Perry, Wayne battle for Utah House seat straddling Box Elder, Weber counties
Democrat Kerry Wayne, left, and Lee Perry, the Republican incumbent, are running for the District 29 seat in the Utah House in Nov. 6, 2018, elections.
Rep. Lee Perry, who won't seek reelection to the Utah House in 2020 elections.
PERRY — Lee Perry, the District 29 rep to the Utah House, has made a point of paying attention to his constituents.
“I’ve listened to the people. I’ve been their voice,” he said. As the Republican from Perry vies for a fifth term in the House, that’s one of his big selling points to voters.
Democrat Kerry Wayne, challenging Perry, laments what he sees as the lack of “good ideas” coming out of the state legislature notwithstanding the GOP majority in both houses, notably with regard to health care.
“I think the Legislature currently is stuck with groupthink,” said the Marriott-Slaterville man, with a small core leading as other lawmakers “fall in line” behind. “There are no opposing voices in our government right now so bad ideas just keep rolling forward.”
District 29 straddles Weber and Box Elder counties, extending into Plain City, Farr West and Marriott-Slaterville on the Weber County side and Perry, Willard and Brigham City on the Box Elder County side. Perry is a lieutenant in the Utah Highway Patrol while Wayne is a contracts manager.
Among Perry’s priorities is protecting small business interests. Small businesses, he said, helped pull Utah through the Great Recession.
He’s also a strong proponent of protecting education — doing more to retain and recruit good teachers and creating a good learning environment for students. Without a good educational system, Perry said, “we’re doomed as a society.”
He’s anxious for the outcome on the non-binding question on the Utah ballot asking voters if they favor a 10-cent per gallon hike in the gasoline tax to increase funding for education and roads. He’ll listen to what voters say, but has his questions. “There may be other solutions out there that we haven’t looked at,” he said.
The debate is big in Utah over legalizing marijuana for medical use and Perry thinks change is inevitable. He’s skeptical Proposition 2, the legalization proposal on the Utah ballot this cycle, is the way to go, though, because of changes its provisions would require in other Utah laws. Moreover, he wants plenty of safeguards in any legislative change to prevent wiggle room that allows for recreational use of the drug.
Wayne, from Marriott-Slaterville, thinks lawmakers, in general, focus too much on protecting business interests and, related to that, favors the expansion of Medicaid here, granting coverage to a larger pool of those in need.
“We always talk about investing in business and we need to invest in people,” he said. Expanding Medicaid would be one way of increasing the focus on people and reducing what he views as excessive college tuition fees would be another.
Wayne opposes the proposal to raise the gas tax to bolster education funding, worried of the ripple effect. Gas is “such a foundational part of the economy, (a hike) will raise the prices of all goods and services,” he said, and particularly impact people in rural areas who have to drive more to get around.
Income tax revenue — the traditional source of education funding — is a better way to go, he said. Funding for higher ed should be pulled from the income tax stream to give primary and secondary schools more of the money, he thinks, and the tax brackets could be restructured to bolster income tax revenue. He also criticized what he sees as bloated administrative salaries and costs at schools, saying scaling back there would also create more money for education.
