Author: Jesse

Attorneys general of the 17 states who filed a lawsuit concerning Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act told the judge on Wednesday that they do not want to get rid of the statute and the protections it provides.

Section 504 helps provide accommodations and aid for kids in school, and also provides assistance for people with disabilities in other aspects of life such as in hospitals and doctors offices.

In May 2024, the Biden administration expanded the definition of disability under Section 504 to include gender dysphoria, saying it “may be considered a physical or mental impairment.”

Following that change, in September 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration, saying it was “abusing executive action.” Since then, 16 states joined Texas in the suit, which claims that Section 504 is unconstitutional.

Besides Texas and Utah, the other states on the lawsuit are Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia.

The lawsuit was filed while Utah’s former Attorney General Sean Reyes was still in office. The state’s current Attorney General Derek Brown found out about the lawsuit last week when concerned friends reached out to him.

“The concern was whether 504s were somehow at risk through the lawsuit, and for me, this is a personal issue, because I have kids that have benefited from IEPs and from 504, so it matters. It matters a lot,” Brown said.

Last week, the lawsuit drew more public attention across the state of Utah, with many people concerned that they or their kids would lose protections provided to them through Section 504.

Brown said that over the weekend he worked with other attorneys general who were plaintiffs in the case on how to make sure Section 504 and the provisions it provides were protected. They then submitted a status report to the judge saying that all the plaintiffs agree that 504 is not unconstitutional and not the issue they want to focus on in the lawsuit.

Last week, Utah’s attorney general made a statement saying that he would protect Section 504, and he said that’s what they accomplished with Wednesday’s filing.

“We promised that we would protect 504, and we did it,” Brown said when asked what he would say to parents concerned by the lawsuit. “My job, as I said, was to protect it, and we’ve done it, and they can rest easy knowing that their children are protected.”

Why is Utah still a part of the lawsuit?

Brown said that many people have questioned why Utah doesn’t just pull out of the lawsuit, but he said if they did pull out they would no longer have any control over the outcome.

“My job is to resolve the issue. My job is to protect kids. My job is to make sure that 504s aren’t at risk, (and) the way I do that is by staying at the table,” Brown said. “My job as a parent, as the attorney general, as a lawyer, is to continue to sit at the table, work with the other parties, and make sure that we come up with a result that everyone is happy with and that protects kids.”

The lawsuit will now focus on the question of executive power surrounding the Biden administration changing the language of Section 504.

“The executive branch is the one that filed a new regulation that the lawsuit argues is outside the bounds of what Congress has authorized them,” Brown said. “It comes down to, who gets to make a decision on that kind of an issue? Is it Congress, or does the executive branch agency have the authority?”

Brown added that he believes there will be a resolution to the issue very soon. He would not elaborate on the specifics of the process, but said that they are working with the Trump administration to resolve the issue.

What is Section 504?

“Section 504 forbids organizations and employers from excluding or denying individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to receive program benefits and services. It defines the rights of individuals with disabilities to participate in, and have access to, program benefits and services,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

504 plans are used regularly across the country to set up specialized programs and supports to help students with special needs succeed and ensures that they will not be discriminated against in classes, per Forbes. These 504 plans can help people with varying needs, including visual impairment, diabetes, heart disease, epilepsy, depression and ADHD.

It also requires certain accommodations for those with disabilities receiving medical care, such as doctors providing clear instructions and sign language interpreters and captions being provided for those with hearing impairments, according to the Utah Parent Center.

Under Section 504, hospitals cannot deny care due to disability and websites from schools and hospitals also must be accessible for blind and low-vision users.

Jessica Forbes, who lives in Herriman, has a 12-year-old daughter, Clara, who has accommodations at school through Section 504.

Forbes said she knows people whose 504 plans provide a variety of accommodations, such as kids with Type 1 diabetes getting regular access to a nurse, temporary protections for an injury, environmental modifications, ASL interpreters and access to Braille materials. She has also seen accommodations for kids with anxiety and ADHD, like giving them extra time to take tests.

She added that 504 plans help kids, including Clara, to succeed.

“She’s a great kid,” Forbes said. “She’s so special. And I want her to continue to have all of these options before her, and I don’t want her limited. And I think this is something that keeps her in the game.”

On the second floor of the Midnight Mission homeless shelter in Skid Row, Los Angeles, is the room that helped save Jared Klickstein’s life.

Looking out over soiled sidewalks, the room housed a recovery program that separated Klickstein from meth and heroin, and pulled him off the streets away from one of the largest stable homeless populations in the country.

“It was probably the greatest program I’ve ever seen or been a part of,” said Klickstein, who recently published a memoir, “Crooked Smile.” “I saw it change hundreds of lives.”

But within a year of Klickstein’s life-changing six-month stay at Midnight Mission, California legislators passed a law that codified federal “housing first” principles and conditioned state funding on shelters abandoning requirements for residents to stay drug-free.

Programs like the one Klickstein credited with ending his decade of chronic homelessness lost funding, removed their sobriety requirements or “ceased to exist,” while the number of free, permanent supportive housing units grew rapidly.

As did the number of people who became homeless, stayed homeless and died homeless, mostly from drug overdose. Since the policy change, chronic homelessness in California has increased by 123%, according to the federal government’s Continuum of Care count.

The pattern of ineffective homeless policy may seem familiar to Utahns.

In 2015, Utah leaders declared a brief victory over chronic homelessness after a decade of implementing a groundbreaking statewide housing-first model that poured resources into low-barrier housing units.

Over the subsequent decade, chronic homelessness in Utah — defined as those who have been on the streets for at least a year with mental illness or drug addiction — has nearly quadrupled.

“It’s clear what we’ve been doing isn’t working the way we had hoped it would,” Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said on Thursday.

Similar outcomes in Utah, California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado point to a failed experiment with a housing-first-turned-housing-only approach in the West, according to some national experts and those with firsthand experience like Klickstein.

That is why this legislative session, Utah lawmakers are looking to show other states “a new way forward” by putting into statute a mirror-opposite set of expectations for homeless shelters compared to the ones promoted by California’s nine-year-old law.

“It’s a course correction,” state Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, said. “We’re missing this piece, so let’s make sure we can address the whole person as they try to heal.”

Drug-free shelters

Clancy, who works as an investigator at the Provo Police Department, is running a trio of bills this year aimed at cracking down on illicit drug use, while increasing coordination between homeless services to encourage treatment options and signaling a hard break with the country’s formal policy on chronic homelessness.

Utah’s legislators appear ready for the change.

Clancy’s HB199 — which would allow first responders to connect overdose survivors to county resources while prohibiting syringe exchange programs in certain areas — and Clancy’s HCR6 — which would pressure federal agencies to rescind housing-first restrictions on homelessness funding — both passed the state House unanimously this month.

The Senate is also on board, passing HCR6 in a near-unanimous vote on Thursday.

“It isn’t humane to leave people in the difficult position they’ve chosen to be in,” Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said. “Somehow we need to encourage them to make changes.”

On Tuesday, Clancy’s HB329 — which would take California’s approach to low-barrier housing and flip it on its head — received a unanimous recommendation from the House Health and Human Services Committee and will now appear before the House for a floor vote.

If passed in its current form, HB329, Homeless Services Amendments, would:

• Require homeless shelters to maintain a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession by conducting regular searches and facilitating law enforcement access.
• Eliminate state funding to shelters if they fail to comply with a signed homeless shelter agreement that details drug-free requirements.
• Increase criminal consequences for drug distribution in, or around, homeless shelters by one degree more than the current maximum penalty.
• Allow for the expansion of the Know-by-Name pilot program which shares the state’s Homeless Management Information System with personalized case workers.
• Encourage shelters to focus housing programs on a “pathway to thriving” model that measures progress in mental health, drug addiction, education and relationships.

Banning drugs in homeless shelters is a prerequisite to addressing the underlying causes of homelessness, said Robert Marbut, the former homelessness czar under President Donald Trump.

Clancy’s bill represents “best practices” that are beginning to be pursued across the country, according to Marbut, who said he was “shocked” that the state hadn’t previously outlined a drug-free policy for shelters.

On Tuesday, Clancy told committee members that almost all homeless shelters in the state already prohibit individuals from entering their facility with drugs. But as new winter response locations are established, it is important to make the state’s expectation explicit, Clancy said.

The Road Home, one of the largest networks of homeless shelters in the state, has a private security force that conducts bag checks of residents when they enter the facility, said the program’s executive director, Michelle Flynn.

Flynn supports Clancy’s bill but reiterated the important role low-barrier shelters play within the state to provide an option to get off the streets for those who are not ready to engage in mental health treatment or sobriety programs.

“But a key component of running a low-barrier shelter is safety,” Flynn said. “We want to ensure that we have a place where people feel like they’re going to be safe, where they’re welcomed in, and they want to be there because that’s the best way to get them connected with support services.”

In addition to banning drug possession and orienting shelters toward recovery, Clancy’s bill would also create a new advisory board composed of shelter counties, free up funds to transport homeless individuals to relatives out of the state, and require agencies to gather data on the extent to which homelessness has become rare, brief and nonrecurring.

Utah is uniquely positioned to spearhead the West’s flip on homeless policy because of the attention the topic receives from the governor and Legislature and the willingness of state leaders to stray from housing-first dogma, according to Devon Kurtz, the public safety policy director at Cicero Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Texas.

“Utah is leading the way in diversifying its approach,” Kurtz said. “It’s not so much ending housing first as an intervention, it’s ending housing first as the only intervention.”

Is the West flipping on homelessness?

Tom Wolf has seen what happens when homeless shelters and drugs mix.

Following an oxycodone prescription from his doctor, Wolf experienced a rapid descension from his life as a married father of two, living in the suburbs, to a hopeless heroin addict on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

Wolf remembers stints in local shelters where the predominant feeling was a total lack of safety, with individuals overdosing in the bathroom and engaging in theft and assault in the congregate living area.

The low-barrier, “harm reduction” environment promoted by state lawmakers had created what Wolf called a “a-free-for-all.”

“This low-barrier approach has actually perpetuated not only the harm but the death,” Wolf said. “And you can even make the argument that it perpetuates homelessness in that it doesn’t require anyone to do anything.”

But the political tides may be starting to turn.

Last year, California assembly members, including one representative from San Francisco, introduced two bills that would allow a portion of state funds to be used for shelters with sobriety requirements.

Both bills passed unanimously in the state Assembly but never came up for a vote in the Senate.

However, even if Utah and California decide to take homelessness policy in a different direction, states will still be limited by federal housing-first requirements, according to Michele Steeb, a senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation who previously ran a shelter for women and children in Sacramento County.

In the late 2000’s, the federal government adopted a housing first approach for chronic homelessness that had been developed in New York City a decade earlier. By 2013, it had become the official policy of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This meant federal funding — which makes up the majority of homeless services funding in many counties — became conditional on housing first methods, Steeb said. Programs like hers, which helped around a 900 women and children a year move toward financial independence, lost federal support, quickly followed by state and county support which also adopted housing first.

“Our program funding went away. It had nothing to do with our outcomes. It was because we didn’t fit the low-barrier model,” Steeb said. “Government loves one-size-fits-all because that makes their job easier.”

Measuring the right outcomes might be the most important piece of Clancy’s Utah legislation and the most pressing change needed at the federal level, according to Caitlyn McKenney, a program coordinator for Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty based in Seattle.

“How many keys are we handing out to a fully subsidized housing unit with no strings attached is the wrong metric,” McKenney said.

To many in the West, it’s clear that the consensus approach has failed. Over the last five years, the state of California has spent over $24 billion on homeless services, even as the homeless population increased by 30,000.

Elizabeth Funk, the CEO of Dignity Moves, which builds modular home communities for homeless programs in California, agrees that housing first has encouraged a focus on the number of units, instead of the number of people in shelter and on their way to recovery.

“Unsheltered homelessness, specifically, is absolutely solvable; we just aren’t looking at it right and aren’t prioritizing it,” Funk said.

But as Utah and other states move away from housing first, Funk said policymakers must remember that law enforcement alone will be just as ineffective as trying to tackle homelessness with housing only.

“We are disillusioning ourselves that people are being resistant and we just need to crack down,” Funk said. “There’s no way around it other than building places for people to go.”

A look back at local, national and world events through Deseret News archives.

On Feb. 20, 1890, Alma Richards was born in the small southern Utah town of Parowan.

And Utah’s Olympic history began.

Parowan is proud of Utah’s first gold medalist, who won the high jump gold in 1912 in Sweden. More on that in a minute.

Richards went to school in Parowan and Beaver as a youth, and competed in athletics in those years. BYU coach Eugene Roberts saw Richards compete at Brigham Young High School and saw a talent.

According to Deseret News reports, Roberts began grooming the young athlete for the upcoming 1912 Olympics, but when it came time for the U.S. Olympic finals, he couldn’t raise enough money for both of them to travel to Chicago. The 22-year-old Richards made the trip alone.

After qualifying in Chicago with a jump of 6 feet 2 inches — with an admittedly unorthodox jumping style — Richards was on his way to the 1912 Stockholm Summer Games.

The Olympic moment

There were 57 high jumpers in the high jump finals, including Richards and fellow American Jim Thorpe, who won two gold medals and is considered one of the greatest athletes of all time. But Thorpe was out when Richards and German Hans Liesche battled for the gold.

On his final jump, Richards cleared 6-4, an Olympic record, and Liesche failed on three straight tries.

According to reports, Swedish King Gustav presented the gold medal and an olive wreath to Richards.

Why the floppy hat?

Many photos of Richards in competition showed the Utahn wearing a hat.

He reportedly developed an eye infection on his way to Stockholm, and he wore a floppy felt cap to keep the sun out of his eyes. He kept the cap on throughout most of the competition, adopting it as a good luck charm.

Per reports, Richards was showered in a ticker tape parade in New York City, showered by yet another parade when he got off the train in Provo, and given a college scholarship by Cornell, where he became the national collegiate high jump champion.

He later won the national AAU decathlon in San Francisco and would have been the Olympic decathlon favorite in 1916 if World War I hadn’t interfered. As it was, he was the most-decorated athlete at the combined Armed Forces track & field championships in Paris in 1919, as a 29-year-old.

After competition, Richards served in the military and taught school in Los Angeles. He is a member of the Utah and BYU sports halls of fame. Richards died in 1963 and was buried in Parowan.

Here are some stories from Deseret News archives about Richards, his road to stardom, and how he helped ignite Utah’s Olympic flame:

“Utah native leaped to fame in 1912 Summer Games”

“He came, he saw and he went home with gold”

“Scrapbook of the 20th century: August 1912: Alma Richards”

“Parowan’s just deserts”

“Route to honor Utah golden boy?”

“Book review: ‘Alma Richards: Olympian’ tells story of Latter-day Saint gold medalist in 1912 Olympics”

“Twila Van Leer: Utah’s extended family includes a 1912 Olympic gold medalist”

“A history of Utahns in Olympic track & field”

“10 Olympians who came from Utah”

Joe Rogan has lost his crown of having the #1 podcast—and he’s seemingly not happy about it. The Joe Rogan Experience was knocked from its top spot by anti-Trump show The MeidasTouch Podcast, outpacing Rogan by downloads and views last month, according to Podscribe, a podcast ranker. The left-wing podcast, hosted by brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordan Meiselas, grew 101 percent in reach last month, with 56 million downloads and views on YouTube and audio platforms.

On July 12, 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took the stage at the National Governor’s Association conference in Salt Lake City to thank the Beehive State for helping his home on the opposite side of the globe.

“So many people and countries have united to help us save our freedom, and thus the common human understanding that evil must always, always lose,” he said, in gratitude to those who had given food, shelter, money and other resources in the face of war in Ukraine.

While clocking in at only 10 minutes, Zelenskyy’s speech elicited multiple standing ovations from a dozen U.S. governors and a crowded ballroom of hundreds of Utah legislators, state business executives and policymakers.

The visit, made possible by an invitation from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, was Zelenskyy’s first to the U.S. outside of Washington, D.C., New York or California. A year earlier, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams led the first state trade and humanitarian delegation to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

The culmination of the weeklong trip included an 80-minute discussion with Zelenskyy and members of his leadership team. The meeting focused on how to encourage support for Ukraine during the war and to provide opportunity for both Ukrainians and Utahns following the war to build a prosperous future.

On Wednesday, those same Utah leaders found themselves struggling to communicate their views on Ukraine while avoiding criticism of their party’s standard bearer who alleged on social media that Zelenskyy was a “dictator” who had swindled American aid and prolonged Ukraine’s war with Russia.

Cox, Adams call for peace in Ukraine

In their careful responses, Cox, Adams and other Utah leaders reaffirmed Utah’s support for Ukraine as well as their desire for Trump to help the conflict come to an end.

“We are grateful for the overwhelming support Utahns have shown for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and pray for the President’s efforts to negotiate a lasting peace,” Cox told the Deseret News in a statement Wednesday.

During Zelenskyy’s visit to Salt Lake City last year, Cox praised the leader and his wife, Olena Zelenska, both of whom he said he spent time with during their stay in the state. Cox said they are good people thrown into an impossible task and noted that lesser people would have fled Ukraine in the face of such conflict.

“This man and this woman did not do that,” Cox said. “They stood up to evil and their country rallied around them.”

Immediately following Zelenskyy’s speech, Cox signed a sister-state agreement between Utah and Kyiv Oblast with the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova. The eight-page memorandum of understanding recognized the economic relationship between the Kyiv area and Utah, building on connections made during Adam’s trip to Ukraine, accompanied and organized by World Trade Center Utah officials in 2023.

Joined by state Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, Utah Department of Agriculture and Food Commissioner Craig Buttars and two dozen business leaders, Adams met with 10 Ukrainian ministers or their deputies during his visit to promote Utah’s unique ability to build businesses, provide humanitarian aid and help Ukraine win the war.

“I hope the war ends,” Adams said Wednesday, when asked about Trump’s comments from earlier that day. “So I’m very glad that somebody is willing to engage and try to bring an end to the war. I believe President Zelenskyy has been a great leader for Ukraine. He’s led his country through a very difficult period of time.”

Adams said the people of Ukraine have “amazed” the world with the defense of their country against Putin. Teuscher, whose wife is Ukrainian, told the Deseret News a peace deal should ensure the continued existence of Ukraine.

“I hope that cooler heads prevail and that we can find a scenario where the war ends but Ukraine is able to maintain its sovereignty,” Teuscher said Wednesday in a statement.

What have Utahns done to support Ukraine?

Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, residents of few states have done as much as Utahns to support the eastern European country economically, according to Jonathan Freedman, the honorary consul of Ukraine in Utah.

In addition to joining the state-led delegation in 2023, Utah business leaders over the past few years have hosted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, supported humanitarian efforts from groups like To Ukraine With Love and August Mission, and welcomed 18 Ukrainian tech companies to the Silicon Slopes Summit.

The state’s business community also saw the tremendous contribution from Dell Loy Hansen, philanthropist and founder of the Wasatch Group, in the construction of whole communities to support Ukrainians who lost their homes.

Freedman, who since the 2023 trade mission has taken over as CEO of World Trade Center Utah, said that Ambassador Markarova regularly tells representatives from other states that Utah is “leading the way in engagement with Ukraine.”

“I think that Utah Business Engagement with Ukraine will continue, regardless of what is being heard out of Washington,” Freedman told the Deseret News on Wednesday. “When the world flees a problem area, Utah, historically, has demonstrated that we will show up and engage.”

While private sector support remains strong, according to Freedman, recent turns in the political environment have put public aid in question.

How much has the U.S. spent on Ukraine?

Since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the United States has allocated roughly $183 billion to support Ukraine, the Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve found.

Of this total, around $70 billion has gone toward military aid, $33 billion has been used to prop up the country’s government budget and $3 billion has been used for humanitarian purposes, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

On Wednesday, Trump put these figures much higher, totaling $350 billion, and said that Zelenskyy had “talked the United States of America into” funding a war “that couldn’t be won.”

Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who has previously spoken out against wasteful funding toward Ukraine, did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Deseret News regarding Trump’s comments. However, the Utah senator posted on X hours after the statement to say: “Not another dime for Ukraine.”

In a statement released Wednesday, Utah Sen. John Curtis did not question Trump’s “negotiating tactics” but expressed concern about a potential deal that would encourage Russia to stir additional chaos.

“President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people have stood admirably against an unprovoked invasion. I want an end to this war just as much as President Trump does, but it must end on terms that bring lasting stability and peace,” Curtis said. “That means ensuring Vladimir Putin does not walk away with a victory.”

A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll in 2023 found that Utahns’ interest in the Russia-Ukraine war had already begun to wane compared to the year before.

The survey found 61% of respondents are very closely or somewhat closely following the war, down considerably from the 85% a month after Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

At the onset of the war, an estimated 2,000 people gathered on the south steps of the state capitol building in solidarity with Ukraine. They were accompanied by state leaders including Cox, Adams, former House Speaker Brad Wilson and Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall.

State officials bathed the capitol building in blue and yellow light and raised the Ukrainian flag, the first time a foreign flag was over the statehouse. Russia’s invasion also rekindled the relationship of Salt Lake City with its longtime sister city of Chernivtsi, resulting in video updates from the city mayor.

Astronomers have uncovered a treasure trove of feeding black holes at the heart of dwarf galaxies — small, faint galaxies containing thousands to several billions of stars but very little gas. The discovery, made with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), contains several “missing link” intermediate-mass black holes.

This is both the largest sample of dwarf galaxies with active black holes ever seen and the largest haul of elusive intermediate-mass black holes ever collected. The data could help scientists better understand the dynamics between the evolution of dwarf galaxies and the growth of black holes while building an evolutionary model of the universe’s earliest black holes.

However, there is still a mystery associated with this sample: The team behind this discovery was surprised that their data didn’t contain more of these mid-sized black holes.

“When a black hole at the center of a galaxy starts feeding, it unleashes a tremendous amount of energy into its surroundings, transforming into what we call an active galactic nucleus,” team leader and University of Utah researcher Ragadeepika Pucha said in a statement. “This dramatic activity serves as a beacon, allowing us to identify hidden black holes in these small galaxies.”

Some mid-sized black holes are big eaters

Logan • A northern Utah nonprofit that distributed 1.6 million diapers to families last year is running out of space.

As need for the nappies and other necessities swells, Logan’s Little Lambs Foundation for Kids is unable to accept large donations in its cramped 2,000-square-foot facility, potentially leaving some Utahns without essential hygiene supplies.

“We had to turn down an entire semi,” saidfoundation Executive Director Ted Chalfant, “and that was about a quarter of a million in donations that we weren’t able to accept.”

Chalfant hopes state funding can help his nonprofit create some room to grow while rising costs continue to fuel demand.

When he started Little Lambs out of his Logan basement in 2014, Chalfant had no idea how much of a need there would be in Cache County for his organization, which, at first, provided hygiene kits to kids transitioning into foster care.

Even more surprising to him is how much the nonprofit has grown — from getting its own building, to becoming one of the only diaper banks in the state, to providing essentials such as feminine hygiene products, wipes and formula to more than 70,000 low-income families throughout Utah in 2024, Chalfant said.

The need, Chalfant said, rises drastically each year. In the organization’s first year, about 750 children were served.

“Diaper insecurity, it’s not an inconvenience; it’s a public health crisis,” he said. “Families should be able to have enough diapers so that they don’t have to choose, ‘Is it diapers or dinner today?’ Every child deserves dignity, respect and love, and they also need to feel secure.”

Chalfant, who grew up in a family that cared for foster children, started the foundation after seeing child after child arrive with only the clothes on their backs, and sometimes, their belongings in a trash bag or paper sack. What began as a program to provide essentials to help kids settle into new homes grew into a statewide distribution center for Division of Child and Family Services offices throughout the state.

Because of this, Chalfant has requested $3.1 million in state funding from the Utah Legislature to help build a 16,000-square-foot community resource center in Logan. The new center would not only support these services in Utah, he said, but also create space for additional programs, including a teen resource center to assist teen mothers with care for their children.

“Populations throughout the state are struggling,” he said. “It is our number one goal to make everyone be able to have access to basic essentials.”

Former Logan Republican Rep. Dan Johnson said he supports granting these funds, adding that he saw the demand for Little Lambs’ services grow significantly during his time in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers, he said, should focus on helping those in need.

“Sometimes, if you could just give a person a leg up,” Johnson said, “if you could just help them with some very basic needs, it’s such a difference-maker in their lives.”

Nibley resident Marilyn Wilson has been volunteering with Little Lambs for nearly a decade, helping create hygiene kits, delivering feminine products to girls at school and making clothing for families in need.

Wilson, who has seen the number of people turning to Little Lambs grow significantly over the years, said there is not enough space for volunteers — who provide nearly all the services — to work efficiently.

She said a new building is crucial for continuing these services. She has seen firsthand people facing illness or other difficult circumstances that lead them to ask for help.

“We give hope to families,” Wilson said. “That’s the biggest thing. We try to break the cycle of poverty. It takes a village.”

Bolstered by Mormon voters’ distaste for MAGA politics, the center-right is trying to reassert itself in a ruby-red state.

A Utah lawmaker removed a controversial piece of his legislation that critics say would gut the state’s public records law but left in an equally controversial part that would eliminate a volunteer committee that decides disputes about access to government information.

Senate Majority Whip Mike McKell made the changes just prior to a hearing Tuesday on SB277 before the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee.

McKell, R-Spanish Fork, told reporters before the meeting that he wants to focus on the process used to seek records under the state’s Government Records Access and Management Act or GRAMA, which he described as “broken.”

During the packed meeting, residents panned the legislation, urging the committee to not approve a bill few have had a chance to read and that would hinder transparency and give too much power to one person to decide whether government records are private or public.

Still, the revised bill passed out of committee 6-2, though some senators voiced reservations. It now goes to the full House for consideration.

Why eliminate State Records Committee?

SB277 would replace the State Records Committee — a seven-member panel appointed by the governor — with a Government Records Office. The governor would appoint the office’s director, who must be an attorney, to a four-year term with Senate approval. The director would oversee an ombudsman who would handle records disputes. The two positions would cost the state an estimated $447,900 a year.

“I think the current records committee process is flawed, and the bill that will continue to move forward with a focus on process,” McKell said. “It’s too slow, it’s too inconsistent and we just need to do better.”

State and legislative audits found few cases in the past few years were resolved within the 73 days the law requires and last year the average time was 156 days, he said.

“The goal of this legislation is to make sure we have the ability to be efficient and responsive to these record requests. We have missed the mark today and we have to improve and do better,” McKell said.

Passing the bill, he said, would reduce delays and increase confidence in government transparency.

GRAMA more beloved than Jerry Sloan?

The Utah Media Coalition, a consortium of news outlets that works to keep government records open, says the State Records Committee has served the state well, noting the courts have affirmed the panel’s decisions 98% of the time.

“GRAMA’s a marvel. This room is full because people love GRAMA. If you polled the public about GRAMA, it would poll higher than ice cream, it would poll higher than (the late Utah Jazz coach) Jerry Sloan, it would poll higher than Zion National Park,” Mike Judd, a lawyer representing the media coalition, told the committee.

Judd said the records committee gets things right and disagrees that a lawyer would make things better. “This is a citizen-led process,” he said.

Utahns of various political persuasions lined up at the hearing to express opposition to the bill and ask lawmakers to keep the records panel intact.

Some suggested that if McKell is concerned about a lack of law training on the committee, that one member be a lawyer. Others said the state should spend the annual cost for the two new jobs to provide training for committee members and county clerks who are often tasked with responding to records requests.

They also lamented the possible loss of the committee’s independence in favor of one person beholden to the governor. The bill allows the governor to fire the director “with or without cause.”

‘Last bastion’ of transparency

Veteran journalist and former State Records Committee member Tom Haraldsen said decisions are better when a group of people share their thoughts. He said the Legislature not filling vacancies on the panel last year contributed to the backlog of cases.

“I think that the SRC is the last bastion of transparency in this state. It gives an opportunity for every citizen who has a complaint to be heard, to be seen, to voice their concerns, not just simply file paperwork that one person looks at and decides if it’s true or valid,” he said.

Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, was one of two senators to vote against the measure. He said he agreed that the records committee could benefit from legal advice but that that could be accomplished with a staff position.

He said there is a significant benefit to having diverse backgrounds of opinion on a volunteer committee rather than a person’s whose “at-will employment is contingent upon keeping somebody happy that may or may not be happy with certain rulings.”

Thatcher also said there’s a lot of things right in the bill “but there’s just one thing just I can’t get past. … The public does not feel heard and it’s something that we are seeing more and more and hearing more and more. If we listen, what we’re hearing is they are concerned about power grabs, they’re concerned about not being included in the process. They’re concerned about bills not having enough time or enough input, and I agree with them.”

Speaking in favor of the bill

The Utah League of Cities and Towns and the Utah System of Higher Education support the bill.

“Of course there’s going to be disputes about whether we classify records correctly,” Geoff Landward, state commissioner of higher education, told the Senate committee. “We think that the question of whether a record is classified correctly is a legal question that requires legal analysis and a determination that’s properly handled by legal professionals.”

He said that would bring great clarity, consistency and predictability government agencies are seeking in the GRAMA process.

Public interest balance test remains

Before Tuesday’s hearing, McKell pulled one of the most controversial provisions from the bill. His initial version would have removed a longstanding part of the law known as the “balancing test” used to determine whether public interest warrants releasing records that would otherwise be classified as protected or private.

The balancing test — in the law since it took effect in 1992 — is the “beating heart” of GRAMA, according to the Utah Media Coalition. Without it, government could withhold records even if the public interest in disclosure was compelling and the interests favoring secrecy were nonexistent or minimal.

Senate leaders said another lawmaker intends to address the test in separate legislation, though it would likely be limited to records regarding workforce harassment.