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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah House Republicans emerged from an all-day closed caucus Tuesday with the political will to confront some of the state's biggest issues, Speaker-elect Greg Hughes said.
GOP lawmakers didn't take any formal positions but had in-depth discussions on Medicaid expansion, education, the state budget and transportation, specifically the gas tax.
Hughes, R-Draper, said the House's new majority leaders wanted to find out if the rank-and-file want to tackle some of those weighty issues when the Legislature meets in general session next month.
"We got some great signals from the caucus in terms of moving forward," he said.
Gas Tax
Gov. Gary Herbert last week said he's ready to talk about raising the tax on gasoline, a proposition Hughes doesn't see getting very far in the 45-day session that starts Jan. 28.
But the new speaker said House Republicans do want to look what he sees as an outdated formula for calculating the state's 24.5-cent per gallon gas tax. He said the rate hasn't kept pace with inflation since it was last raised 17 years ago and it doesn't make sense to add 10 cents to something that isn't working.
Herbert told the Deseret News Editorial Board last week that because people are paying less at the pump right now, even a 10-cent hike probably wouldn't hurt the marketplace and would be absorbed smoothly.
Medicaid expansion
House Republicans are also looking closely at the governor's Healthy Utah plan as an alternative to Medicaid expansion. In the closed session, lawmakers discussed several possibilities from partial to full expansion.
Hughes said he wants to find a policy that lawmakers can vote for and then move forward.
Budgeting
The speaker-elect said the House GOP also wants to find a more stable approach to the budgeting process. With the state having a large surplus to work with in 2015, he said there is "pent-up demand" for the money. He said lawmakers can hold to the commitments they make.
Despite new budget projections showing the state can count on an additional $638 million to spend, lawmakers have ordered an initial 2 percent budget cut.
