Senator Wayne Harper has been in office since 1997—a total of 28 years. Harper began his time in the Utah House of Representatives, serving there from 1997-2012, before being elected to the Utah Senate, where he has served since 2013. He is currently the longest serving legislator in the Utah State Legislature.
For those who believe in term limits, over two dozen years is a long time for a single person to have been in office, preventing new ideas and perspectives from being represented in our state legislature. Because he has the distinction of being the longest-serving state legislator, we decided to look back at Harper’s time in office and see what he has focused on with legislation.
Over time, Harper has taken on a significant role in overseeing many of the transportation bills that make their way through each session; serving currently as the chair of the Senate Transportation, Public Utilities, Energy, and Technology Committee. But he has also sponsored, co-sponsored, and voted for some controversial bills over the years. Here’s a quick look:
2000: Anti-Abortion Constitutional Amendment
Harper co-sponsored H.J.R. 17 (2000), which urged Congress to propose an amendment to the United States Constitution that would overturn Roe v. Wade by protecting “the life of the unborn.”
2007: Private School Voucher Program
Harper voted in favor of H.B. 148 (2007), which created the first statewide private school voucher program in the nation, gutting public education for the benefit of private, often religious schools. Luckily, the bill was overturned after being challenged by a citizen referendum led by the Utah Education Association. Last year, Harper also voted in favor of H.B. 215 (2023), which created a new private school voucher program under the guise of being a “scholarship program.” Unfortunately, the larger Republican supermajority meant this bill could not be challenged by referendum, but the Utah Education Association has sued, claiming the bill violates the Utah Constitution.
2007: Cutting Education Funding Revenue
Harper has supported efforts to cut school funding revenue and increase the tax burden on the poorest Utahns.
His efforts over the past two decades to drastically reduce income tax rates and rid Utah of tiered income taxes has meant less overall funding for our public education system and a higher reliance on lower income Utahns to pay taxes. (S.B. 223 (2007), H.B. 293 (2018), S.B. 59 (2022), H.B. 54 (2023), S.B. 69 (2024))
When Harper entered office, Utah’s education funding effort at a percent of personal income stood at 5.7%. Now, it’s at 3.7% and we have the lowest education funding per pupil in the nation. Ultimately, these bills that Harper sponsored and voted in favor of have cost our public education system billions of dollars in needed funding.
2011: Government Transparency Fiasco
Harper was a co-sponsor of H.B. 477 (2011), which exempted Harper and his fellow Legislators from having to release documents to the public, ending Legislative transparency as we know it. The bill exempted the Legislature and several forms of electronic communication from the Government Records and Access Management Act (GRAMA), in addition to increasing access fees and erasing language from the Act that favored government transparency. The new law created such a large amount of public outcry that lawmakers had to come back in special session to quickly repeal it and restore GRAMA.
2011: Public Lands Grab
Harper was a co-sponsor of the original Utah resolution, H.J.R. 39 (2011), that urged Congress to hand over federal public lands to Utah so it could be developed instead of conserved for future generations.
The following year, he co-sponsored H.B. 148 (2012), the bill from Rep. Ken Ivory that “required” the federal government to transfer its public lands to state control and authorized the legal study that was used this year to sue the federal government over control of those lands.
2011: Goodbye Department of Environmental Quality
Harper sponsored H.B. 97 (2011) to essentially eliminate the Department of Environmental Quality, which protects Utah’s air and water.
The bill would have consolidated the Department of Environmental Quality, the government agency focused on protecting the environment, within the Department of Natural Resources, the government agency focused on managing/exploiting the environment. Luckily, the bill was held in committee so that we still have the Utah Department of Environmental Quality today.
2022: Reduced Legislative Accountability
Harper sponsored legislation to make it much easier for him and his colleagues to get reelected, while making it much harder for others to challenge their authority.
Utahns already have a hard enough time holding lawmakers accountable living in a one-party state with an overwhelming supermajority. Harper made it a bit harder to hold them accountable by sponsoring S.B. 170 in 2022, which switched the candidate filing deadline from after the legislative session (when prospective candidates know how their elected officials voted) to before the legislative session (when it’s been over a year since the last legislative session).