CEDAR CITY — The Southern Utah Museum of Arts in Cedar City was the site of Tuesday night’s Direct Link radio program featuring Utah Governor Spencer Cox. Cox had been attending the One Utah Rural Summit.
“We do these One Utah Summits twice every year, one on the Wasatch Front, one in rural Utah. We’re doing this one of course here at S.U.U. and it’s a big week for us, we’ve got people coming from all over the state really focusing on rural issues. We decided to try something new, we’ve been doing this radio program now for well over a year, we tried having a live studio audience, and we’ve got one….maybe you can hear them cheering (applause),” he explained.
The Governor commented on transportation and said the state needs to think big.
“High speed rail has been on my mind for a long time. And I would love nothing more than having high speed rail coming down here to Southern Utah from the Wasatch Front. We announced just this week….we’re having some discussions, open discussions, our department of transportation with Idaho and Nevada, looking at what it would take to get high speed rail from Boise to Salt Lake to Las Vegas and, of course, points in between.”
The high price of housing and the supply continues to be an issue in the West.
“It is supply and demand, there’s more demand than supply, so we need supply. What’s happening right now, is the fed, by raising interest rates is trying to destroy demand artificially. That’s not real demand destruction, it’s artificial demand destruction, if we make interest rates too high then nobody will want to buy a house and the price will come down. Well…yes that’s true, but that’s a terrible way to do it because they still want to buy a house they just can’t buy a house, right? So what we want to do is increase supply and find ways to do that.”
The governor also answered another student’s question and said he does plan on running again when his first term is up, but in keeping with an earlier promise, to only run for two total terms.
Direct Link with Utah Governor Spencer Cox is heard every six to eight weeks on KVNU and is made available by the Utah Broadcasters Association.