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Senator Owens introduces $5.9 million RFA to address conservation officer pay inequities
Summary
Senator Owens and the Utah Conservation Officers Association asked the Natural Resources budget committee to fund a $5.9 million request for an agencywide pay scale to address large disparities created after last year’s law enforcement unification (House Bill 469). No formal vote was taken; the committee said it would consider the request.
Senator J. Owen Owens introduced a request for appropriations (RFA) to the Natural Resources budget committee seeking $5,900,000 to create a formal pay scale and address compensation inequities among Utah’s natural resource officers.
The RFA was presented as a response to last year’s unification of four law‑enforcement groups into a single Division of Law Enforcement under the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Ethan Justinger, president of the Utah Conservation Officers Association (UCOA), told the committee the unification left officers on widely divergent pay scales and created “large scale inequities” that threaten retention.
Why it matters: Committee members and presenters said the state relies on career…
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