From LymanForUtah.com
SALT LAKE CITY — News emerged a few weeks ago that Utah representative Phil Lyman was throwing his hat in the ring for the top office in the state, to challenge Governor Spencer Cox, who has said he plans to file for re-election next year.
On KVNU’s For the People program on Monday, Lyman said when he started in the Utah Legislature, one of the things that surprised him was how easy it was to make a law.
“Sitting in a committee, talking about transitional therapy for kids who are transitioning genders, and I’m sitting there thinking, this is way above my pay grade. We should have qualified people that are talking about this. But that’s the way it is, you get a citizen legislature to come up and you find out really quickly you’ve got to do a lot of homework, and you’ve got to think through things, you’ve got to talk to a lot of people and get their perspectives,” he explained.
Lyman said that was real eye-opening for him but he loves the legislature.
“I feel like too often we delegate our real authority to agencies for rule making like the Department of Health, where people elect us and vote for us, sometimes we don’t pass clear enough laws we just hand it off to the executive agencies. If I were the governor, I would push tell the legislature to go back, do your job. I’d like to see more resources devoted to the legislature and less to the executive branch.”
Lyman, who is a former San Juan County commissioner, became a cause celebre in a movement challenging federal management of Western public lands when nearly ten years ago he organized an ATV ride through a canyon closed to vehicles that is home to Native American cliff dwellings.
He was fined by federal prosecutors for causing damage. Lyman would like to see the state to stand up to the federal government.
“My biggest heartburn comes with the state’s inclination to take federal jurisdiction or mandates, whether it be our public lands or our public schools. We are very much beholden to the federal government, they send a bunch of money, and that has strings attached, and Utah could do a lot better.”
Lyman will be in Cache Valley this Thursday evening, Oct 12th, from 6 to 9p.m. at a Meet ‘n Greet event planned by Cache Valley Conservatives. It will be held at the Historic Courthouse (199 N. Main) in Logan.