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Speaker Hughes urges coordinated response to homelessness, criticizes federal monument designations and highlights education funding
Summary
In his Jan. 23 opening address, Speaker Gregory H. Hughes called for a collaborative, multi-jurisdictional response to homelessness and behavioral health needs, criticized federal monument designations as overreach, and urged sustainable funding for public education via school trust lands and tax policy review.
In his opening remarks to the newly organized Utah House on Jan. 23, Speaker Gregory H. Hughes outlined policy priorities he expects the chamber to focus on during the 2017 session, emphasizing homelessness and behavioral health, public-lands policy and education funding.
On homelessness and behavioral health, Hughes said the problem "is going to take a collaborative effort" and warned that no single city, county or the state alone can solve it. He described encountering a constituent who, after serving 21 years in federal prison, sought help on returning to the community and who benefited from transitional housing and job supports. Hughes said the Legislature must be accountable for how state dollars are spent and insisted the state "will have every one of those dollars accounted for." He also warned about criminal exploitation of vulnerable people, saying drug dealing and human trafficking "go on in broad daylight" and that the state will work with federal law enforcement.
Hughes criticized recent federal public-land monument designations as an overreach. He said the attorney general's office described some monuments as "prescriptive and prohibitive" and called such designations an "overstep." He told the chamber: "I am calling for, and we will be pushing for the new Trump administration to rescind this national monument entirely." No federal official was present to respond in the opening session.
On education funding, Hughes discussed the school institutional trust lands (SITLA) fund as a mechanism to derive revenue for public schools, praised reforms from the 1990s that allowed the fund to grow the principal, and raised the need to study how tax structures in other states affect school funding. He framed these issues as central to the Legislature's work and said the Commission on Federalism would be reconstituted to inventory state–federal conflicts and pursue federal waivers and remedies.
Hughes also referenced work the Legislature had done on seeking Medicaid waivers and securing federal engagement to bring funding to vulnerable populations, noting prior legislative efforts that sought to align with federal Health and Human Services guidance.
The speech mixed policy framing with personal anecdotes and concluded with a call for collaboration and hard choices over the 45-day general session.
The House agreed to print the invocation and the Speaker's remarks in the House Journal and then recessed until the afternoon.
