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Staff briefs council on four boating-related bills: AIS education, insurance verification, registration timing and watercraft definitions
Summary
Division staff summarized HB147 (AIS amendments), SB27 (insurance reporting and registration letter timing), SB52 (registration reporting expansion) and SB200 (watercraft definition changes, including eFoils and jet devices). No formal council action was taken.
At the Feb. 4 meeting the division staff provided a legislative update outlining four bills affecting boating policy in Utah.
Ty Hunter, voting program manager, told the council the division is monitoring House Bill 147, described as “aquatic invasive species amendments,” which would remove paddlecraft from a mandatory education requirement and make housekeeping changes about which division issues AIS decals.
Hunter summarized Senate Bill 27 as proposing an insurance-verification system: insurers would report liability coverage for boats to a third-party service (identified in the update as InsureRight). That data would be available to dispatch and officers so they can verify on-water insurance; repeated noncompliance could lead to registration revocation and reinstatement fees. Hunter said SB 27 would also limit the months when the state automatically sends uninsured-registration letters to April through October instead of year-round.
Senate Bill 52 was described as expanding the scope of the registration/insurance reporting system to cover more vehicle and vessel types so the Tax Commission can identify Utah residents who register vehicles out of state but carry Utah insurance.
Senate Bill 200 was presented as a follow-up to earlier boating law changes. Hunter said it contains (1) bookkeeping changes to the Utah boating grant structure, (2) a narrowed personal-watercraft definition now explicitly tied to jet-propelled devices while expanding to other propulsion devices such as eFoils, and (3) new language to define “water jet device” for devices like the Jetlev and flyboards.
Hunter invited questions and urged members to follow bill progress at le.utah.gov and to contact legislators or sponsors if they wished to register support. Council members did not take a formal vote on any bill during the meeting.
No action was taken by the council on legislative items during the meeting; staff said they would continue to monitor the bills and notify the council of hearing schedules.
