DAVIS COUNTY—The legislative session ended a week ago and as the dust settles, three lawmakers take a moment to share their insights on how it went.

Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful

“Overall I think it was a very good session,” said Ward. “I was quite pleased with how things turned out. If I was giving a short answer that would be that I’m happy the way it turned out from a budget perspective. The parts of the budget I care about the most are the parts that I’m assigned to work on such as the social services budget of the state.”

Those programs are really important, he said. “I was pleased with how that turned out. We were able to get a cost of living increase for many of those programs.”

That’s like Baby Watch that helps disabled children who are developmentally delayed with their walking or talking, Ward said. “The specialists that serve them haven’t had an increase for a long time. Just a cost of living raise for the families who do foster care, including the ones who do the specialized care, where a child might have a very difficult mental illness or intellectual disability.”

For policy there were some bills about immigration, he said. “Some of those were good changes. There was one about large truck drivers having to speak English well enough that they can be safe when they’re interacting with people on the road. That just follows federal law.”

Of the big immigration bills were some that I thought were detrimental, said Ward. “There was HB88 that got quite a bit of people paying attention to it. I was so happy that one didn’t pass because I thought that it would have hurt people and I don’t think it would have helped anybody else. That’s just the way I saw it.”

Ward’s bill on small lots, HB184, didn’t go through. “That was the most important bill to me of the session. I also knew that I was up against difficult terrain,” he said. “It was sad but I knew that was the likely outcome when I started working on it. So I just have to come back and think about it a different way. Somehow we have got to keep looking at it because we have some areas of our state that are still growing rapidly but other areas of our state aren’t.”

Rep. Melissa Garff Ballard, R-North Salt Lake

“From the perspective of Davis County, actually south Davis, between the four of us (legislators) we sponsored 9.5% of all the bills that passed,” said Ballard. “I think that says a lot about the quality of the legislation that we prepare and have ready for the Utah Legislature and that’s not the case for everybody.”

Sometimes the emphasis is that the legislature passes too many bills, she said. “I would say I think we need better quality of bills that are ready because we need to modernize our laws, our government and be more efficient, transparent and be able to respond well to the needs of Utah and our citizens.”

It’s always a good year for education funding, Ballard said. “For every year I’ve been up here education has always fared well. This year it was funded 5% over base budget which was about $300 million over. So I think that was really good.”

Ballard is the vice chair over appropriations for Criminal Justice. “We are opening a new wing of the prison,” she said. “The main prison by the Great Salt Lake. It’s called Bear 3. It's the housing unit and I hope that this will also mirror Bear 2, which is a community living (space) within the prison system.”

It’s not a complete lockdown, said Ballard. “They’re walking back and forth between education and work and living quarters and the leadership of the inmates are holding each other accountable. I think it’s much better for personal accountability and also preparing them for reentry to be our neighbors in our community again because 90% of everyone who’s incarcerated will come back to our communities.”

It’s really easy to read a tagline or a headline of an article and not understand the details, she said. “There is a process in the legislature that is much more thorough than people often see or understand so I’m grateful for the process.”

Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton

“It was an unbelievably successful session,” said Adams. “One more time we cut taxes, again, again, again, again, again and again. Now for the sixth year in a row, when you add up all of those cuts the average family gets a $300 reduction in their income tax. Pretty amazing.”

Then the legislature cut the gas tax by 15%, he said. “We gave some additional tax cuts for childcare credits. We’ve done that for multiple years. So we’ve actually made life much more affordable for families.”

One of the big winners was the Great Salt Lake, Adams said. “We started with a $40 million purchase of U.S. magnesium and all the water and the resources out there that was a big win for the Great Salt Lake.”

Then in the middle of the session the governor went back and talked about the Great Salt Lake with the President of the United States in a one-on-one personal conversation, said Adams. “The result is the President, the federal government, committed to save the lake. Then we see the purchase of this excess ground that they’ve worked on for years and years around the Bear River Wildlife area and the federal government agreed to purchase it for $60 million.”

That’s $100 million of additional money being spent on the Great Salt Lake and a big government commitment, he said. “That’s a big deal.”

Adams started in the Senate in fall of 2009 and has served as Senate President for eight sessions. “It’s been an unbelievable honor (to serve) because Utah is number one,” he said. “We know we have the best economy. We have the best upward mobility which means our grandkids will have a better life than we do.”

Utah is number one because of the great people, said Adams. “We’ve got great input from the public and great legislators that have put in place policies and regulations that allow Utah to be the great state that it is.”