Special Session with Bryan Schott

>> Bryan Schott: Foreign

Buckle up, politics junkies. It's time for another

episode of Special Session. I'm your

host, Bryan Schott, managing editor of Utah

Political Watch. We're heading into the final week of the

2025 session, which means it won't be long

before a bunch of villages get their idiots

back. This week on the show, Governor Cox

and legislative leaders themselves on the

back for funding education. But when you

dig into the numbers, it's not as impressive as they'd

like you to think. We got our first look at

the draft budget for the 2025,

26 fiscal year on Friday. It's a

pretty lean budget. Next year we'll go over some of the things

lawmakers want to spend your money on. Even though money's

tight, that doesn't mean lawmakers are backing away from another

round of tax cuts. Most televised

political debates suck, but

legislative leaders hatch a plan

could make debates in Utah suck even

more. And it's a really dangerous idea, too. I'll

explain. And Phil Lyman

wants to head the Utah gop. Okay,

that's all coming up.

Let's get to the headlines.

The state's budget came out this week. The

final tally is somewhere right around

$30 billion. And we'll dig into

some of the parts of it here in a minute. But I want to talk

a little bit about the education funding piece of it because

on Friday morning, Governor Spencer Cox and

legislative leaders, speaker of the House Mike Schultz, Senate President

Stuart Adams had a press conference where they were

touting how much money they were putting into

public education. And it all sounds great.

They're going to spend $50 million to

give all teachers in the state a fifteen

hundred dollar raise. And they're spending another $50

million to give support staff,

education support staff, a $1,000

bonus. When much

new funding, extra funding they put into

education that they were not required

to do, it's not much more than the

amount of money that they're going to spend on

tax cuts. And they also decided that

they're going to put more money into the

state's private school voucher program, which is the Utah Fits

all scholarship. So let's start at the top. The centerpiece

of the education funding, that's fifty million dollars

to provide about a fifteen hundred dollar

raise for te. And then there's fifty million

dollars in one time money, which means they're only going to spend it

one time. That will go to

$1,000 bonuses for educational support

staff. There's another big piece, the biggest dollar

number that they released at this press conference was

$178 million for a

4% boost to

local school districts, which they say can go to

raises for teachers. Technically, that's

true, but in reality, that $178 million

is a 4% boost in something called

the weight pupil unit or the wpu.

And that is the amount the state spends per

student on education. So it's a 4%

boost, which is $178 million.

This is something they were required to do by state law.

They had to give this 4% boost to public

education funding because it's

to cover inflationary costs. They use a

formula that's a five year rolling average of

inflation. And this year it said 4%.

So they had to do that. They had no

choice in the that

$178 million that they're putting into public

education, they were required to do. So we

can kind of take that off the table as new money

that they put in by choice. All this other stuff is by

choice, but that they didn't have to do. There's

$65 million to fund Speaker

Schulz's career and technical education

initiative. It's large numbers

for things like teacher professional days

or school supplies. But when you look at it, it's just a

modest increase for those programs over last year

for something called educator professional time. And

this was something that they created back in 2022,

and it allows teachers to do some

lesson planning or to get some continuing

education. And they're putting $77.7 million

into that. Last year it was 74 million. So

$77.7 million sounds great, but

it's just under $4 million more

than what they spent on this program last year.

There's money to help teachers buy supplies

and materials for the classroom, and that's

14.3 million do million. But last year that

amount was $13.9 million. So it's

just $400,000 more. There's a program

called stipends for future educators, and this is

money that they pay to student teachers while they are working

in the classroom. They created this last year. It's a pretty good

program, and this is a fairly healthy increase. Last year it

was funded at $8.4 million, and this year they've

upped that to 12.4 million. The other big funding

item is a grant program called grow your own educator

pipeline allows schools to give

scholarships to their employees who

want to become teachers, who want to get their teacher's license. And so

they're funding that at $7.3 million,

but that's $400,000 less than what

they put into that program last year. If you add up

all of the ongoing money, all of the money

that's going to be spent year after year after year, the

$1,000 bonus, that is one time

money. But if you add up the ongoing money, it's

about 115, $120 million

somewhere in there. That's not much more than what lawmakers are going

to spend on their which has a fiscal note of

$103 million. And that lowers the state's

income tax rate from

4.55% to

4.5%. It's going to cost $103

million. There are some non refundable tax credits

for companies to provide

childcare, but the big bulk of it, about

$97 million of that is going for this tax

cut. And that's not much less than the

$120 million of new ongoing money

that lawmakers are putting into education. And

don't forget, the money for those tax cuts comes

out of the fund that could go to public

schools. We have the income tax fund. It used to

be called the education fund, now it's called the income tax fund. And

under Utah's constitution, income and corporate taxes

all go into this fund. And it can only fund public education, higher

education and some social services. So

they're funding about 115, $120 million

out of that fund. But then they're also taking $103

million in future revenue away

from that fund to pay for tax cuts. So they kind of balance each other

out. Now add on top of the fact that lawmakers are going to

add another $40 million to the

private school vouchers program, that will bring the

total funding for that program to

over $120 million.

And that also is paid for out

of the fund that could go to public schools. So when you hear

lawmakers talking about how much money

they're putting towards public education, you really have to dig

into the numbers because that's when you see the

reality really does not match the rhetoric.

So I told you about the education piece of it.

But what else is in the budget that we

learned on Friday night? Now, they're not going to make all the decisions

until the final day of the session. They still have to

decide which bills they're going to fund. So we're not going to know

until Friday, uh, night

what the final budget looks like. So what else is

in the budget? Well, lawmakers are still hashing out whether or not they're

going going to cut Taxes on Social

Security. That was in Governor Spencer Cox's budget

recommendation from last year. There's going to be some

form of it. Uh, there are reports that they

could not tax Social Security on households

making up to $90,000 a year or

a little more. Cox wanted a complete elimination on that.

So that still remains to be seen. But it's clear that Cox

is not going to get everything he wants out of the budget. There's also

a lot of buildings that they're going to fund in this budget.

They'll spend 36 and a half million dollars on Convergence

hall. That's going to be a tech hub down at the point of the mountain

which is currently under development. There's an additional $20 million

for a first time home buyers program.

But remember, the revenue estimates came in lower than

what they expected for the income

tax fund. It was a little bit higher in the general

fund and the transportation fund, but not much. So it was going to be a

tight budget year anyway. There's

about just under $2 million to

fund operations at

homeless shelter in South Salt Lake.

There's another five and a half million dollars

in one time money to fund

emergency homeless shelters through this

coming summer and next winter. There's

about $2 million in one

time money that's going to fund changes in the big election

bill that's going to radically change how

vote by mail works in the state. The fact that they funded

it means it's pretty much going to

pass before the end of the session. There's money

to fund gigawatt, which is an

initiative from Governor Spencer Cox to double Utah's energy

production over the next 10 years. It looks like they're going to be

funding that with about $1.75 million to

expand geothermal energy production and then

another 1.75 million to expand nuclear

energy production. Legislative leaders were calling this a socks

and underwear budget, meaning when

families have, uh, tight pocketbooks around Christmas,

you get socks and underwear for Christmas rather than fun

things. And they were calling this a socks and underwear

budget still have for tax cuts. Uh,

also there's going to be about $100 million that's spent

to provide raises, uh, for state

employees. That's money that they had put away

prior to the session for the tax cuts and for the

raises. Everything else, if it saw an increase, it

was mostly moderate. Most of the big

ticket items that is new ongoing money is in

education because that's funded out of a different fund

than everything else

foreign.

Let's back up a minute and talk about the Tax

cuts that are barreling through the legislature right now.

Originally, lawmakers were hoping to cut

taxes by 0.1%, dropping it

from 4.55%, which is where we're at

now, to 4.45%. But they don't have enough

money for that, so they're dropping it

by.05%, which as

I told you is going to cost $97 million. Then they tacked

on some non refundable tax credits for to

provide child care. But for the most part, the biggest chunk

is for tax cuts. This will be the fifth straight year that

they've done an across the board income tax

cut. Most of that money goes to the top 1%

of wealthiest Utahns, as it has in the

past few years. There's an analysis from Voices

for Utah Children and the

nonpartisan Institute on Taxation

and Economic Policy. It shows that the top

1% of income earners who make make

$882,000 or more per

year would receive an average tax cut of

$1900. Meanwhile, the

average Utah household, which would have an income of around

$81,000, their tax savings

in a single year would be about 35 bucks or just over

2 bucks a month. In fact,

31% of the money that

they're spending, of the $97 million they're

spending each and every year that as I told you, can go to

public schools or higher education or Social Services,

31% of that money is going to go

to the top 1% of

income earners in the state. Since they have started this

income tax cutting spree over the past

five years, the top 1% has seen their

overall tax bill drop by more than

$17,000. The bottom

40% of income earners, they

only get 7% of the money that's spent on

this and they would see an income tax

cut of around $5 per year

or less. That's even if they qualify because a lot

of them don't make enough money to pay income

taxes or they have tax credits that

cancel out their tax bill. Remember, those

tax credits are non refundable, so they don't get the money back. They just don't

pay taxes. Most of the money goes to the top 1% and then

everybody else down the income scale gets

pennies compared to the nineteen hundred dollars

that on average that people making

882,000 do a year or

more receive. And these tax cuts not only go

to individuals, they go to corporations because they're dropping the

individual and corporate income tax rate. And

this same analysis concluded these

tax breaks which will be enacted over the last five years. Almost

95% of them go to

companies that are out of state. So

this income tax revenue that again could

be funding education is going to mostly

go to the top 1% in Utah or

out of state corporations.

How much does it cost to produce

videos online that nobody

watches? Well, first, taxpayers,

it's about $6,000 a month. I had been digging

into this story for a while, finally was able to publish it. Uh,

the Utah House of Representatives is

paying an outside company known as northbound

strategy $6,000 a month

for communication strategy.

And it's not clear what taxpayers

are getting for this money. Again,

$6,000 a month, $72,000 a

year. I, uh, reached out to Northbound Strategies. It's run

by two people who have so who are very well known in

Utah political circles. Barty Carpenter, He's a former TV

journalist, he worked for Governor Herbert as

his communications head and also ran

his 2016 reelection campaign. And

then Wesley Smith, who has been a lobbyist,

they have second company that they partnered on

together. It's called Northbound Strategy. And they're getting

paid $6,000 a month by the Utah House

of Representatives for communications

consulting. Uh, but Carpenter and his company

will not tell me what they're doing. The only output that I

can find are these videos,

very slickly produced videos

of, uh, Speaker Mike Schultz talking directly to

the camera. Speaker

Mike Schultz. Of Speaker Mike Schultz talking

directly to the camera on his policy

initiatives, uh, about education

funding, whatever,

whatever he deems important. They're

about two, two and a half minutes long.

Um, and

that's about it. I can't find any other

output for this

group or what they do in terms of their

consulting. Um, and this is also

extremely strange because the Utah House, there are

nine full time employees of the

Utah House. Ten if you count Chief of staff

Avia. Ten of you count the chief of staff,

but she's supposed to be for both parties. There are nine full time

employees who are employed by the Republican majority.

And four of them have the word

communications in their job title.

And I looked on the state transparency

website and those four employees earned over

$400,000 a year last year

in salary and benefits. And so

you've got $400,000 a year going to these

four communications employees. And then you're

adding another $72,000 for

an outside company who won't tell you what they do.

The House would not answer what this

Northbound Strategy does for them. They refuse to

answer. Uh, when I asked how this

outside company, what they're doing how it differs than the

four employees that are already paying for communications.

It complements their work. Nobody knows anything. The only

thing I can find are these videos of Speaker

Schultz, and they sound like this. A

wise person once said, the road to success

is always under construction. And here in

Utah, we know that's true in more ways than one.

Building a robust infrastructure is critical as our

state continues to experience rapid population

growth. From Cache to Washington county and

everywhere in between, Utahns are feeling the strain on

our transportation system. That's why this

legislative session, we're committed to building on past

investments to keep our state moving. But

that's not all. It's fascinating,

but that's not all. These videos appear to be

distributed outside of the

official communications channels for the

Utah House. They are posted on the House

Majority's YouTube page, but. But

the way it. But that's the only

official place. You will find them everywhere

else. They start on Schultz's

personal social media. He posts it to his personal

Facebook page. He posts it to his personal Twitter

page, and then the House majority

reposts those videos with a link back

to his personal

page. So it would be

m. It's not a stretch to think

that this $72,000 a year, the

taxpayers are shelling out for

this communication strategy, communication consulting,

it's going to elevate Schulz's personal

brand because, uh, it shows up

on his personal pages and then it's

reposted. There's one other outlet, and this is how I

was able to figure this story out. There's one other place,

and it's a website that looks like a news

website. If you're not paying too much attention. It looks like a

news called northboundutah.com

and the videos end up there as well.

So, for the most part, the main distribution channel for

these videos are Schultz's personal social

media pages and this northbound

Utah website. And if you look at how much traffic

they're getting, they

don't crack a hundred views. Each one of them is under a

hundred views. Nobody's watching them. So you,

as a Utah taxpayer, paying $6,000 a month

for these videos, then nobody's watching. And they

won't tell anything about what this company's

doing with that money or what services they're

providing. I found out about it through an open

records request, and I got my hands on a

contract that talked about some of the.

And I got my hands on a contract that was in some vague

terms, what they were doing. Um, and some

invoices, but that's it. No one else will say anything else

about what this outside company is doing for

$6,000 a month. Because it really

looks like you, the taxpayer, are paying

$6,000 a month to, uh, to hype uh

up. Speaker Mike Schultz.

I have a lot of problems with political debates that are

televised. They don't do much to

inform the voting public.

Candidates who are good at speaking can

essentially filibuster themselves if they have a

minute to answer a question or a minute and a half to answer

a question, they'll just talk for a minute and a half

on something other than the question if they don't want to answer

it. Governor Spencer Cox is particularly good at

this. Um, um, and so the formats are

terrible, the product is terrible. So that's just

a personal feeling of mine. I also have a lot of problems with the Utah

Debate Commission. When they were formed in

2013, it was an offshoot

out of candidates refusing to debate

their opponents. And so they were trying to make it

so that there was a big event around

these debates and candidates would show up, up. My problem is

when you do that, you are institutionalizing the

fact that candidates only have to debate once

rather than letting local TV

stations invite candidates and having a series of

debates. I think that would be more useful if

they made the format more, uh,

utilitarian rather than focusing on a TV product.

And they're not going to do that anyway. Those are my problems with

debates. But what the Utah Legislature is trying to

do is really, really dangerous.

HP557 from Representative Nelson Abbot.

Habit creates, uh, another

entity. It doesn't get rid of the Utah Debate Commission,

but it creates the Utah Debate Committee. And that will

be a state funded committee made up of

political appointees who are

responsible for scheduling

and operating televised debates,

televised political debates ahead of elections in the state

of Utah. And those 11 people on the committee, seven

of them would be appointed by Republicans, just four by

Democrats. Aside from that partisan

imbalance, this is something government shouldn't even be

talking about doing. And you as

a, as someone who cares about politics, that's

why you're listening to this podcast. You should be outraged that they

would be even thinking of doing this because this is going to give

politicians control over these

debates, which is incredibly

Orwellian. The money to pay for this

committee was approved in the budget that

was released on Friday night. But, but there's a

hiccup. The bill went to committee

on Friday and it got held.

It did not make it out of committee. So I don't know what

lawmakers are gonna do unless they try to lift the bill from committee.

There's not much committee time left. Monday and

Tuesday are the final days

of committee hearings. They've got one more chance to try to bring it

back, improve it. A lot of people said they should just send

this to interim because this is a, a really big and

again dangerous move that the

legislature is trying to take

here by, uh, gaining control of

political debates in the state.

If you watch the video from Friday's house business and

labor committee, when they were discussing the bill and

uh, it came up for committee action, Representative

Melissa ballard made a motion to hold the bill in

committee because she said this isn't, this is a discussion that's

not ripe. It's something that's coming up in the final days of the session. We

only saw this bill a couple of days ago and then it was in committee

and had already gotten funded in the budget, meaning

this is something that legislative leaders were planning

on doing. She said this, this, this issue is not

ripe. We're uh, not ready for it. So, um, she

made a motion to hold it. And then you

had representative Jason Kyle, who was

also a re Republican, Uh, he made a substitute motion

to pass it out of committee. That vote failed and

it surprised everybody on the

committee. That's not what was supposed to happen. That was not the

script. If you go watch the video, you, committee

chairman Corey malloy, he's

almost panicked because the

recommendation to pass this bill out of committee and send it

to the floor fails. So then they go back to the substitute

recommendation and it's going to be

held. Uh, this was not what they were expecting

and that's a good thing. And I haven't even gotten into the fact

that they're expecting the media

to partner with this

state run debate commission for the

debates. Meanwhile, the debate committee, the

state funded committee full of political appointees,

they'll be responsible for what

criteria it takes to bring someone on

stage for the debate. They get to pick the m

moderators, they get to control

all the aspects. There's an advisory committee that's

made up of some members of the media and a few other people

who they deem necessary. And they get to provide input

to the committee. But it's the committee committee again full of political

appointees. Seven republicans, four Democrats

who will make the final decision. And there's one part of the language that

I found especially chilling, and that was

where it said that this advisory board, this advisory

board would provide input on what topics

are in the debate. That means that the

topics that are covered in the debate are

completely up to this state funded committee.

That's terrifying. This is something you should not

want. And, and if the local media,

they should reject this outright and say we're not

partnering with you, we're not going to put these debates on, we're not

going to work with you because the government should not be in

control of these political debates. But they're trying

to. This is really terrifying and you should be outraged

about it.

He's back. Phil Lyman.

Yep. You know, Phil Lyman, former state representative

representative, ran for governor last year, lost

in the primary to Spencer Cox. Started throwing out

wild accusations with no proof behind them

that Cox did not get enough signatures to

qualify. He's been misrepresenting that. He launched a

write in campaign, got 13% of the vote. Well, now

he wants to be the head of the Utah Republican

Party. On Thursday night at a meeting of

a conservatives group in Davis county, he announced he's right

running to become the chair of the Utah Republican

Party. The convention in May will pick the

party's chair for the next two years. And Phil

Lyman is in the race. The current chair,

Rob Axon, uh, he hasn't decided whether he's going to run

for another term or not. He told me that,

uh, that's up in the air and he'll make his decision sometime in

the next two weeks. Phil has been a

fringy character and you might laugh. Well, you know, there's no way that he becomes

the, the chair of the Utah Republican Party. Don't

dismiss that. The people who will decide on the party's

chair are party delegates. And a

big group of those delegates love Phil

Lyman. They are big Phil Lyman fans. If you'll

remember, they voted for Lyman over Cox,

uh, at last year's Republican convention by an almost 2 to

1 margin. So he's got a real shot at

winning. And I watched this whole hour

and a half video of his

presentation to this Davis county group.

Most of it was relitigating his loss in

the 2024 election to Cox. And he's talking

about his conspiracy, uh, theories or

unfounded claims that Cox didn't get enough signatures.

Again, there's no evidence to back that up.

But if you think about it, if Phil Lyman were

to become m, the next chair of the Utah Republican

Party, we may be in for a fascinating couple of years.

He's already running for governor. He's already said he's going to run for governor again

in 2028. So this would be a chance for him,

him to set himself up. And in that

meeting he said that this is the only way

for him to root out the problems in the party

because he and his supporters feel that there is

an entrenched group, an

entrenched system that favors more

establishment candidates like Cox rather than outsiders.

And so if you hand the keys to the, of the party

to Lyman, he's going to spend two years trying to

dismantle that. But not only that, for the

net, for two years you would have

the man who lost to Spencer Cox and

believes in his heart that Spencer Cox

cheated to get on the ballot and that he was

the, and he should be the rightful governor of Utah. You're

going to have him in charge of the state Republican

Party. That is a recipe for

absolute chaos over the next two years.

And don't discount it. It could absolutely

happen because as I said, said

delegates love Phil Lyman. I've also been

told that Lyman is trying to get his supporters

elected as party chairs across

the state in the different county parties. You could see the

Republican Party, the Utah Republican Party, it's been fairly

mainstream over the last two years under

action. Axon has deep ties to Mike

Lee. He was Mike, he's ah, an employee of Mike Lee.

He's worked with Mike Lee. Um, I reported a couple of

months ago that Elon Musk actually

donated money to the Utah Republican Party. That was probably a

connection made by Mike Lee. Um, the Republican Party's

had financial problems for years and it

was finally bailed out by

Lee. So that they're actually financially

solvent right now. If you break that connection, you

could devolve into what we saw number of years

ago when James Evans was the head of the party

and you had a small group of right wing

zealots just causing

problems for elected officials

around the state. Uh, they hate the signature

path. They would do whatever they could to try and

dismantle that. So keep your eye on

this. Phil Lyman could be handed the keys to the

state's largest political party for the next

two years.

Before we finish for the week, I'd like to, um, you know, I'm gonna take

this opportunity to insert some shameless plug

here. Um, as you may know, I am the managing

editor of an independent political news website,

Utah Political Watch. I, um, would like to ask you,

if you haven't yet, go to my website, Utah

PoliticalWatch News, and sign up for my

newsletter for free. You'll get all the

stories that I write delivered to your inbox.

That's if you sign up for free. Um, if you want some

extra content you can become a paying subscriber for as

little as $5 a month. Month. For that, you'll get

access to my morning News Fix newsletter,

which is a curated roundup of the top headlines you

need to start your day. And during the legislative

session, you can get my subscriber only

newsletter, Daily Dispatch, which is a

roundup of what happened in the legislature that

day. Look at the afternoon headlines

and everything that's coming up the

following day. So that's for subscribers as well.

All of that is for as little as $5 a month,

which is a pretty good deal. Um,

this podcast, my website, Utah Political Watch,

they're all reader supported. I don't sell

advertising. I don't have corporate donors.

Uh, and that's great because I don't have to

sit there and worry about whether some,

um, hedge fund billionaire decides

to shut down my publication. But the problem

is I m need your support to keep doing

this. You are my boss. My subscribers

are my boss. Uh, and it takes time and

resources to produce this kind of work.

If it's important to you, I'd appreciate it if you

could think about becoming a paid subscriber. I know

not everyone can afford that right now, but if you

can, I'd really appreciate it.

And that will do it for this week. If there's a guest you'd like to hear

from or a topic you'd like me to discuss, you can

send me an email or reach out on social media. I would love

to hear from you if you haven't yet. If somebody

forwarded this podcast to you and you haven't

subscribed, please take a moment and subscribe. And also leave a

rating and review if you can. That helps new people find the

show. You can do that at Apple Podcasts or wherever.

Uh, and I would be very, very thankful for

that. Special session is written and

produced by me, Bryan Schott. Thank you

so much for taking the time to listen. We will be back

next week.