By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
Representative Jon Cox (R), from Ephraim, gave a brief legislative update to Nephi City Council members on Tuesday.
Cox, State of Utah House of Representatives, District 58 which encompasses the populated area of East Juab County and all of Sanpete County, also fielded questions from council members.
Cox is on the Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee, the House Business and Labor Committee, the House Rules Committee and the House Transportation Committee.
He is the chief sponsor of H.B.97, which concerns the election of officials of a new municipality.
In the 2015 general session is also the chief sponsor of Education Amendments (In Process), Federal Toll Waiver (In Process), High School Athletic Classifications (In Process), Justice Courts--Funding (In Process), Online Voting Amendments (In Process) and Voter Preregistration Amendments (In Process).
"In the 2014 Legislature," said Mark Jones, mayor, "there was a bill before the legislature that was gaining momentum and steam. It was SB 243."
The city had great concerns that the bill would have an adverse affect on small cities. The bill would have required utilities (including municipal utilities) to charge and collect $1 per month from customers and remit the collection to an interlocal entity that would seek methods to improve air quality.
The Utah League of Cities and Towns (ULCT) staff and members voiced concerns in committee last week—including the state of Utah using local utility billing and local funds to pay for state priorities, the lack of detail about the interlocal entity that would receive the money, and the administrative burden—but the bill passed out of committee because of the political effort to improve Utah's air quality. ULCT joined a coalition of other opponents and the bill never came up for a vote in the House.
"We, as a city, contacted Jon regarding our skepticism and he was very responsive and supportive," said Jones, "our interaction was very positive."
Cox said he was very interested in the issue of transportation and funding of roads in his district.
Class B and C road funds were insufficient to maintain the roads in rural communities, he said. Cities were not able to keep up with the need to maintain roads and that meant that they were having to dip into general funds to just meet minimum maintenance standards.
"I would like to give local areas some way of taxing," he said. "There ought to be enough flexibility for you (local councils) to decide what you want to do."
He said a gas tax was being considered.
"There is an appetite to address transportation," said Cox.
He said that the state dealt with a lot of tourism, still, the state was requiring that property tax be spent for roads and, he thought, tourists who use the roads should also pay rather than expecting a narrow group of property tax payers to foot the bill. A gas tax would help with that.
There would be a few items that the legislature would need to tackle. Of course, one would be the budget and another would be the state prison relocation.
Don Ball asked if the site in West Juab County had been shot down.
To Cox's knowledge, that site had not been proposed and the Gunnison site was not a good prison locality to expand. The population of those who could service the prison was too small. Already, the prison there was having to use personnel and services.
"The cure to apathy is to propose a prison relocation," said Cox.
One issue that he had proposed a bill for was the need for some sort of multiplier to be used in determining what sports teams from private educational institutions would be allowed to play what public school teams.
"The bill language is still in draft form," he said.
In some states, schools are subject to a 1.65 enrollment multiplier. That is happening because, Increasingly, private school high school students are disproportionately winning state championships to the exclusion of their public school peers.
"Judge High School will bump up but Juan Diego is bumping down," said Cox.
This disparity between public and private school championship possibilities has caused many states to implement enrollment "multipliers," placing private school sports teams into divisions comprised of much larger, more competitive public schools, and making state championships more difficult to achieve for private schools.
"There is an unequal playing field," said Cox.
The reasons for such multipliers place an emphasis on the unfair advantage private schools enjoy due to their ability to enroll students outside of "boundaries."
The goal is to "level the playing field."
Another issue he hopes to address is the "vote by mail" question.
"I don't like having a mandate," he said. "I do like vote by mail."
The state has expensive election equipment valued at $29 million which came from federal money.
"It is too expensive for cities to use for city elections," said Blair Painter, city recorder. "We don't use it."
One other point that had been raised was the possibility of voter fraud existing with the vote by mail system.
In Nephi history, every vote had proved to be important. One election, he understood, was determined by a coin toss and others were within a few votes.
Painter said that this past election was an off-year election, meaning that there was no presidential or top-level race. Nevertheless, there was a good voter turn-out.
There were ways to make on-line voting more secure.
With the right to vote also came the counterbalance, the right not to vote.
Cox said he voted against SB54, a long and complicated bill but did have an amendment he wanted to propose to the bill.
Basically, during the 2016 election cycle, candidates can choose to gather voter signatures (2,000 for state Senate, 1,000 for state House) and go directly to the open party primaries or they can choose to not collect signatures and go through the current caucus/delegate/convention process.
Candidates may also choose to do both and go to the conventions and get on the primary ballot through voter signature petitions.
The GOP has challenged SB54.
He had worked for Senator Bennett, said Cox, and should hate the caucus process. However, he liked the caucus convention where those on the state level came to the rural areas during the convention.
"I don't like secret ballots," said Cox.
He did like the idea of narrowing the ballot before the primary.
Don Ball, who is a Democrat, said the Republican and Democratic party are, essentially, private entities but taxpayers of the state are paying for the primary elections.
The majority of Utah Democratic Party delegates voted against Count My Vote at convention.
Justin Seely, council member, said that Cox did an awesome job.
"He follows our sports teams," said Seely.
His son, a championship wrestler, had met him and had been treated extremely well. Cox remembered his son and was always open and welcoming, he said.
Cox had taken his time and expended his energy to talk about and look at an issue of great interest to his family, said Seely.
"He has a great blog site," Seely said.
