Charlie Schill – file photo
STATE OF UTAH — Following through on his campaign promise, Utah Governor Spencer Cox has made rural Utah a focus of his administration in various ways – his outreach through his bi-monthly Direct Link radio program (heard on Newstalk KVNU), also in promoting his policies including a recent announcement regarding health care in rural areas.
On KVNU’s For the People program this past week, the governor said he greatly appreciates the contributions from rural parts of Utah.
“I was very serious about it. As somebody who grew up in rural Utah, I’m grateful for our rural counties, I’m grateful for the people that make up the backbone of our state. I’m grateful for the hard work that they put in every day to make our state better. We wanted to give back and let people know that we cared about it from a policy perspective,” he said.
The governor said he has an office in rural Utah and he makes sure he spends time there every month. Cox also said his cabinet and senior staff are involved in moving jobs to the rural parts of the state, including over 100 state jobs they’ve been able to move during his short time in office.
Despite the pandemic, this past year has been a good year for the state.
“Well it’s been a remarkable year for Utah, again depending on how you measure that. Certainly economically, there’s an argument that it’s the best year in our state’s history, considering we’re coming out of a pandemic. A lot of people don’t realize this but for a long time we were one of only two states that had positive job growth in that we have more jobs now than we had before the pandemic.”
Cox was asked if there are things that he is surprised about as he visits those in the state.
“As I’m traveling around the state visiting different businesses and different non-profits and seeing some of the innovation that’s happening here is truly remarkable. There’s a company that is growing food and growing it all indoors under lights and using very little water, about three percent of the water you would normally use. And they’re growing food for people, but they’re also growing food for animals.”
Governor Cox said he is constantly amazed when he visits Utah manufacturing companies – for example, there’s one company that has invented a product that goes on power lines to prevent eagles from getting electrocuted and shorting out the power lines and possibly starting a fire.