SALT LAKE CITY — As a new lawmaker, Rep. Clint Okerlund was surprised to see just how many bills the Utah State Legislature considers in a 45-day session.
"If you're a legislator that says we need fiscal responsibility or we need smaller government in this state? You have to ask yourself why you’re running that many bills," Rep. Okerlund, R-Sandy, said in an interview with FOX 13 News.
Every year, the Utah State Legislature seems to break its own records for bill requests, numbered bills and those passed in a general session. Governor Spencer Cox has complained that many of the legislature's bills "could have been a phone call." Last session, the legislature had more than 1,200 bills requested by lawmakers; nearly 1,000 were numbered and 563 actually passed.
So Rep. Okerlund is proposing a bill to limit the number of bills a lawmaker can file in a legislative session.
"It’s an ironic thing to run a bill to limit bills, but we just have too many bills," he said Monday.
Rep. Okerlund said the sheer volume of bills the legislature considers in a session requires a lot of taxpayer money. There's policy analysts and fiscal analysts, someone to draft the bill, then input from state agencies or municipalities and stakeholders across the state.
"It’s a lot of time, a lot of energy, and then when they’re all done we have to come here and vote on them in a 45-day session and it’s just too much," he said.
A large amount of bills aren't passed until the final weeks of the legislative session and many lawmakers barely read what they're voting on. It's a frequent public complaint that people haven't had enough time to weigh in or debate a piece of legislation.
"When you don’t have a limit? You can run message bills, performative legislation, those that really aren’t important," Rep. Okerlund said.
Maryann Christensen, who heads Utah Legislative Watch, said she tries to keep up on all the bills.
"I read all the bills that go through committee and I do not love reading hundreds of bills in a seven week time period," the conservative political policy advocate said in a recent interview with FOX 13 News.
While she agreed the idea has merit, Christensen said she did worry about putting to strict of limits on bills.
"I see the value of that because if there’s less bills, they’re going to be vetted better," she said. "But on the downside of that, a lot of times we discover there’s a reason for a bill and if legislators have already opened their limited number of bill files we have no opportunity for this session."
Prior attempts by some lawmakers to limit bills haven't gotten very far with the legislature. Rep. Okerlund is still working out the numbers, but he said he is considering a cap of six bills per House representative and nine bills per senator. There would be exceptions for committee bills, budget bills and even repeal legislation.
Even one lawmaker who is known to run a lot of pieces of legislation was receptive to Rep. Okerlund's potential legislation. Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, defended many of his bills as things that did not make it through a prior legislative session. But he said the discussion is worth having.
"I don’t know if that’s necessarily the right answer, but I think we definitely need to look at legislative throughput," he said. "Are we giving the right attention to the right things as government has grown, our budget has grown, society has grown?"
Rep. Okerlund's bill to limit bills is expected to be filed in the 2026 legislative session that begins in January.
