Utah lawmakers passed 582 bills this year. Here's what they didn't do

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers came close to matching last year's record of 591 bills passed during the recent legislative session, but nearly just as many proposals didn't make it across the finish line before time expired Friday night.

Some high-profile bills to eliminate daylight saving time, allow 18-year-olds to openly carry loaded weapons in public and increase the number of businesses required to use the E-Verify system were voted down during the 45-day session. Many others simply ran out of time to pass both the Senate and House, even if they received votes of support from lawmakers.

Here are some of the issues that were hung out to dry as the Legislature adjourned last week — which could serve as a way-too-early preview of the 2026 legislative session:

Splitting Salt Lake County?

Rep. Jordan Teuscher, a Republican from South Jordan, floated a proposal late in the session to make it easier for several municipalities to break off from Salt Lake County and form a new county. The bill would let cities with about a third of the total population of the state's largest county band together and propose a split. The question would then go to voters across the county.

Teuscher said his bill, HB533, was proposed to start a conversation around splitting the state's largest county but was never meant to move forward this year.

"We'll probably have several committees over the interim before this comes back next session," he told KSL.com.

Counties have been split before, but the most recent change occurred over 100 years ago. Teuscher argued Salt Lake County is growing too big, and said splitting it could potentially bring constituents closer to their local government. HB533 would impact any county with more than 1 million residents, meaning it could also pave the way for a split of Utah County when its population reaches that threshold.

Even if the bill passes next year, cities would be hard-pressed to put a proposal to split the county on the 2026 ballot, which would be the earliest possible option.

Ballot question reversal

Top House and Senate leaders rarely sponsor bills of their own, but when they do, they are generally seen as priorities that are all but guaranteed to pass. Not so for HB563, one of two bills introduced by House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and the only bill with Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, as the floor sponsor.

The bill was meant to reverse a change made last year, when lawmakers empowered the speaker and president to write the ballot question language for proposed constitutional amendments instead of legislative attorneys. That policy quickly blew up in lawmakers' faces, when the state Supreme Court invalidated Amendment D in part because it said the question written by Schultz and Adams "does not accurately reflect the substance of the amendment."

Speaking to reporters after winning reelection last fall, Schultz said he "probably (has) a regret" in using the word "strengthen" in the ballot question, and said "we could have been a little more clear" on what it meant. He said last month lawmakers "made a mistake" in changing who writes ballot questions last year and said HB563 would return the power to legislative attorneys.

Adams appeared to agree, telling reporters the bill "may be a better way to go."

HB563 passed the House with near-unanimous support and was introduced in the Senate at the start of the last week in session, where it never came up for a vote. Because lawmakers can only put proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot in even years, the proposal could resurface next year ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Other bills fall short

Here are other proposals that failed to get a final vote before the session ended:

• HB292 aimed to crack down on the vandalizing of political signs by making it a class B misdemeanor to attach an object to a political sign that changes the message or obscures it from view. Teuscher, the bill's sponsor, had "vote out" signs attached to his campaign signs during his reelection campaign last year. HB292 passed the House unanimously and got full support from a Senate committee but was never put up for discussion on the Senate floor.
• SB155 would have reduced the amount of time — from 20 years to 12 — a person must wait after being released from prison to ask to be removed from the state's Sex, Kidnap and Child Abuse Offender Registry. The proposal quickly turned controversial for sponsor Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, who told a Senate committee of the "texts and the emails and the screaming phone calls that I've received" in response to the bill. While the senator was clear that many people on the registry committed "reprehensible" crimes and deserve to remain registered, he said he heard from wives and mothers of constituents who remain on the list despite being rehabilitated after making "a mistake" decades ago. Marlesse Jones, the head of the Victims Services Commission, opposed the bill in committee, saying: "The commission cannot support a bill that lessens the time on the registry for someone who's been convicted of a sex offender offense." SB155 passed the committee 5-3 in January but was never voted on by the full Senate.
• Finally, SJR8 would have made previous allegations of sex crimes admissible in sexual assault cases, whether those allegations resulted in charges and a conviction or not. Although defense attorneys argued the resolution would make it much easier for prosecutors to submit evidence that wasn't fully vetted by a court, the proposal passed the Senate and was recommended by a House committee with little opposition. The measure was added to the House's calendar after 10:30 p.m. on the last night of the session and was only a few bills away from consideration when time ran out.

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