Economic policy group decides on reboot, will tackle new issues this year

Brice Wallace 

A state economic group that’s not even a year old will start all over again.

Commending the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission’s accomplishments during its first year, Gov. Spencer Cox and other members nonetheless believe it should tackle issues anew in 2022.

“The idea is this: that we start over every year,” Vice Chair Dan Hemmert, also executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, said during the commission’s meeting in January. He proposed that “we are done with everything we’ve been doing” and called for all the commission’s work groups and committees be disbanded.

The commission was created by the Legislature in the 2021 general session and had its first meeting in late June. With the help of several work groups and committees, it presented 26 new policy initiatives to the Legislature for the 2022 session.

Hemmert said starting fresh and tackling new issues will “help this group remain continuously relevant and working on the big issues of the day.”

“My only disappointment is that I didn’t think of this,” replied Cox, the commission chairman. “I appreciate you and your team coming up with this idea. I think it’s a brilliant idea and we should do more of it. … just the idea of starting over, starting fresh, with new people again. We had some committees that were awesome, some that maybe struggled a little bit, but they’re all gone. We get to start fresh, start new, and we get to bring up big issues.”

House Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Layton, said the commission “has done remarkable work in a short period of time” and focused on big issues. “And I love the fact that we’re going to ‘rinse and repeat’ the process again and start from scratch and do it all over again,” he said.

A calendar presented at the meeting calls for:

• March: The commission evaluates and selects new issues to tackle and assigns staff to suggest membership and deliverables.

• May: The commission approves working group topics, membership and deliverables.

• July: The working groups present high-level policy ideas for consideration and discussion.

• September: The working groups present items for consideration to propose to legislative interim committees or for the governor’s budget.

• November: The working groups present on any unresolved or challenging items.

• January 2023: Final status reports are be made, working groups are disbanded and the commission staff works with legislators on commission priorities.

For the current legislative session, the commission prepared bills or was working on bills that focused on the state incentive programs; 10-year statewide economic development strategy; education and training initiatives; coordinated strategic growth solutions; diversity, equity and inclusion and economic empowerment initiatives; rural economic growth; international trade; small-business and entrepreneurship support; and affordable housing.

Cox said the commission’s work “has been some of the most substantial, the most informative” he has seen since being in state government.

“We had some really difficult issues where people have been forced to the table and struggled and may not be 100 percent there, but we’re 90 percent there,” he said.

“State government is really slow, really methodical, really difficult by design. This is a way to cut through so much of that and get to the stuff that matters and get the right people working on it. … What we’re trying to do here is get upstream of the problems we’re facing … and taking on the big issues.”

Hemmert said the commission’s first year “has been pretty successful.”

“We are pretty pleased with this first year’s effort for this commission,” he said. “[We] actually couldn’t be more excited about what’s come out of this commission its first year.”