The 2025 Legislative Session kicked off on Tuesday and for the next several weeks lawmakers will see hundreds of bills that will impact the state. Last week, the Davis County legislators met with the public in a town hall to discuss the bills they are running and what they’ll be focusing on throughout the session.

“Some of them have risen to the top of importance this year,” said Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful. “Some of our subjects are big enough that there might not just be one bill. There might be two or three bills that are in that area that are important for us to think about.”

Ward said as legislators they want to have spent time ahead of the session thinking about them, to kind of come to an agreement if possible amongst themselves. “We know that each of us here are elected to represent our own area. So that means that as we represent the people we will not all come from the same place, because each area of the state has its own unique characteristics to it.”

Every community across the state wants to have a place where families can be strong, he said. “Where there are jobs. Where it’s safe to be there. Nobody wants to be in a place where the red tape is so heavy that you can’t get basic things done that you want to get done to take care of your family.”

“The Speaker of the House has made quite a few comments about education and I appreciate that,” said Rep. Paul Cutler, R-Centerville. “Part of the goal is to focus on the education program, especially in higher ed where we focus on getting our students to graduate with degrees and skills so they can get a job that can pay back the cost of that education.”

Cutler said there is a need for individuals in nursing, engineering and many of the technical trades. “So there’s going to be a focus on looking at the higher education budgets and examining those programs that may have a very small number of students, or are not in demand, from an economic perspective and shifting dollars to those programs where we have higher demands.”

“I have a bill that relates to payment of child support that’s due,” said Ward. “We have an office that’s supposed to take care of that and I would say a lot of things in Utah are not going well on that right now. You have a parent who’s struggling, who has custody of the children and a non custodial parent who has a legal obligation to pay. Money that is owed, that is still owed, even when a person loses their parental rights our state apparatus needs to help make sure that gets collected.”

“I was approached by a mother in our community some years ago,” said Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross. “She was complaining about Instagram. I don’t know because I’m not on Instagram. She said, ‘no you don’t get it.’ She started showing me pictures from Instagram that were not appropriate for children. And after a day or two of that, I’m like ‘stop bowing up my phone with porn because I was shocked.’ I was shocked it was on Instagram.”

For the last 15 years, or however long it’s been around, it rates itself, he said. “It says it’s friendly for 12-year-olds and it’s not even close. So I have a bill, and in fact I talked to Google today about it, because they’re coming out of the woodwork to talk to me.”

Weiler said he’s got about eight other states that are waiting for this bill to pass. “It’ll require the app stores, this is Apple and Google, to make sure that the ratings give parents accurate information about what these apps have in them and it’s to give parents another tool to help them properly raise their kids and to make sure these apps are telling the truth.”

Frankly, there are a lot of businesses that are profiting by selling, basically our kids eyeballs to adult material that is not appropriate for 7 to 11-year-olds to see. That’s probably my biggest bill this session and this will be about the third year in a row that I’ve taken on Apple and Google. They don’t like it but I’m not backing down.”

For more information about Republican House priorities visit house.utleg.gov/2025-pillars-home-page/.

For Republican Senate priorities visit https://senate.utah.gov/issues/.λ