SALT LAKE CITY – Another Utah Inland Port Authority bill, tabled late in the General Assembly of the Utah Legislature this year, to create a funding mechanism for low-interest loans for rural port projects is in full swing.
Although dozens of speakers lined up both online and in person on Capitol Hill, Utah on Monday, filling the limited capacity of the Senate committee due to COVID-19 and multiple overflow rooms, the chairman of the committee, Senator Daniel Thatcher, left less than 15 minutes towards the end of the 45-day session this week.
“We run out of time here,” said Thatcher, R-West Valley City, when calling on recent public commentators to speak. Not long afterwards, the Senate Government’s Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee quickly voted 6-1 to approve the bill, with only Senator Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, voting against.
It is now being examined by the entire Senate.
Stevenson’s SB243 would create “infrastructure banks” that would hold government funds for loans for future Utah Inland Port Authority projects, including projects in rural areas. House lawmakers announced on Friday that a large portion of the one-time cash – $ 75 million – would be made available for this type of “infrastructure bank” specifically for port authority projects.
Proponents, including Jack Hedge, executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority, said Bill SB243 to create “infrastructure banks” for rural port projects would “allow us to focus on rural efforts.”
Senator Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City and chairman of the Senate Government’s Standing Committee on Operations and Political Subdivisions, listens as Senator Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, sponsor of SB243, hears the bill during a hearing in the Senate Building at the Capitol Complex in Salt Lake City on Monday, March 1, 2021. The law aims to create an inland port fund with a reported budget of $ 75 million. Steve Griffin, Deseret News
“Our goal at this infrastructure bank is to stimulate project growth. … That’s really our focus, ”said Hedge.
Stevenson reiterated what Hedge and other pro-port stakeholders had emphasized in order to address environmental issues.
“We have the opportunity to build a new port that is second to none,” said Stevenson. “I think all industries that want to come here are all going to be very green.”
Activists have protested the port for years – at one point they stormed the downtown Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce building, sometimes disrupting public gatherings and facing arrests – to prevent what they see as a project from affecting the air quality of the Wasatch -Front deteriorate and ruin fragile wetlands near Great Salt Lake would growl the Utah roads with more trucks and increase fossil fuel exports from rural Utah.
When anti-inland port activists spoke against the bill, labeling it as yet another Utah Inland Port Authority bill that was being worked out behind the scenes and given little time for the public to digest, they ran to theirs End comments one minute at a time before their microphones were cut off.
“This whole process is just ridiculous,” said Katie Pappas of Salt Lake City.
Deeda Seed, an activist with the Center for Biodiversity and the main organizer of Stop the Polluting Port, described the public process as “shameful” and intended to facilitate the development of an inland port in Utah that continues to worry environmentalists because she said there are no greens Ports “.
“Why are you creating a funding mechanism … before there is even a plan?” Seed asked. “Wouldn’t it be more responsible to create the plan first before creating a financial instrument?”
Senate budget chairman Jerry Stevenson said SB243 “will build a fence around these funds until a viable project gets back to the agency,” and a credit committee would determine the profitability of the project.
As currently specified in the bill, the loan fund is administered by a committee of five appointed members, including two governor-appointed, one by the Speaker of the House, one by the Senate President, and one by the Chairman of the Standing Community Impact Fund Board.
“This doesn’t hand the funds over to these authorities,” says Stevenson. “You have to go through a process to get it.”
The bill would also create a loan fund mechanism for the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, the board of directors overseeing the development of the soon-to-be-used Utah State Prison site in Draper, and the Military Installation Development Authority, a body the state originally created had to continue development near Hill Air Force Base but was expanded to create a new ski area in Wasatch County.
Victoria Ashby, Director of Government Relations for the Utah League of Cities and Towns, and Andrew Johnston, Salt Lake City Councilor, raised concerns about the bill. They asked for a city representative on the committee to oversee the loan fund, as well as concerns that the loan fund could serve as a means of potentially raising city tax (tax revenue from property tax growth) on projects outside of the Salt Lake project City issue territorial jurisdiction.
“We have to be careful,” said Johnston. “Because that could be a precedent.”
Salt Lake City is still in a lawsuit with the state, now up to the level of the Utah Supreme Court, over the creation of the Utah Inland Port Authority and its nearly 16,000 acre jurisdiction in Salt Lake City is constitutional.
Stevenson said he was still working on the bill “while I was in church yesterday,” and promised Salt Lake City and other parties, “the door is not closed.” We will continue the discussions. ”
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Jack Hedge, executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority, discusses SB243 during a hearing before the Senate Government’s Standing Committee on Operations and Political Subdivisions in the Senate Building of the Capitol Complex in Salt Lake City on Monday, March 1, 2021. The bill would create an inland port fund with a reported budget of $ 75 million. Steve Griffin, Deseret News
Regarding complaints about the late filing of the bill and the reduced time for public contributions to the bill, Stevenson admitted, “It’s late in the meeting.”
“I apologize to the public, but it has a lot to do with my schedule and my artists,” he said. “We’re not moving quite as fast as we usually do.”
Stevenson said the bill was processed “during the meeting”. Though lawmakers first announced on Friday that they had considered creating legislation for the “infrastructure bank” and hit the $ 75 million mark, Stevenson stated that “no attempt was made to litigate or a public opinion to circumvent this bill. ”
“There was no attempt to do this in the back room,” said Stevenson. “It’s daylight outside now.”
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