It is impossible to accomplish anything in government.
This is a sentiment you’ve probably heard many times before. As culture wars intensify, bipartisan efforts become rarer, and public trust in institutions erodes, it becomes easier to lose faith in legislative solutions and feel that policy is no longer the instrument of policy. . Change what used to be.
But over the past three Congresses, we at the Policy Project have had three successes. In 2022, HB162 “Limited Time Products in Schools” passed unanimously. In 2023, $15 million will be allocated to establish a teen center to provide resources to students and families in need. SB205, the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Amendment, is a bill that would provide all elementary school students in Utah with funding and the opportunity to receive age-appropriate child abuse prevention training in school. SB205 was just passed unanimously in the 2024 Utah Legislature.
We are often asked how we can pass legislation “easily” and whether our success comes from working on “small” policy changes. But in the current climate, there are no “easy” bills, and some of these “small” policy changes can make a big difference by addressing the root causes of problems. The truth is, it’s not easy, and it only seems that way until you zoom out and look at the big picture. A metaphor I like to use to describe our process is the sport of curling.
Yes, curling. This sport, which you probably only hear about during the Winter Olympics, involves athletes sliding stones across ice toward a goal. That curling.
In curling, there is a player who delivers the stones, but there are also team members in front of those stones to smooth out their trajectory and direct them where they need to go. They sweep, sweep, sweep furiously to make sure the stone hits the target smoothly and effortlessly. When everyone works together, the stone slides at the perfect speed and direction and hits the target.
This year’s Bill (or Stone) was SB205 and had a large cleaning team. We knew that consensus bills—that is, bills that were considered and worked on by a diverse group of stakeholders before the Legislative Council—were most likely to pass. We began measuring ice temperatures and gathering and evaluating feedback on the bill’s language. We met with supporters of the bill, but most importantly, we met with those who disagree with our ideas. We work with child abuse experts, prevention curriculum developers, law enforcement members, local school superintendents, State Board of Education members, county attorneys, and several child justice centers in Utah to I heard stories from those who took in the children who received it, and many others. We shared our findings with skeptics and those who publicly oppose mandatory abuse prevention education. We met with members of Congress who support this bill and are willing to work with their colleagues to find acceptable language and compromises. We continued his one-on-one meetings with members of Congress to help them understand the need for abuse prevention and secure support.
Grassroots community efforts also prepared ice sheets. He has hosted training events across Utah to present samples of his curriculum to parents and educators, and to ease concerns that this is “sex education” or contains sexual content. I was allowed to. We spoke to a variety of local figures, including victim advocate Elizabeth Smart, House Speaker Mike Schultz, and Republican Hooper and his wife, Melissa, about the importance of abuse education for Utah families.
We needed both conservative and progressive voices, so we reached out to both and they reached out to their audience. We reached out to communities across the state through social media and leveraged community champions to spread the message. Thousands of concerned citizens wrote letters and called their representatives to confirm that this bill needs to be passed.
This is not to deny that it is difficult to find consensus on important public policies. But with preparation and work even before the bill was drafted and involving all stakeholders in the process, the path was smoother. We had a team on the ice and each member played a vital role in cleaning and making sure the stone (SB205) hit the target.
Mary Katherine Perry is the Director of Policy and Government for: policy projectis a nonprofit organization that advances solutions-based policies that remove barriers to opportunity for women, children, and families in Utah. The policy project’s main campaigns include: Utah era project, teen center project and safe kids project. Perry, her husband, and her four children live in Salt Lake City.