Lawmakers passed a record number of bills, spent less time than ever debating them

SALT LAKE CITY — It's a common platitude that lawmakers had a "record-breaking" year during each legislative session. Lawmakers tout record tax cuts, record funding for education, record investments in housing, etc.

But the 2023 general session was record-breaking in a distinct way: Utah lawmakers passed a record 575 bills, and introduced a record 929.

Both the House and Senate also spent the fewest hours debating bills in their respective chambers, and spent fewer than 10 minutes combined debating the median bill this year.

That's according to Adam Brown, associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University and faculty scholar with the university's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. Brown created and maintains a Guide to the Utah Legislature, an online database with detailed statistics about seemingly everything related to the Legislature — from bill workloads to which lawmakers are absent for the most votes.

Brown said the effort stems from an attempt to help people visualize what their state legislature is up to, and educate in the process.

"Most people, if they have any sense at all of how the process works, that sense comes from classes about the U.S. government in high school or college," he said. "We do a terrible job of teaching about states in this country, which is unfortunate, because state policy influences so much more of our lives and national policy."

The data Brown compiles is useful, in part, because it doesn't make a value judgment about the numbers, he said. Rather, it allows constituents to see what their lawmakers have been up to, and determine for themselves whether that's a good or a bad thing.

More bills, less time

The legislative session only runs for 45 days, so lawmakers have limited time to get everything they want done. This obviously means that the more bills lawmakers pass, the less time they have to dedicate to discussing and crafting each one.

But in 2023, lawmakers didn't just spend less time on the average bill, they spent less time on all bills.

According to Brown's data, the Utah House spent only 65 hours considering bills on the floor — 10 fewer hours than in 2022, which was previously the lowest mark since 2009. Similarly, the Utah Senate spent 66 hours considering bills on the floor, another recent low.

Brown was clear that his data doesn't include time spent in committees — where most of the debate and public hearing occurs — but only a handful of lawmakers sit on each committee and most defer to their colleagues when a particular bill is on the floor.

During an afternoon floor session on Feb. 22, Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, presented SB215, "Insurance Adjuster Claim Amendments." After Weiler gave a brief description of the bill, senators passed it, unanimously, with no discussion.

Only Weiler hadn't described SB215. He had mistakenly described SB214, a similar bill amending the definition of medical benefits to include payments to any licensed health care provider.

Weiler quickly realized his mistake and had the Senate vote to reconsider their decision. He pointed out that the Senate had debated the bill the previous day and passed it unanimously in a preliminary vote, but acknowledged it illustrates some of the chaos that comes with passing so many bills in a limited time.

"It was embarrassing for 30 seconds," Weiler told KSL.com. "But we do deal with hundreds of bills in tens of days and sometimes they do get confused. But, as soon as I realized my mistake, I did everything and bent over backwards to get that corrected."

He said it's not uncommon for lawmakers to take cues from colleagues they trust who heard the bill in committee and are therefore more familiar with it.

"I know that the public wants every legislator to read and comprehend every bill, but in our 45-day session, it's not realistic," Weiler said. "And I know a lot of people make promises that they're going to do that, and then they get there and realize there's not enough time for that. You can do that but then you're going to have to ignore all the emails that are coming to you. You're going to have to not go to other meetings with your colleagues, because you're just going to be sitting in your office reading bills all day."

With over 100 bills passing in a day, during the last few days of the session, Brown said most rank-and-file lawmakers don't get much time to delve into bills, making the committees that initially approved them more powerful.

"So, the question is, how much do we care? Are we OK with delegating to the committees or not?" Brown asked. "It's working well enough. Legislators are content that they trust one another well enough, but it all is resting on that trust. And if that trust breaks down among legislators and there was not a change in process, we might see some real chaos unfolding on the floor when they're trying to evaluate bills independently and don't have the time."

Weiler said the process isn't perfect, and sometimes "if you're going to eat the sausage, you don't want to watch it getting made. Sometimes the way our legislation gets made is messy."

Controversial bills in prime time

Not all bills are created equal when it comes to floor time, and there are always several major outliers. In 2023, the longest-considered bills were some of the most controversial, including a school choice scholarship program, a moratorium on transgender surgeries for youth and the surprisingly contentious effort to create a new state flag.

Bills related to abortion, social media regulations and discussions on race in classrooms rounded out the most-discussed proposals.

Brown warned that his database only tracks the length of the discussion, which doesn't necessarily translate to the quality of the discussion. He said that the school choice bill — which was debated for around 2½ hours — received several unsuccessful amendments from Democrats, which ate up a lot of time on the floor.

The sponsor of the bill in the Senate "responded to several amendments saying, 'That's not a bad idea, but let's address that in a future bill and let's just get this one passed,'" Brown said. "Time doesn't always reflect discussion in that case. It spent something like 40 minutes on the Senate floor, but mostly that was deflecting minority amendments, it wasn't a great deal of robust discussion."

Other bills occasionally get more consideration simply because lawmakers want to make a speech about their position on the bill, even though they largely agree it should pass, Brown said.

Weiler has seen his fair share of unexpected consideration on certain bills. Several years ago, a Senate bill of his took up nearly an hour of floor time in the House on the final day of the session.

"It was the last day of the session, and it went over the House and the House debated my bill for one hour and then it passed unanimously, which is such a waste," he said. "Why are you debating a bill for an hour, if you all liked the bill? Because there's always bills that die, because we don't have time to get to them on that last day. But there are some weird things that happen up there."

Weiler said he thinks some representatives were still weighing whether to support the bill, but said it shows the one metric doesn't always demonstrate how much real discussion there is.

"I was just scratching my head saying, 'This is a weird process.'"

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