11-04-2025
Will there be any veto overrides from 2025? Here's what Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz said about it
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — It's still unclear whether any of the six vetoes from the 2025 legislative session will be overridden, but Utah's House Speaker Mike Schultz is not completely closing the door on it.
According to Utah's Constitution, lawmakers have until May 6 — or 60 days after the last day of the legislative session — to reconvene for an override session. It also lays out that two-thirds of the members in both chambers must agree in order to hold that session.
Both the House and Senate are currently polling their members, but majority leaders won't elaborate on where those votes lie.
But, House Speaker Mike Schultz joined Inside Utah Politics with Lindsay Aerts for an episode set to air Sunday, April 13.
'Well, we'll see what happens,' he said. 'We're in the process of continuing to have the dialog with our members. … We respect the governor's vetoes. Some of them I agree with, some of them I don't agree with. And so, as we go through the process, we work with the House, we work with the Senate to see where the members are at.'
The Speaker was asked to clarify which vetos he disagreed with, but he wouldn't elaborate.
'You can look at the ones I voted against,' he said.
The Speaker originally supported four of the six bills Cox vetoed. Those include the bill to reroute local property taxes for education funding to the state, a bill on using , , and the bill giving the Governor and Senate the power to appoint Utah's chief justice.
When asked specifically about a veto of the chief justice bill, Schultz said that Cox's reasoning for the veto included some support for picking the justice despite being a power he did not want. Cox mainly took issue with the fact that the bill also required appointment and reconfirmation by the Senate every four years.
'So we'll continue to have those discussions,' Shutlz said. 'If it doesn't get overridden and worked out this year, (it's) something we'll have discussions around next year,' he said.
The Governor has said that a special session to fix some bills from the 2025 session will be needed. That would be separate from the veto override session, and the Governor would set the agenda for that.
So, it's possible that negotiations between Cox and legislative leaders also include adding a compromised version of appointing the chief justice, or any other veto, to stave off an override.
Cox wants to fix H.B. 263 – Election Amendments, which would allow some sensitive election returns to be made public. Cox said he agrees with the transparency aspect of this bill, so he signed it, but said the sponsor and county clerks who largely opposed it had agreed to fix 'important changes.' He didn't elaborate on what those were.
H.B. 356 – County Government Amendments will change how smaller county and city councils are elected. Instead of each member being elected 'at large' or by the entire county, this bill dictates that members are elected by districts. Large counties, like Salt Lake, already do this. Cox said this bill needs fixing because of some 'unintended consequences.'
Cox also wants the legislature to reappropriate $3.5 million that was supposed to go to Sundance but won't now that they've decided to leave Utah for Boulder, Colorado.
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