SALT LAKE CITY — The 2023 Utah Legislative session started on Tuesday and Weber County lawmakers have put forward a broad range of proposals they hope get attention.

The proposals from the county’s delegation run the gamut, calling variously for a repeal of the state sales tax on groceries, creation of a new state flag and creation of a college tuition waiver program for children of disabled veterans. Other measures from local lawmakers would require high schools to have school resource officers, prohibit purchase of child sex dolls, repeal a state measure allowing Utah locales to use ranked-choice voting and more.

Republican legislative leaders said Tuesday that priorities for 2023 variously include addressing limited water resources, bolstering the shrinking Great Salt Lake, cutting taxes, boosting teacher pay and tackling high housing costs. The session goes until March 3.

Much, much more will be discussed, though, and below are a few of the proposals coming from Weber County’s contingent, seven House members and three senators. Two new faces are among the delegation, Reps. Jason Kyle and Katy Hall, GOPers who replace Steve Waldrip and Kelly Miles, respectively.

Sales tax: Repealing the state sales tax of 1.75% on groceries was a priority in 2022 for Rep. Rosemary Lesser of Ogden, Weber County’s sole Democratic lawmaker, and she’s submitted a proposal for 2023, House Bill 172. She views the tax as regressive, particularly hurting lower-income Utahns.

Utah Rep. Judy Weeks Rohner, a West Valley City GOPer, has also filed a similar measure, H.B. 101, and Sen. John Johnson, a North Ogden Republican, is the Senate sponsor of the measure.

Lesser and Weeks Rohner last year lobbied hard for repeal of the sales tax on groceries, to no avail.

Tuition waiver: Rep. Calvin Musselman of West Haven is proposing a measure, H.B. 109, calling for creation of a program that would waive tuition at state colleges, universities and other higher education facilities for dependents of disabled veterans. Sen. Ann Millner of Ogden is the Senate sponsor.

The measure would apply to children of veterans with 100% service-connected disabilities and would be geared to students seeking undergraduate degrees.

School safety: Rep. Ryan Wilcox of Ogden is proposing a measure, the School Security Act, or H.B. 61, that would create a School Security Task Force and an official within the Utah Department of Public Safety tasked with overseeing matters related to safety at Utah schools. The measure would also require that all high schools have a school resource officer.

The School Security Task Force, made up of 15 members, would recommend safety and security protocols for schools, review the state’s critical-incident response training program for schools and define the duties of the state security chief, the new school safety official.

Mental health services: Wilcox is proposing another measure that would let husbands and wives of retired first responders tap into mental health services available to their spouses, H.B. 59.

Wilcox authored a parallel measure last year, H.B. 23, that provided $5 million in start-up funds to help agencies around Utah implement mental health programs for first responders and requiring that the initiatives be maintained. As is, retired first responders and spouses of current first responders can also tap into mental health services but not spouses of retired first responders.

State flag: Rep. Mike Schultz of Hooper, the House majority leader, is the House sponsor of a measure, Senate Bill 31, to establish a new state flag.

The proposed tri-color banner, which emerged late last year, is blue on top, white in the middle and red on the bottom, with a yellow beehive within a blue hexagon in the middle.

Rail crossings: Schultz is proposing another measure, H.B. 63, that calls for creation of the Office of Rail Safety within the Utah Department of Transportation.

Among other things, the new office would be tasked with regulating and monitoring “time limits on the blocking of railroad-highway grade crossings” by trains, an occasional issue on West 12th Street in Ogden.

Ranked-choice voting: Hall, from South Ogden, is proposing a bill, H.B. 171, that would repeal the state’s Municipal Alternate Voting Methods Pilot Project, which allows locales to implement ranked-choice voting for local elections.

Child sex dolls: Rep. Matt Gwynn of Farr West is proposing a measure, H.B. 108, that would make it a crime “to possess, purchase or distribute a child sex doll.” Possessing such a doll would be a class A misdemeanor while selling or buying one would be third-degree felony.

Brine shrimp: Lesser is proposing a measure, H.B. 137, to designate the brine shrimp as the state crustacean. The sea critter, which lives in the Great Salt Lake, would join a long list of Utah symbols, including the elk, the state animal; the Utahraptor, the state dinosaur; and the Dutch oven, the state cooking pot.

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