The completion of the legislative session this month creates an opportunity to reflect on and learn from what happened during those hectic 45 days. Several themes that jump out include: (1) Utah’s legislative process works, despite its flaws, (2) Utah has a unique brand of conservative politics, and (3) consensus-building is the surest path to legislative success.

Utah’s legislative process works, despite its flaws

Everyone has reasons to be pleased and frustrated with the Utah Legislature for its policy decisions during the 2022 legislative session. Generally, no one gets everything that they want, while the vast majority of us get some of the things that we want. That is true in both life and politics, including the legislative session.

Taking a step back from specific decisions that the Legislature made, the facts make it hard to deny that Utah’s legislative process works to enact policy resolutions to important societal issues. Everyone is unhappy with some (and perhaps many) specific actions that lawmakers took, or with how many months or even years those actions required. But the legislative process in Utah did produce significant decisions on issues ranging from public education to the state budget to water conservation.

That is certainly not something that we observe in Washington, D.C., for example. Important federal policy issues languish in Congress without needed resolution for many years, even decades in some instances. In part because of that political reality, many consider Congress to be broken. Whatever failings exist in Utah’s legislative process – and they do exist – being broken is not one of them. Utah’s legislative process continues to work.

Utah has a unique brand of conservative politics

Utah is clearly a red, center-right state. Whether comparing partisan voter registration numbers, elected official partisan affiliation, or other metrics, Utah is politically conservative.

But Utah’s brand of conservative politics is unique. Sometimes more hardline approaches win. Such was the case with the Legislature’s revocation of county mask mandates early in the 2022 legislative session. Other times more moderate approaches prevail, such as when tax reform legislation combined a modest income tax rate cut with targeted reforms for low-income families and retirees.

As culture evolves and the political pendulum swings, the proportion of hardline versus moderate-conservative policy victories also changes. However, a look at all legislation enacted during the 2022 legislative session in total illustrates that Utah’s conservative politics is unique: neither purely hardline nor entirely moderate.

Consensus-building is the surest path to legislative success

Utah’s legislative process is designed to produce broad consensus in policy decisions. So it should come as no surprise that policy approaches that seek to build broad consensus gain momentum, while approaches that refuse consensus-building amendments tend to fail.

Sometimes consensus is built across partisan lines, like the Legislature’s approach this year to water conservation. Sometimes consensus is built mainly across ideological lines within the majority political party, such as the Legislature’s 2022 tax reforms. Sometimes consensus is built across the legislative branch and executive branch of government, as is the case with every enacted bill that wins the governor’s signature. 

Nevertheless, the legislation that succeeded tended to build consensus in some fashion as it moved from committee votes to floor votes to the governor’s desk, while the legislation that failed tended to refuse consensus-building compromise. That reality may displease ideologues and hardline advocates of all stripes. It also frustrates everyone involved in lawmaking at one point or another, when their bill seems to gain momentum only to fail in the end due to an unforeseen or late-developing source of opposition.

However, the pressure generated by the legislative process to seek broad consensus encourages state public policies to consider the broadest range of interests when making or reforming the law. That may frustrate our personal desires or preferences at times. But if we try to look at it with a clear head and from the perspective of the larger picture, it is difficult to deny that it is a wise way to make laws.