Utah Rep. Joel Ferry of Brigham City is involved in the process of revising the state’s emergency statutes to better respond to future pandemics.
BRIGHAM CITY – While political debate is still swirling around Utah’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Utah Rep. Joel Ferry is already looking toward the next possible health crisis.
“When we enter into a state of emergency — due to an earthquake, a fire or a flood – we need to take immediate action and we’ve crafted our current laws to deal with that,” Ferry explained during a candidate forum on Tuesday sponsored by the Cache Valley Chamber of Commerce. “But no one ever contemplated a state of emergency that would drag out for six months or longer like this pandemic. In this kind of a circumstance, our laws are antiquated and they need to be updated.”
Ferry is involved in that process because the first-term state representative serves on the House subcommittee that oversees appropriations for Utah’s executive and criminal justice functions.
The Brigham City resident is now dividing his time between discussing revisions to Utah’s state of emergency statutes, managing a family farm in Corrine and running for re-election in House District 1, which includes the Cache County communities of Clarkston, Cornish and Newton.
Much of the 1st House District is farmland and Ferry said that representing those agricultural interests since his election in 2018 has been a pleasure, because those are his interests as well.
“We’re going through real difficult times right now with COVID-19 and the resulting issues that we’re trying to deal with,” he added. “As we’ve seen in report after report, the state of Utah is not only in the best position to come out of this, but we’re also leading the way in seeing that our people our safe.”
But Ferry emphasized that now is the time to revise Utah’s laws to streamline the state’s response to any similar crisis in the future.
“We’re working to come up with a consensus on that and it’s hard because it does impact both the executive and legislative branches of our government,” he explained. “So there’s kind of a power struggle there.
“What we need is a multi-tiered system that will address both a longer-term situation like the pandemic we’re now experiencing and a short-term state of emergency. That kind of system will prevent having to delegate authority to non-elected bodies that can now make rules that essentially have the effect of law.”
Ferry will compete in a three-way race in the general election balloting in November. His challengers for the 1st District seat in the Legislature are Democrat Amber Hardy and Sherry Phipps, representing the Constitution Party.