The 2025 Utah legislative session levied punitive laws against Salt Lake City at a level not previously seen, according to Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall.
On Friday, the mayor decried the state Legislature’s aggression toward the capital city, saying the state had the audacity to enact, or try to enact, legislation that “sought to control our residents’ lives and to narrow our city’s ability to function as a municipality.”
“I really have a hard time seeing how anybody who says they believe in smaller government and local control would ever actually support what happened in the legislature this year,” Mendenhall told a room full of reporters at the City and County Building.
Among the bills Mendenhall cited were Senate Bill 195, which places restrictions on new transportation initiatives in the city that will block street safety measures, not to mention the bill requires many city road decisions to be reviewed by the state. The mayor said Salt Lake City was punished for daring to try and “make our streets safer for our residents and visitors from speeding cars.”
Despite the issues, Mendenhall said initially proposed legislation was much worse, and she thanked those lawmakers who were willing to negotiate proposals with city staff. She said many lawmakers were receptive to the city’s concerns, but others weren’t.
“I will say it’s been disappointing when we have had negotiations and in depth conversations, only to see none of that reflected with substitutions and sometimes with ultimately being passed on the floor in the House or the Senate,” Mendenhall said.
She said people like Angela Price — the city’s Legislative Affairs Director, who was seated next to Mendenhall on Friday — successfully advocated the city’s position to legislators, “even when sometimes the bills were drafted and introduced and sometimes even voted on in near darkness.”
Public Safety and Homelessness
One of the larger bills directed toward Salt Lake City was House Bill 465, which was one of 28 bills passed during the session that impacted the city’s public safety plan released in January in response to a letter from state leaders.
Initially, HB 465 would’ve penalized Salt Lake City by taking away state road funding if the city failed to meet deadlines or agree to cooperate with state public safety officials. Mendenhall said she worked with Rep. Casey Snider, who sponsored the bill, to remove those penalties, adding the city wants to work with the state to implement the city’s public safety plan.
“We want to work with (Utah Department of Public Safety), we need to have these partnerships …” Mendenhall said. “I’ve maintained that this bill was unnecessary to require that of us, and I think that’s how we were able to get the bill sponsor to pull back on the punishment end of it. They know we want to do this.”
She added that Brian Redd, the new chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department who started earlier this month, has already started working with DPS to implement both city and state public safety priorities.
Snider’s bill also will allow the state to exercise eminent domain to acquire property for a new emergency shelter, though that authority would end by January 1, 2027. Salt Lake City estimated it needs between 1,000 and 1,600 emergency shelter beds to house its homeless population.
Mendenhall said typically the city would never have agreed to use eminent domain for this facility, but her priority is to create that space as fast as possible, adding, “we know the legal landscape surrounding the property options that we’re looking at, and this is a tool that we support.”
However, she added that the city has made no decisions on where the possible new shelter would be. “If I knew, I probably couldn’t tell you, but I don’t even know just yet,” Mendenhall said.
Housing and Infrastructure
Despite the negatives, Mendenhall was upbeat about other bills that passed during the Legislative Session. She praised Senate Bill 26, which allows city and county tax funds to be funneled toward the Salt Palace Convention Center renovations and, ultimately, an entertainment district downtown that would link the convention center with the Delta Center.
“This locks in the Utah Jazz and the Utah Hockey Club — or whatever they will be called after this season — for the next 30 years in downtown Salt Lake City, as they should be,” Mendenhall said. “This is a major win for Salt Lake City’s downtown economy and economic stability into the future, and that was a major bill that we negotiated a lot and worked on.”
Mendenhall said she was happily surprised to hear the city would receive $10 million in funds from House Bill 360, which will go toward the construction of starter condos and townhomes in the city for affordable housing. The funds will be allocated to the Salt Lake City Community Redevelopment Agency, which will dole out the funds to approved developments.
“It was a bit of a surprise to us, honestly,” Mendenhall said. “We were not deeply involved in that conversation, but I think it reflects the trust that the state has in our capacity to use those dollars and get them out to people.”
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