading to a dozen others, as decreasing gas tax revenues and increasing road maintenance costs made it difficult to find funding for badly needed infrastructure improvements without raising already high property taxes. 'It became clear that there just wasn't enough money to meet those needs,' said Cameron Diehl, the executive director of the Utah League of Cities and Towns. The controversial new funding mechanism led to a 2023 ruling from the Utah Supreme Court which determined that transportation utility fees are to be considered fees, not taxes, as long as they bear some 'reasonable relationship to the cost of the benefit or service.' To stay well within these legal bounds, the League of Cities and Towns worked with Peterson to craft strict requirements for the study cities must conduct to implement the fee, Diehl said. The studies must take into account traffic counts and apportion fee rates based on whether the traffic is mostly for residential, commercial or house of worship purposes. Cities opposed Tuesday's compromise bill because they worried that legislative exemptions for religious organizations would spread from one type of fee to another, Diehl said. Brammer said he understands the League of Cities and Towns' point of view but believes that cities are 'discounting the benefit that religious organizations play in their cities.' Rev. Dr. Curtis Price of First Baptist Church of Salt Lake City said he can see both sides of the argument as the pastor of a small congregation that occasionally struggles to pay other utility fees while doing all it can to offset its tax exemptions by contributing to the community through service, religious instruction and activities. But Curtis recognizes that in some areas of the state, churches are one of the largest property owners and it makes sense for cities to ask 'to spread that pain out a little bit' to fund shared resources. 'Those properties take resources that the city has to pay for and so I understand a need to get creative about having to resolve some of those issues,' Curtis said. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is headquartered in Utah and owns the parent company of the Deseret News, is one of the largest landowners in the state and would be impacted by this bill. Many of the lawmakers in the Legislature are also members of the church. The church did not respond to a request for comment about the legislation. Before HB454 made its way to the Senate, Adams said he is 'adamantly opposed' to the House proposal. During a media availability on Tuesday, Adams said he was 'disappointed' that the League of Cities and Towns had come out against exemptions for religious meetinghouses. Echoing a point made by Thurston and Brammer, Adams said that regardless of court rulings, transportation utility fees function like a tax. 'This is a tax, they'll call it a fee. But I just can't imagine we in Utah want to tax religious organizations and wash away that exemption,' Adams said. 'And I think that's the battle. And personally, I'm going to stand up.' Peterson's House bill will now head back to the House where it will likely be rejected, requiring the bill sponsors to come together in a conference committee to negotiate a version that can pass both chambers. If some sort of religious exemption is not included, Thurston, Brammer and Peterson alluded to potential lawsuits from religious institutions. Although the bill specifies that city transportation utility fees cannot be based on property ownership 'alone,' nonprofits could still argue that the fee is directly tied to property like a property tax, Peterson said. But this question has already been settled by the courts, according to Thurston. Provo has already included religious organizations in its transportation utility fee for a decade, he said. And while Thurston agrees that the fee is essentially a tax, he said that under the court ruling, these fees should be applied as equally as possible to avoid impacting some residents more than others while also supporting local government. 'It's a way of funding the government. Should that apply to everybody? And the answer is, yeah, it should apply to everybody,' Thurston said. 'In an ideal world, there's a better way of doing it, but in the meantime, this is what we have.'
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Utah Supreme Court disputes lawmakers' allegations that it's not productive enough
Utah Supreme Court justices John Pearce, Paige Petersen, Diana Hagen, Jill Pohlman, and Chief Justice Matthew Durrant, left to right, sit with legislators at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on the first day of the legislative session, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch) As the 2025 Utah Legislature considers a slate of bills aimed at flexing legislative influence over Utah's judicial branch of government, some Utah lawmakers have accused the Utah Supreme Court of not being productive enough. Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove — a senator who is running multiple bills that have been opposed by the Utah State Bar — called the Utah Supreme Court 'woefully unproductive' in a Senate committee hearing Tuesday. 'In 2023, they were the least productive Supreme Court in America, issuing only 25 opinions. In 2022, they only issued 41,' Brammer said, adding that last year, the court issued 46 opinions, and this year so far the court has only issued one opinion. In 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Utah Supreme Court issued 70 opinions. 'We have some serious concerns as to what they're doing, especially when they come to ask us for money for additional court of appeals judges,' Brammer said. 'So it seems to us that rather than take caseload from the court of appeals, they've come to the Legislature and said, 'We want you to fund our lack of productivity.'' 'A broad attack': Utah's judiciary fights bills threatening its independence Brammer isn't the only lawmaker to question the Utah Supreme Court's case numbers. Earlier this week, House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield — who is sponsoring HB512, a bill that the judiciary opposes that would give a legislative committee the power to recommend on the ballot whether voters should retain judges or not — also called the Utah Supreme Court the 'least productive court in America' in 2023. In response to those allegations, Tania Mashburn, director of communications for the Utah State Courts, issued a lengthy statement on Wednesday addressing the nuances of the Utah Supreme Court's case load and why it's problematic to gauge its productivity just by the number of published opinions compared to other state supreme courts. 'Comparing volumes of published opinions between states is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Different courts have different structures and publish different things,' Mashburn said. She pointed to Wyoming as an example, noting that it doesn't have an appellate court like Utah does. 'As a result, the Wyoming Supreme Court's opinion numbers include short decisions in less complex cases, such as probation revocation and sentence modifications,' she said. 'That court also publishes certain types of summary disposition orders; Utah does not.' Mashburn added that the length of opinions and orders can also reflect how courts differ state to state. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'In 2024, the Wyoming Supreme Court published 139 opinions and orders with an average length of 10.49 pages,' she said. 'In 2024, the Utah Supreme Court published 47 opinions with an average length of 20.74 pages.' Mashburn added it's also 'important to note that if the comparison is being made purely on published opinion numbers, many state supreme courts have varying numbers of justices.' She pointed to Colorado and Arizona, which both have seven justices. Those courts published 45 and 54 opinions respectively in 2024. 'However, it would be improper to infer that the five-member Utah Supreme Court is more productive than the seven-member Colorado Supreme Court,' Mashburn said, 'because we do not know their staff support level, additional constitutional responsibilities, administrative roles, and the extent of their duties to oversee the practice of law in Colorado.' At least one lawmaker, House Majority Leader Jefferson Moss, R-Saratoga Springs, is exploring expanding the Utah Supreme Court — something Supreme Court Justice Paige Petersen, in a Judicial Council meeting on Monday, expressed concerns about, comparing it to 'court packing' on the federal level. While Moss has said he wants to address 'growing caseloads, delays, and evolving legal complexities' facing Utah's highest court, Petersen said it's 'misinformation' and 'absolutely false' to say 'we need more members of the court because they have a backlog.' 'We haven't had a backlog for years,' she said, adding that the court did face a 'dip in case filings' during the COVID-19 pandemic, but 'that's been improving.' Despite experts' warnings, bill to give Utah lawmakers a say in judge elections advances Brammer on Tuesday also asserted that the Utah Supreme Court used to publish more opinions — he said on average 70 a year, and sometimes as many as 100. Mashburn also addressed that issue, saying other factors can influence that figure. 'The number of opinions the Court publishes in a given year is correlated with the number of appeals filed by litigants in the prior year and how many of those cases become ready to be heard by the Court (meaning that the parties have completed their briefing),' Mashburn said. 'The Court has no backlog of cases. As soon as cases are ready for oral argument, the Court schedules them.' Additionally, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused mass disruptions in 2020, Mashburn said there was a 'big dip in the number of appeals filed with the Court and the number of those cases that were ready to be heard by the Court.' In 2022, for example, the Utah Supreme Court received the lowest number of appellate filings of the last 10 years, she said. However, since then the number of appellate filings has steadily increased, 'and the number of opinions the Court has published each year has likewise increased, trending back toward normal.' 'Also, during the pandemic, parties in criminal appeals took much longer to complete their briefing,' Mashburn added. 'We understand that this was due to a shortage of attorneys handling criminal appeals. The consequence for the Court was that cases that normally would have been ready to be heard were not.' Both of these issues led to a 'dip' in the number of opinions the Utah Supreme Court has published in recent years, Mashburn said. 'This was not because the Court was 'unproductive,'' she said. 'The Court heard and decided every appeal before it in which the parties had completed their briefing.' Additionally, the Utah Supreme Court's opinion count doesn't paint a full picture of the justices' work. Mashburn said that number doesn't 'capture a lot of casework done by some members of the Court.' Both Justice Jill Pohlman and Justice Diana Hagen joined the Utah Supreme Court in 2022, coming from the Utah Court of Appeals. As they moved over, Mashburn said they were each 'granted permission to complete their pending Court of Appeals decisions to avoid delays to the parties and for the Court of Appeals.' 'They collectively completed 53 cases for the Court of Appeals in their first years on the Supreme Court on top of their Supreme Court caseloads,' Mashburn said. 'Of course, their additional work is not included in the Supreme Court's opinion numbers. Notably, this did not cause any backlog for the Supreme Court or slow down the Court's work.' 'Revenge streak': Utah Bar opposes flurry of bills flexing legislative influence on judiciary Additionally, Mashburn said the Utah Supreme Court has been considering cases that have been 'increasingly complex.' 'For example, the average length of an opinion in 2000 was only 5.48 pages and in 2024 it was 20.74 pages,' she said. As for complaints that the Utah Supreme Court has only issued one opinion so far for 2025, Mashburn repeated that 'there is not a backlog of cases in the Supreme Court.' 'As soon as the parties complete their briefing on a case, the matter is scheduled for oral argument,' she said. 'The Utah Supreme Court structures its work in a September to August term, similar to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court hears matters for each term from September to May.' Typically, a small number of opinions are issued in the early months of the year, she said, while most opinions are issued during the summer when arguments are not typically scheduled, similar to how the U.S. Supreme Court functions. 'Five opinions from this term have already been published, with four of those being published within two to three months of being heard,' she said. 'These opinions were published in the final months of 2024.' Mashburn also included a document detailing the Utah Supreme Court's opinion numbers and how they've been impacted by various factors. It's included below: Supreme Court Case Information SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Forecast: Enrollment slide will continue at Mesa Public Schools
Feb. 17—Bad news for Mesa Public Schools: student enrollment, which drives the budget, is likely to drop for another 10 years or more, according to a consultant. A low-birth rate and school choice continue to play into the ongoing student decline despite Arizona almost doubling its population between 1990 and 2020 to 7.3 million. "We're going to have 10 million people in 2050," said demographer Rick Brammer of Applied Economics at the Feb. 11 Governing Board study session. "But the way it is right now, we're dealing in a world where even though you see growth ... The number of students out there to serve in the state of Arizona is not growing at all. It's fixed." Brammer blamed it on birth rates. "Back at about 2006, 2007, the Great Recession, immigration legislation, all kinds of things and the birth rate basically crashed by 18%," he said, adding it was at that time the lowest birth rate in Arizona history. He said the birth rate then stabilized for three years and he and other demographers anticipated it would go back up again but the exact opposite happened. "People were so traumatized by what they saw happen in the Great Recession," Brammer said. "They acquired so much debt, they saw their parents suffer to such a degree that essentially what they all decided to do was either not have kids at all or put off the decision for later in life. "So, we saw the average age of first birth increased by five years in a space of 10 years. One of the things we know about that is that the longer you wait to have your first child, the fewer children you will have." According to Brammer, 102,000 babies were born in Arizona in 2006 versus 78,000 births in 2023 even with the overall population growing. And while the households of adults in their child-bearing years, those 25-44, has increased from 2010-20 in the district's boundary, they are mainly renters who live in multifamily units not intended for families, according to Applied Economics. Unlike total population, those under the age of 18 declined in most parts of the district, it said. The other compounding factor is school choice. "Since 2009, charter school enrollment has increased by 118,000 students, while other public school enrollment has decreased by 91,000 students," Brammer said. "Except for a little bit of growth between 2009 and about 2014 total publicly funded enrollment in the state of Arizona has not changed at all. "And so as we've introduced choice, it's taken the same size pie and cutting into more pieces. Our pain is inflicted by demographics piled on the timing of choice. That's where the real pain is." The state's Empowerment Scholarship Account program, or ESA, in 2022 was expanded to include all K-12 students eligible for vouchers. Since then the number of new students receiving vouchers to attend private schools went from 11,200 two years prior to 79,000 this year statewide, Brammer said. "Most of the people who took them early were already in a private school," he said. According to Applied Economics, the share of students previously attending a public school before receiving an ESA increased from 21% in Fiscal Year 2023 to 57% in Fiscal Year 2025. That translated to about 29,000 students leaving public schools since the program expansion. Although the program continued to grow last school year, it was not as fast as the last two years, Brammer pointed out. He assured the board that MPS, which has been losing students over the past 14 years, was not alone as most districts in established areas also have been impacted by lower birth rates and increasing enrollment choices. He added that the district like Chandler Unified, Tempe Union K-12 and Scottsdale Unified haven't fully recovered their enrollment prior to the pandemic. "These districts, I would say, are in middle- to upper-income areas for the most part," he said. "You see this drop in 2020. You got a little back but very little compared to what was lost. But so did every one of these other districts, they didn't come back. "If you look at lower socioeconomic status areas in the Valley, you'll see that a lot of kids came back. And what we know about choice is that it's not free to anybody. You have to know about it. "You have to have the money to do it and you have to have the time to do it. So this impact of choice isn't even across the Valley either." Mesa is also losing students to other public school districts. Gilbert Public Schools took the biggest chunk at 2,122 students, followed by Chandler Unified with 728 and Tempe Elementary School District, 710. But in those districts, Brammer has pointed out to their governing boards, high single-family home costs have "locked out" young families that are the most likely to have school-age children. According to Applied Economics, a total of 117 charter schools and public school districts are serving over 18,200 students living within MPS' boundary — or about 23% of its school-age population. Charter schools enrolled 13,000 Mesa kids at 100 different facilities while 17 school districts enrolled about 5,200. Brammer and Associate Superintendent Matt Strom noted that household proximity to a school plays a big part in where parents enroll their children. "There's misconceptions on who your competitors are and proximity matters," Strom said. For instance, Mesa High School's main competitor is not Mountain View but Gilbert High for students and Dobson High's main competition is not Westwood but Chandler High, Strom said. And like other districts, MPS' K-2 class size has declined the most, which is "not showing us a lot of hope for the future," Brammer said. He warned that while the 9-12 enrollment is now by far the biggest cohort, it's starting to arc down. "We know in the next five or six years, we're going to see a pretty big drop at the high-school level," he said. Brammer said that Arizona is growing but that the 18 and younger population has been unchanged for the last 15 years and "probably will continue to be for at least the next 10." Board member Marcie Hutchinson said it appeared that the state's passage of SB 1070 in 2010 also was a major factor behind the district's enrollment drop and asked how many students were lost because of it. About 8,000, Brammer responded. Much of the provisions of the anti-immigration law was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014. Hutchinson also asked how the Trump administration's push to deport people who are in the country illegally will impact enrollment. Strom said that staff uses a model to predict enrollment loss and for next school year the district anticipates losing 1,800 students. "There are several factors in that," Strom said. "One of those is immigration. This is not a political statement, I don't want people to hear it as a political statement. This is an impact on enrollment and enrollment affects our budget." He said that district administration discusses a lot if "that 1,800 number enough and do we need to figure out where are our next budgetary savings will come from if 1,800 rolls in at 2,500 due to immigration." Hutchinson referred to Superintendent Andi Fourlis' status report to the board, which mentioned that the district's "attendance numbers have gotten to now 89%." "I know that some of that is the result of fear and I worry about the impact this is going to have," Hutchinson said. She also asked how many MPS students came from other districts, which Brammer said he is able to track but didn't have the number off the top of his head. He also said that the new federal policy on immigration won't have a big impact on MPS' enrollment. "It's not going to be 8,000 because we just do not have the type of illegal population that we have now," Brammer said. "It's much less families and it's much more single adults. "I don't believe that there is the volume of people with kids to be deported that would have that kind of an impact. Will it have some impact? Yeah. I'm more worried about the fear than I am the actual event. It's keeping people home from work, too, by the way." Board member Sharon Benson wanted to know why students leave district campuses and said if MPS was able to recapture 2,000 of them it would not need to do layoffs. "I'm just going to keep beating this drum until we actually answer the question," Benson said. "What's the district doing to recapture because parents are choosing something else because we are not providing them with the product they want for their children." Brammer said that the choice of education is socially motivated — "borderline segregation — people choosing to want to go to school with people who look like them." Benson asked what evidence he based his statement on. "Well, the fact that the charter schools tend to have a much higher ratio of children of certain ethnicities than others," he responded. After Benson pressed him into agreeing it was more an economic issue behind the choice of schooling, she added that she didn't want it misconstrued that it was a race issue. "Let's not bring race into it because that is totally counterproductive to anything that we want to discuss here," she said. "We need to realize as a district parents are choosing to leave for reasons that we can probably address and that we can mitigate the things that they don't like." She asked if the district conducts an exit survey with families who leave the district. Staff said the district just started such a survey, Board member Rachel Walden admonished Brammer, saying "I don't appreciate that we paid a consulting fee for somebody to come in and tell us that charter school parents are racist." He apologized and said he didn't mean to imply that. "That's the impression I got," Walden said. "It sounded very bad, because we don't have the data on that. It could just be that charter schools are going into specific neighborhoods to build schools, and I think proximity to one's home is also a big factor in where people go." "And now we're seeing a lot of developments where there's a new housing development that goes up and then a charter school goes right up next to that new housing development. And so there's those trends, too." She said she was interested in finding out where students who left the district went to. After schools re-opened following COVID, the kids disappeared, Walden said. "The birth rate didn't change," she pointed out. "In just four years, we lost students and I think that's nationwide. "The big fervor over school boards happened when parents saw some of the stuff that was being taught in the classroom, or some of the stuff that teachers said," Walden continued. "So there is a place where I think parents have left public school. Maybe they didn't even see it in their own school but they saw what was going on in other schools that made them nervous. "So there's definitely a lot of factors that are not just birth rates. The birth rates kind of got us here with our low enrollment K through second grade. Younger kids, they're not coming in and that's going to compound as we go forward. "I think there's a trust that we need to build with the community."
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Utah State Bar claims 5 proposed judiciary reform bills may be ‘unconstitutional'
SALT LAKE CITY () — The Utah State Bar has openly come out against several bills that are moving through Utah's Capitol Hill that, if passed, would impact the role of the judiciary branch. The Bar said the five bills – , , , , and – may be unconstitutional because they remove powers from the judicial branch and undermine the separation of powers. All but one bill is sponsored by (R-Pleasant Grove). The remaining bill is sponsored by Rep. Jason Kyle (R-Huntsville). A group of 32 lawyers penned a letter to Senate and House leadership expressing concerns alongside the bar and urging lawmakers to assess the long-term implications of the forms. 'Notably, these bills will accelerate the erosion of public confidence in our judicial system and threaten the right of access to the courts of individuals and associations, including many business associations critical to the economic health of the state,' the lawyers wrote. The Utah State Bar said it has met with several legislators to express their concerns. These lawmakers have reportedly expressed a willingness to hear from lawyers and work with the Bar to find a resolution of the concerns. The Utah State Bar said this bill restricts the current standards for individuals and associations to file legal action on behalf of injured parties. It also gives new powers to the Utah Attorney General's Office to file civil actions of 'significant public importance' without qualifications for standing. Sen. Brammer, the bill's sponsor, said S.B. 203 would protect the integrity of the courts and help them from becoming a 'forum de jour' for out-of-state interests. It would also maintain access to the justice system for individuals with grievances. The State Bar, however, argues the bill attempts to change long-standing common law principles of standing. Local defense attorney Greg Skordas that the bill is 'an attempt by the legislature to make it harder for groups to challenge the constitutionality of laws they pass.' According to the Utah State Bar, S.B. 204 would create a right of 'suspensive appeal' for government defendants when a plaintiff challenging the constitutionality of a state law has been granted an injunction. The suspensive appeal would effectively remove the injunction at the request of the defendant. 'Defendants would be able to appeal a preliminary injunction straight to the Supreme Court and the law would not be enjoined during the pendency of the appeal,' The State Bar said. 'This adds new procedure to legal standards to the existing rule governing injunctions in the Utah Code. Additionally, it appears to usurp judicial authority by placing the status of the injunction in the hands of the defendant.' Sen. Brammer saying it simply seeks to ensure that legal tools are used in a way that respects all three branches of the government while also addressing concerns about the overuse of injunctions by courts to block laws passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. 'I believe this will help protect the integrity of the process of upholding the rule of law in Utah,' said Brammer. The Utah State Bar said this resolution and bill work together to grant legislative auditors the authority to require the production of privileged information or information prepared in anticipation of litigation from individuals or entities subject to an audit by the legislative auditor. 'This legislation attempts to govern the practice of law by altering the nature of the attorney-client privilege and the ability for a government client to rely on the confidentiality of the communications with their counsel,' the State Bar argued. Neither the bill nor resolution have been heard on the Senate floor as of Friday, Feb. 14. The final bill the Utah State Bar has raised concerns over is H.B. 154, which would to retain a judge in judicial retention elections from 50% to 67%. The Utah State Bar said this increase would be the highest in the nation, making it difficult to attract and retain qualified judges. 'This will allow outside and special interests to campaign against judges when they only have to convince one-third of the populace to vote against a judge,' said the Bar. 'No need to change what is a very successful and nationally recognized judicial retention process.' Some Senate leaders previously expressed some doubt about the bill, which was proposed by Rep. Kyle. Sen. Kirk Cullimore (R-Draper) he was aware of other states that have higher thresholds than Utah but was not sure the proposal passed constitutional muster based on retention elections. 'I guess it's not totally off the wall, I just haven't heard about it or thought about it in the context of Utah law or the Utah Constitution,' said Cullimore. The list of bills seeking to make adjustments to the judicial branch comes at a time when Utah's legislative and judicial branches have been at odds. In the summer of 2024, Utah's Supreme Court handed a blow to Utah's legislature, ruling that they when they gutted a citizen-led initiative to create an independent redistricting commission to draw new Congressional boundaries. Utah's highest court said the move may have violated Utahn's right to 'alter and reform' their government but the case is still moving through the lower courts. House and Senate leaders both called the Supreme Court's decision 'one of the worst rulings' they have ever seen and promised judicial reforms. The Utah legislature was dealt another blow when Utah Supreme Court justices from the 2024 November ballot. The Supreme Court argued that the legislature failed to meet a constitutionally required publication requirement, which was another decision that frustrated legislative leaders. Lindsay Aerts contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
