S1, E58: Utah Political Watch - Bryan Schott

Join us for an insightful journey into the heart of Utah politics with our special guest, Bryan Schott, a seasoned political analyst and founder of Utah Political Watch. If you've been curious about the seismic shifts in political dynamics and why local elections matter more than ever, this episode promises to enlighten you. Together, we dissect the zero-sum game of tribalism that has taken root in politics, both locally and nationally, and explore the critical role journalism plays in confronting misinformation and radicalization.

Delve into the intricacies of Utah's legislative power dynamics over the past 25 years. Reflect on the Republican supermajority's growing influence in decision-making, leaving little room for collaboration across parties. Hear firsthand how this power consolidation affects governance and representation, especially in the post-pandemic era. From constitutional amendments to potential civil unrest scenarios, our discussion with Brian sheds light on the challenges to democracy in a polarized world.

The conversation doesn't stop at politics; it also takes a deep dive into the changing media landscape. Brian shares his personal journey from traditional journalism to embracing new platforms like podcasting and TikTok, offering a glimpse into the evolving nature of news consumption. We'll also touch on the state of Utah journalism and the importance of independent voices striving to hold public officials accountable. Round out the episode with a nostalgic look at the comedy influences that have shaped our perspectives and the unpredictable twists that come with covering politics in Utah.

Please be sure to like, review, follow, subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family! See you next time 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Utah Politics and Journalism Trends
• 4:21 Legislative Power Dynamics and Decision-Making
• 8:27 [Ad] Rumi.ai
• 9:16 (Cont.) Legislative Power Dynamics and Decision-Making
• 13:02 Power Dynamics in Utah Politics
• 23:32 Adapting to Changing Media Landscapes
• 30:42 Career in Politics and Journalism
• 36:58 Current State of Utah Politics
• 51:03 Political Division and Democracy Threats
• 59:11 Potential Scenarios Leading to Civil War
• 1:05:58 Changes to Utah Education Funding
• 1:17:10 The State of Utah Journalism
• 1:27:39 Comedic Influences and Journalism Collaboration

Transcript

Bryan Schott: 0:10

The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down. She said there are two things about me I want to find out the things, and then I want to tell people about the things. That was jumping from the kiddie pool right into the big leagues. As a journalist, you need to spend time in places that make you uncomfortable, and he told me that he gets most of his news from TikTok, which absolutely horrified me. I have no desire to ever run for office. I probably dreamed of this, but never thought I would grow up to be hated by a governor and a US senator, and I'm really worried. I'm really worried about the future of this country. There have been times where I'm sitting in a legislative hearing and someone will say something that I ran into on a QAnon board. That's how a lot of people have become so radicalized. It's terrifying to think about it, but I spend a lot of time thinking about it. I want this to be funded by my readers.

Erik Nilsson: 1:07

What is up everybody and welcome back to the Small Lake City Podcast. I'm your host, eric Nilsson, and, as everybody should probably know by now, it is an election year, and while there's a presidential election going on, that's really important, there's also a lot of other elections in Salt Lake that are equally as important and arguably impact us more than that. Now this week's guest is someone who knows Utah politics better than anybody else, and so I sit down with him to understand better what we should know about his voters as Utahns, as Salt Lake citizens, small lake citizens, to make our vote go as far as it can. Now the guest this week. His name is Brian Schott.

Erik Nilsson: 1:45

Now he has been following Utah politics for decades now. He was the political contributor at the Salt Lake Tribune. He has now started his own platform to help give Utahns and Salt Lake citizens more info on what's going on in politics, called Utah Political Watch, where newsletter content also his social medias gives us all the information that we want to. But we talk about how, essentially no matter what you vote for Trump's probably gonna win the presidential election in Utah. But we talk a lot about more about what's been going on in politics recently, what we should be mindful of and what we should be paying a lot more attention to. So a lot of great tidbits for people wanting to understand more of what's going on and to help us make better decisions in our elections. So let's check it out. I mean whatever is comfortable. Well, I started in radio in my hometown when I was 13.

Bryan Schott: 2:32

Oh, some people. Well, I started in radio in my hometown when I was 13.

Erik Nilsson: 2:34

So oh, so you've been doing this for like a like a long, long time. It's a real job? Yeah, it's. It's funny how that is, cause like even in my own like personal life now, cause I mean the podcast let's see, we're nine days short of a year since I launched the first episode and ever since I've done this, I'm like all right, how do we get out of this full-time corporate job and do more of this? So I understand how that can be the addicting side of it and it's fun, especially if you've been doing this since you were 13 years old and still doing it and still have a passion to be doing it. I definitely get that, especially with all the beat and the headlines and the news and everything that goes into it. It's addicting. It's like a dopamine drip.

Bryan Schott: 3:13

Well, it was, it was well as and we can talk about this in podcasts, but my wife has always said that I'm a natural news person, where she said there are two things about me I want to find out the things and then I want to tell people about the things that is journalism in a nutshell, um, but it's.

Erik Nilsson: 3:32

It's interesting and I and also kind of like what we were talking about when we started up is, you've been following the beat of Utah politics for a long time and I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly and I feel like I mean, obviously, in the past eight years now, everything's become a lot more personal. Everyone feels, I mean the claws are starting to come out and it's become more of an identity to people than before, and especially, not only just on like on the national scale that we've seen, but even more so, I mean, in the Salt Lake and Utah area and all the changes that have happened there. Well, that's.

Bryan Schott: 4:01

I know it. Just, we're always behind the trend, but it has accelerated and just the trend of politics becoming more tribal it's it's no longer a uh, it's become a zero-sum game I win and you lose. Um the there's no collaboration. Um, when I first started up on the hill, uh, 25 years ago, um, there was a lot of um working together and and Democrats, even though they were a minority, they were included in a lot of the decisions.

Bryan Schott: 4:40

And what we've seen is the Republican majority up on the Hill and they're a super majority now and they do a lot of decisions behind closed doors. A lot of the stuff is negotiated behind closed doors and those decisions are made in their caucuses before they ever come out on the floor. Just this last session, the hockey arena that was negotiated 100% among the Republicans behind closed doors. The baseball stadium same thing, 100% with Republicans, behind closed doors. Now the Democrats were included a little bit because the areas that those buildings are going to be in are Democratic areas of the city, but the main decision is made in the Republican caucuses behind closed doors. And then, when you get to things like the budget, a lot of the big budget decisions are made by an even smaller group of people, and that's just the leaders of the house and the Senate and it reminds me of I want to see like Hamilton, where there's like the song, it's like in the room where it happens, where they talk about, I mean, decisions made, no one was there.

Bryan Schott: 5:44

Do not get me started on.

Erik Nilsson: 5:45

Hamilton Deal. We will not go down that rabbit hole. But I mean Brian shot, I mean Brian Schott, I mean we've been talking forever. I mean I reached out to you a long time ago to wanting to be on the podcast and it's funny, since I messaged you, I feel like every, because at the beginning I was like, oh, the legislative session just ended, be good to get your thoughts on, kind of what happened there, what we can expect, blah, blah, blah. But then I felt like, and you're like, listen, I'm swamped. Like and you're like, listen, I'm swamped, this is like my Super Bowl. And then I feel like every week after that it was like, oh, and then there's this other thing happening and it's just been this tsunami after tsunami.

Bryan Schott: 6:23

It used to be that politics in the state. Really, you know there was some downtime and there's not anymore, and you know you can say that that's probably because of the fact that Utah is the fastest growing state in the nation. Our budget has expanded to $25 billion. I mean, it's a huge budget and so you know we have the shortest legislative session in the country, at 45 days. I don't see that changing. But there's a lot of stuff that doesn't get done and a lot of stuff that gets rushed through at the last minute. I don't think it would be good for the state to have like a 180-day session or a year-round, but 45 is really, really short are made before they get to the session, or a lot of the big issues are starting to be litigated before you get to this session. But you know it's just such a rush to get everything done.

Erik Nilsson: 7:24

Yeah, and it makes sense Because, again, like we don't want this to be going in perpetuity, we don't want this to be half the year, but at the same time, going from I mean just using easy numbers like 10 billion to now 25 billion, and and let's call it the days per billion dollars negotiated over in a legislative session has been gone up two and a half times what it was, and so I don't know if it's the chicken or the egg that because it's so short that they feel like they have to have this getting everything in their ducks in a row before they bring things to the floor they have to have this getting everything in their ducks in a row before they bring things to the floor.

Bryan Schott: 7:56

Well, that's one of the reasons why they have the monthly interim meetings where they have committees it's joint committees with the House and the Senate and they will discuss possible legislation, get input on those things. So that's the reason why they have those meetings Almost every month. They take a few off in the summer, but you know it's just. Everything has expanded and they like to say that the legislature is not a full-time job, but it's pretty darn close to a full-time job for the top leaders.

Erik Nilsson: 9:07

Yeah, yeah, especially in like that caliber of things, cause there's a lot of roles in the state and county city that are part-time roles, like even when I recorded with with Rochelle Morris, for example, that's a part-time role, but she's like, let's be honest, it's not a part-time role, but then the amount of time and the money that goes into things and people's schedules being hidden, the bills that have been trying to be passed, the gerrymandering that's happening, it's hard to not look at this and be like well, how much power do you want, you know? Like like, how much control can you possibly have before people like wait a minute, maybe not.

Bryan Schott: 9:42

Well, once you get that level of control, it's hard to see any of it back. Um, uh, and. And what we've seen from the legislature, especially since the pandemic? Uh, the aftermath of the pandemic is the legislature I like to use the term. They've become more imperial in the fact that they have pulled more power to themselves.

Bryan Schott: 10:09

For example, if you look at some of the bills they pass in the aftermath of the pandemic, if the state wants to issue a mask mandate this is a statewide mask mandate it was that the governor could do that. Well, now it's the governor and the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. Two of the three have to agree, and that does not make a lot of sense to me, because the Speaker of the House represents maybe 20,000 people and the governor represents the entire state and the Senate. It's a much larger group of people, but still it's only 1, 29th of the state. But somehow those two seats are now part of the decision making process. Seats are now part of the decision-making process.

Bryan Schott: 11:00

If you'll remember, when Salt Lake County decided to institute a mask mandate, their health officials said let's have a mask mandate, the virus numbers are going up. And the county council signed on with it. They had a Republican majority on the county council, but a couple of members decided to vote for the mask mandate, so they instituted the mask mandate. Well, the legislature wrote themselves into the bill that they could override that mask mandate and that's what they did, and most of the people who voted to override the mask mandate do not live in Salt Lake County. Yet they terminated a local decision and one of the things you hear up at the Hill is they like to say they like to talk about local control a lot, but the other part of it that they'll say as jokingly, but it's not a joke we believe in local control until the locals need controlling.

Bryan Schott: 11:49

Yeah, it's only felt more and more that way, and I like to use the term imperial because my brain just goes straight to Star Wars and it's like, oh yes, senator Palpatine, well you know we do have three co-equal branches of government, but the legislature sees themselves as more co-equal than the other two and that's why you saw such a angry backlash this year when the courts the other part of the three branches of government ruled against the the legislature. They ruled against them in the gerrymandering case. Uh uh, league of women voters and others against the state of Utah. They ruled against them in the amendment D case and then the legislature realized they were going to lose amendment a, so they decided to avoid that from the ballot. Uh, the speaker of the house, mike schultz, and the president of senate, stewart adams, were so angry about those decisions and when you make all the decisions, it's really hard to get told no, yeah, but the judiciary was on solid ground. There were constitutional issues that were not followed or constitutional procedures for putting these things on the ballot that were not followed. The language for those two constitutional amendments were they were very misleading and that was part of a change they made in the 2024 session earlier this year, when it used to be that if you were going to have a constitutional amendment on the ballot, the language was written by legislative attorneys and it said that it had to be a nonpartisan analysis, a non-biased analysis. They changed that. So the constitutional amendments will be written by the president of the Senate and the speaker of the house. They changed that earlier this year. They didn't do it for amendment D. Amendment D came out of nowhere. They did it for amendment a, which would have completely changed the way that schools are funded here in the state.

Bryan Schott: 13:54

So it's, it's just part of these power grabs A power grab is a great way to describe this where the legislature is not satisfied with the level of influence that they have, and I'll say that specifically, it's the Republicans.

Bryan Schott: 14:14

They have a super majority in both houses. They have 61 Republicans in the House and 23 in the Senate, and sure, that's a veto-proof majority which keeps the governor in check. Right, if you pass something with a veto-proof majority, you're not going to see a lot of vetoes. But the other thing and this is the part that a lot of people don't pay attention to is that if a bill passes with a supermajority in both houses, you cannot launch a referendum to undo it at the ballot box. We saw that at the end of 2019 with the tax reform that did not pass with a super majority and in a very short amount of time, opponents gather enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot, and the legislature, instead of being defeated at the ballot box, repealed it With the really controversial issues. You watch, they are making sure that those bills pass with two thirds in each house and that means it's done.

Erik Nilsson: 15:20

Yeah, the citizenry cannot override it at the ballot box Interesting and like it's so interesting to see, like these games of chess and checkers, and I mean what's communicated and what's done and what's shown and the optics of things kind of all get convoluted in itself. And I mean definitely want to dive into a lot more of kind of the current issues, the things that you think that people should talk about, but first want to talk more about I mean you, your background and how you got to do what you did, cause I mean you alluded to your wife saying that you were born to be a journalist. You want to find things out, you want to tell people about it and started at the age of 13. But I mean walking through kind of setting the stage for that I mean 13 year old, first job and to where we are today.

Bryan Schott: 16:01

When I was 13 and a freshman in high school in a small rural town in Northeastern Colorado, one of the teachers came up to me and said hey, you won't shut up in class, you like to talk? The radio station, which was right behind the school, it wasn't too far from the school, but they were looking for someone to work nights and weekends. And so I applied and I went in and I read something, read some scripts onto a tape, and they hired me and it was. It started off with a weekend job. On Friday nights and Saturday nights I would babysit the automation. There were two stations, there was an AM and an FM, but they simulcast at night so they played the same thing.

Bryan Schott: 16:52

But the automation were these gigantic reel to reel tapes, Um, and they had hours of music on them and there were six of them, and I had to make sure that the they were put on in the correct order, because they were programmed from a computer and it would play this, this, uh, play this song, and then this ID and everything. So it was just pretty much run by itself. And then occasionally I got to do newscasts and I was kind of left on my own. There wasn't a lot of people listening at night. The AM didn't reach very far because it had power down at nighttime and the FM wasn't incredibly powerful.

Bryan Schott: 17:31

So I got to do newscasts and that went all the way through high school. Then I went off to college, um, and I thought I was either going to be an actor or or study history and I could not stay away from the radio. So I started working on the student station, um, and then I worked on the public radio station that was there and one of the local stations, just, you know, doing some freelance stuff, um, not so much dj, as it was more news, you know, helping to write, really learning by putting my feet in the fire um, and was this mostly like just general news at this point?

Erik Nilsson: 18:09

was there any sort of like politics or um no, it was mostly general news.

Bryan Schott: 18:13

I really wasn't a beat reporter because I was a snot-nosed college student. I was basically helping them learning a little copyediting and editing skills and occasionally filling in on the air for newscasts for three or four minutes. And that's when there were lots of radio stations that had lots of local owners. And then there was a student station, and the student station is where I had the most fun Because we got away with a lot of stuff on the student station. I remember one time Public Enemy came through Oklahoma City for a concert and somehow I don't know how this this happened, but they were going to come in studio with us and it was going to be on my show and I was freaking out because I'm a huge public enemy fan. I mean, I love chuck d, I think he's fantastic, I love flip flavor, flavor, and so to make it a little more interesting, we went to the student food, the cafeteria, and we had them bring in waffle irons and so we made waffles on the air as we were talking with Public Enemy and it was a lot of fun, wow, yeah, just a lot of fun.

Bryan Schott: 19:29

And then after college I went back, worked at my hometown station for a little bit. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And then I got hired by the big news talker in denver, uh, koa radio. They were an am at the time am only a clear channel am station, meaning at nighttime you can. You could hear them in parts of 38 states. In canada, ksl is also a clear channel station.

Bryan Schott: 19:52

All the other AM stations had to power down when the sun went down, and then these clear channel stations, so, uh, that was that was jumping from the kiddie pool right into the big leagues and I, uh, I worked on. I worked on producing talk shows and booking guests and doing the research for that and working in the newsroom and helping with the radio broadcast. So, uh, and then I ended up out here in 1997 when um david lock, who is the play-by-play voice of the jazz, was hiring to start the brand new sports talk station that doesn't exist anymore, k fan, and that came about because I worked on the denver nuggets broadcast. The play-by-play man at the time, who's now the play-by-play man of the colorado rockies, uh, is a gentleman by the name of Jerry Schemmel and he's fantastic, just a wonderful person, and he and David knew each other, and so that connection happened and that's how I ended up out here.

Erik Nilsson: 20:46

Got it. What was your initial thoughts on going from Denver to Salt Lake? Were you excited about the move? Did it just feel like a professional move?

Bryan Schott: 20:59

Oh, about the move. Did it just feel like a professional move? Oh, I was, I was 20, 26 or something. So you know it was time and I'm young and you know you can just make whatever. Uh, you know it, it was really exciting, um, you know, I thought this might just be a stop along the way and it turned out to not be, um, but you know it was.

Bryan Schott: 21:13

That was at the time when, if you were in radio, you moved around a lot, you know, um, and you and you went to two different stations.

Bryan Schott: 21:20

That's not the case anymore, um, and it was right around that time that you started to see a lot of the consolidation start to happen in the radio business. Um, uh, clear channel, which used to be a company in the called J core. When I was in Denver they had just started buying up a whole bunch of other stations in Colorado. It made me really sad because there was a station in Fort Collins called KTCL that I grew up listening to and they call themselves Freeform Radio. The DJs program their own shows and so I got exposed to a lot of just non-mainstream music, not a lot of pop music, and I was really sad when J-Core now Clear Channel took that over because they changed it fundamentally. They did the same thing with the legendary station, the music station in Boulder I think it's KBCO is what they were. Anyway, if you lived in Colorado at the time you knew KBCO Got it and they took over that station and made it a soulless husk of what it used to be.

Erik Nilsson: 22:28

Yeah, it's sad to see all of that consolidation happening.

Erik Nilsson: 22:31

I mean it's all the guys in suits looking at financial models trying to make it all happen, and then the which sure it foots on a model, make your money, whatever, but at the same time, like the people like you and other people that are in those areas, that is their culture, that is their. I mean morning commute, that and especially during that iconic time, like pre, I mean, let's say, like 2009, when iphone started to come around yeah, like that's what people did. And it reminds me a lot of excuse me, the conversation with Frankie and Jess that I had, where I mean both of them, like Jess particularly was down in Arizona and other places before jumping around. Frankie came here from Detroit and so this like bounce around was so normal and then obviously they, similar to you, came here for a job, stayed longer than they thought, and I mean now with I mean podcasts and YouTube and everything else. It's it's a medium that's changing a lot and people are kind of figuring out what to do as more of these suits start to show up.

Bryan Schott: 23:23

Yeah, it's, it's it's. You know, there's just a lot of change in media and the way that people get their news. You know there's. There's a journalist by the name of Peter Hamby. He used to be with CNN and now he writes for the Atlantic sometimes, and some of the other, I think he's mostly with the Atlantic. Anyway, he said something when I was at a conference once, probably 10 years ago, that really stuck with me and he said as a journalist, you need to spend time in places that make you uncomfortable. And he wasn't talking about being in, like you know, a city that makes you uncomfortable. He was talking about media environments and things like you know, snapchat. He had just started a Snapchat show, a weekly show, I think it's called Good Luck America. He's still doing it. It's quite good, but he was doing a show on Snapchat, and the reason he did that is because he said, if you're going to grow or if you want to find your audience, you have to spend time in these places that make you uncomfortable.

Bryan Schott: 24:26

When TikTok first came out, I was like there's no way I'm going on that app Now. I'm still trying to figure it out, but when I put stuff on there, people seem to respond to it, and that's finding your audience. And you have to go where they are because they're not going to come and find you. You have to put your stories out in different ways, put your content out in different ways so people understand that. And the other reason why I'm on tick, tick tock is I was talking to my brother-in-law and, um, you know, he and he told me that he gets most of his news from tick tock, which absolutely horrified me. But I'm like, okay, well, if, and he's, and he's a smart guy, but that's where he got, that's where he stays up with with, with the world, and so I'm like, well, I guess I need to be over there. So we have to figure out how to make that happen, happen as well.

Erik Nilsson: 25:16

Yeah, that's a, that is a strong serving that I've had to learn with the park Cause. At first I'm like, oh cool, put it out and learn how to upload podcasts and host it to different. I mean platforms like cool. Now everybody just like comes along Right and just loves it Right. But no, like you have to. I mean the amount of me being comfortable talking in a microphone, in front of a camera, with a ring light in my face. If you would've told me that a year ago, I've been like there's no way I'm doing like I'm not that person, but at the same time, like you do have to be uncomfortable. You have to meet people where they're at. You do have to try new things out, or else it'll get stale and people won't know where to find it or you won't be able to.

Bryan Schott: 25:53

And the moment you figure out how, the moment you get a formula that works, it all changes again Exactly, and that's one of the things that has really hurt a lot of news organizations is that Google and Meta changed their algorithm to de-emphasize local news and you see a lot, especially here. A lot of local news outlets are having trouble. They're not getting the reach that they used to get because that organic search is not happening anymore and there are a lot of people who thought they had it figured out. They were relying on that and then it changed and they're still stumbling around in the dark. All of us are trying to figure out how to get eyeballs on our stuff, because that's the only way. I mean, if 10 people read my stuff, that's great, that's 10 people, but I'd like more people to read my stuff.

Erik Nilsson: 26:43

Yes, yeah, more the better, especially when there's so much I mean to your point about tick tock and people getting news like is there good news on tick tock, absolutely? Is there bad news on tick tock Absolutely? And so the more that we can have the voices that are more reliable or know what they're talking about, instead of just someone decided to upload something that got a lot of views so they decided to run with it. I mean, I think that's an interesting fork in the road that we're at. So you come to Salt Lake, you start with Kayfan. I mean, at what point were you like? Politics is my thing, politics is my jam, this is my jam. This is what I want to be doing.

Bryan Schott: 27:16

Well, I was with K fan for uh uh 1996 to 98 and then Utah jazz made two runs to the NBA finals and I got to cover both of those.

Bryan Schott: 27:27

Uh, it was a lot of fun. Um, I actually went to Chicago in the 98 finals for the uh because the jazz had the home court advantage. So the first two games in the last two games were in uh, salt Lake, so the middle three were in Chicago and that was just an incredible time. Um, you know, just just a wonderful experience, um, and I remember distinctly the the bulls could have closed it out at home in game five and the jazz came back and won and we were traveling with the team because we were the official team broadcaster. Now the thing you'll see is the broadcasters are employees of the team. That was, uh, when I was there. It was sort of a hybrid where part of the salaries of the people on K fan were paid for by the jazz. Now they're just straight up employees Interesting, um, and straight up employees Interesting, and they'll also buy the outlet. So you know, and it's a private business, you know they like to control the message. You see politicians thinking they can act that way as well but they're, they're public officials.

Bryan Schott: 28:25

It's not a private thing, different thing. But I remember just distinctly that the jazz one game five, sending it back to a game six in Salt Lake City, and the Bulls won in game six. But as we were pulling out of the parking lot on the bus and, like Chicago, had called every police officer in because they were expecting riots and you know just big crowds, and so as we were pulling out, there was a police officer just standing there giving the bus the finger, like there wasn't. It was so funny I that that was uh, and so so that really stuck, stuck with me from that. So, um, but when I wasn't doing stuff with the jazz, I was working with the radio shows and I kind of got tired of um, and there's a place for this and people like it, um, kind of like guy talk, you know. But you know, guy talk. One of the things I noticed is, at least once every other week you'd spend a show talking about caddyshack and I'm like, okay, I mean that gets phone calls, but what's the point of this, right, um, it's, it's changed a lot, but that was, that's lot of what happened, and it was just because and I found that when I worked in Denver with some really talented talk show hosts in Denver they had their go-to shows. I used to call them Insta shows.

Bryan Schott: 29:48

There was one gentleman I worked with. His name is Greg Dobbs. I love Greg Dobbs to death. Greg Dobbs he I love Greg Dobbs to death. He was ABC News Bureau Chief for in Paris and in the Western United States and he snuck into Afghanistan when the Russians invaded in 1979. I mean, he has done a lot. He's a great guy. But when he would come in to host his evening talk show and he didn't do any prep, he would go to abortion or gun control because it would light up the phone lines and then he could just kind of sit back and relax.

Erik Nilsson: 30:22

I've never heard of gun control and abortion making people sit back and relax.

Bryan Schott: 30:26

Well it was him, because you know what the show is going to be and you know that you're going to get the phone calls, because it's really hard. It was really hard then to get people to call in. So anyway, but I got tired of those kinds of discussions but that's what you get when you're listening to sports talk. And so there was an opening at the NPR station up at the KUER. I applied, they hired me, worked there for a couple of years, went to KSL for a few years working with them, ran KCPW when it was an NPR station and down at Library Square for a few years. And then I got hired to run a local website called Utah Policy, and I did that for 13 years before moving over to the Tribune and now I'm on my own did that for 13 years before moving over to the Tribune, and now I'm on my own, nice, and so what was it about politics that drew you to?

Erik Nilsson: 31:20

I mean cause there's a lot of other ways you could go, I mean outside of sports and kind of like, let's call it that guy talk Cause I couldn't do it either If I had to talk about Caddyshack every other week. Hard pass, but what it was like and that's a topic that I think it's very binary for a lot of people very black and white it's either people are all in, they want to follow it, they want to know it, or it's like whatever, keep me updated when I need to. But you're the one who wanted to be in the trenches, understand?

Bryan Schott: 31:41

And it's because it's because of my grandma, um, uh, my mom was a single mom, um, divorced my dad when I was probably five, um, and we moved from Denver back to my, to her hometown, um, and my mom had to work during the day, so my grandmother watched me and I would walk over to her house after school, which was down the street and everything. But, uh, I I remember one of my earliest memories is watching the 1976. The 1970s that would have been too early for, too young, for for 72, but the 1976, uh, democratic and republican conventions, um, it was in the summer, I didn't have school, my mom was working and they were on all day and on all the networks and we watched, uh, the floor fight that happened over Gerald Ford when Ronald Reagan, I mean, I, I had no idea what was going on, but it was fascinating, um, and my grandmother was telling me all about it and, um, and so that's that's one of my earliest memories and it just sort of blossomed from there Now, um, uh, I I loved reading. I read everything that I could. I remember when I was in In seventh grade, I read All the President's Men, which is a tremendous book, and that just ignited fire and I would get my hands on anything that I could. I read voraciously.

Bryan Schott: 33:16

And then I was a civics dork in high school. I got into the debate program speech and debate did quite well and that just sort of set me on this, on this path. Um, you know, uh, I, I, I like to argue. Um, people in my class always thought that I would end up in politics, but not this way. They thought I'd end up like running for office or something I have no desire to ever run for office. Um, I would rather sit on the sidelines and throw pot shots at them.

Erik Nilsson: 33:46

So that's a you probably seen so much and seen. It's kind of like me and my thought of having kids, like I've seen my family, like there's two steps, two sisters, three steps sisters and a stepbrother. Between all of them there's like 19 grandkids. So you know, my friends have kids. I'm like I know a lot of what this has to do and if I make this decision it's going to be a big dis like I will know what I'm getting into. I mean, no one ever truly knows, but I have a good picture and like similar with you or it's like I have followed politics for so long. I've seen who's coming in and out, I've seen what it's taken, what people survive, what people don't. You're like yeah, I like where I'm at, I like having a front row seat.

Bryan Schott: 34:22

I enjoy what I do. I wake up every morning. I'm still very excited about, you know, making phone calls to people digging into issues. The job has changed so much from when I first started doing it. When I first started doing it, it was just radio. You'd go and stick a microphone in someone's face. But now you know you have to be recording vid, video and thinking about how to, and you know there's a lot of data analysis and documents. But I'm still very excited. I still love what I do. I do I could not do the same thing every single day. That would drive me nuts and that's my particular brand of ADHD. I like to tell people that I'm an unsupervised adult with ADHD and you know it helps me because I can multitask and keep track of a lot of things you know, and so it's suited for what I want to do. So you know it's just I love it, and the day that I don't love it is the day that I stopped doing it.

Erik Nilsson: 35:28

Yeah, I think that's a healthy relationship to have with it, cause I too have ADHD and I will go through my various rabbit holes and hyper fixations and keep tabs on things that I don't and like can recognize trends better than most and have a really good memory because of it, and so, like, similarly, like I'll try to think of the last rival while I went down.

Bryan Schott: 35:48

I'll think about it, but, and, and, and, and, and it helps. Yes, I'm, I'm, I'm lucky that I have a wife who has a good enough job that allows me to continue committing acts of journalism. Um, you know, she supports what I do. I support what she does. Um, you know, my kids are grown and gone. Um, they're off on their own lives, and so it's just us and the dogs at home, so we have plenty of time to do all this stuff, perfect.

Erik Nilsson: 36:14

And looking back, I mean up until this point in your career. I mean outside of, I mean the, the jazz to play off runs, I mean what were some of the other highlights that you remember from your career so far?

Bryan Schott: 36:24

Oh, I mean, I've covered some pretty big sporting events. I was on the radio news team when the Colorado Avalanche moved to Denver and won the Stanley Cup and that was an incredible I mean, that was just a whirlwind. I worked with the broadcast team when the Colorado Rockies first started. That was crazy. Um, you know, I've been, I've been lucky to be, in a lot of places where I've seen a lot of interesting things. Um, you know, I, I like to tell friends who, uh who, I grew up with that you know, I never thought that I would be, um, uh, I, I I probably dreamed of this but never thought I would grow up to be, uh, hated by a governor and a U? S and a Senator. But, um, you know, uh, spence gov, governor Spence or Cox and Senator Mike Lee, and I don't really get along.

Erik Nilsson: 37:18

I would imagine that you guys do, based on what I know.

Bryan Schott: 37:20

Uh, you know so, but it's in terms of highlights. Um, for me, the biggest highlight is that I'm still able to do this. There's a lot of people who either burn out or they get laid off, and we're seeing a lot of new shops close, and so I'm very lucky that I still have the opportunity to do this. Yeah, my stepdad always says there's always still have the opportunity to do this.

Erik Nilsson: 37:45

Yeah, my stepdad always says there's always room at the top for the best. Well, I wouldn't say that, I just think I've been extremely lucky. There we go. But I also kind of want to talk more about, I mean current state. I mean there's a lot of things going on. I mean we have election coming up in less than a month. I mean what do you think? I mean Utah voters should be paying attention to, salt Lake voters should be attention paying attention to, or just I mean your thoughts on, I mean recent political events, because there's been so many.

Bryan Schott: 38:13

Oh well, I mean ballots. We're. We're recording this, probably just a few days before ballots start hitting the mailboxes, and there are some pretty consequential races on the ballot. Now, when it comes to US president, that's not something that we're. We're a red state. Trump is going to carry this state. So essentially, in terms of the electoral college, your vote does not count, because it doesn't matter which way you vote. Trump is going to win this state. But there are some other big seats out there. We have US Senate, with John Curtis and Caroline Gleish running as the two major party candidates. We have an attorney general's race to replace Sean Reyes.

Bryan Schott: 38:59

It is astonishing to me how our last three attorney general have been so scandal plagued. Um, you know, uh, first we had Mark shirt shirtless, and then his successor, john swallow, and I remember, um, the day that John swallow resigned, um, I I usually get up very early in the morning, and so I got up and I did a little bit of work, and then I'm like oh well, you know, I got a little bit of a headache. I think I'm going to lay back down. So as I start to lay back down and my wife was sleeping next to me, my phone rang and I picked, picked it up and it was someone who I really trust and he said John Swallow is going to resign today. And I'm like what? And he said John Swallow is going to resign. And so I was immediately swung into action and we reported it. And the rest of the day I was sitting there chewing my fingernails because we weren't sure if it was going to happen. And we had other media outlets saying no, this is not going to happen, we can't confirm it, we can't do anything. But I was right. The same thing happened last year. I had taken a long vacation with my wife, came home first day back, I was sitting there and I'm like what am I going to write about? What am I going to cover? And then I get an email and it says Chris Stewart is going to step down. And I'm like what? And so I immediately start making some phone calls and in about two hours I had it confirmed that Chris Stewart was going to step down. He announced he was stepping down the next day. So I've been lucky to break a couple of those stories like that.

Bryan Schott: 40:41

In terms of the four congressional seats, you know you've got it's. It's unlikely that a Democrat will win any of those, you'll see the Republicans return, but then when you get a little bit further down the ballot, um, uh, maybe you know the. The the governor's race is interesting. Um, I don't know what's going to happen there because you have Spencer Cox, who is the Republican nominee, but he's really not well. He's done a lot of stuff to damage the coalition he put together in 2020. When he first won, he was seen as a moderate. He has gone very hard right. A lot of people gave him some wiggle room because of his stances on LGBTQ issues and trans right issues, and now he's been lockstep with the Republican majority, particularly in the House, which has been very reactionary on those issues, and so I'm not sure what's going to happen there.

Bryan Schott: 41:42

And the reason why it's interesting to me is because you've got Phil Lyman, who is running to Cox's right, as a write-in candidate. How much of that vote does Lyman take? I don't know. Can Lyman win as a write-in? It's a non-zero chance he can win, but I think it's very unlikely. Non-zero chance he can win, but I think it's very unlikely. But does he take enough vote away from Cox to help Democrat Brian King?

Bryan Schott: 42:12

They released an internal poll showing him with like 11 points down from Cox. Earlier this week they said it's within striking distance. I'm a little bit skeptical of that because ballots hit next week as we are recording this, but that's one that I'm really going to watch and see how that one plays out. And then you've got the legislative seats All 75 seats in the House are up for grabs and then half of the Senate and you've got your county councils and seats down the ballot. I'm fascinated to see what amendment D and amendment a do because, as I've been speaking with people over the last couple of weeks, there's a growing worry among especially Republicans that they have really made voters mad. Yeah, with amendment D, which was a blatant power grab yeah.

Erik Nilsson: 43:06

So for those who don't know like, let's, let's quickly, yeah so amendment d.

Bryan Schott: 43:11

So in order to understand amendment d, you have to rewind to 2021. Okay, um, actually you have to rewind to 2018. So let's rewind to 2018. There were three ballot initiatives on the ballot. You had Prop 2, which expanded Medicaid. You had Prop 3, which legalized medical marijuana, and Prop 4, also known as Better Boundaries, which established an independent redistricting commission. Every 10 years, you look at the census numbers and then you have to divide up the state so that the areas which have more population now you have to make sure that they balance out the areas that don't have as much population, and that's what's called redistricting. It happens every year. Every 10 years, they do the census and in they do the census in 2020. We get those numbers at the end of 2020 and then they take those numbers and use them in 2021 to redraw the lines.

Bryan Schott: 44:10

Okay, so what prop four did? And that passed? A prop, prop two, pop three and prop four all passed. Uh, when they were on the ballot, what prop four did is it established an independent redistricting commission. So there would be I believe it was seven members, some from the Democratic Party, some Republicans, some independents who could not have belonged to either party, and they would have to draw, redraw the maps, and they had some guidelines that they had to follow when they redrew the maps. They could not look at where incumbents live, so you cannot say, well, speaker Schultz, this is where he lives, so we're going to draw a map around him. They had to be blind. They could not look at partisan voter data. Partisan voter data where you say because and the easiest way to understand this is look at what they did with the four congressional districts in Salt Lake County.

Bryan Schott: 45:11

It split Salt Lake County evenly into four. Salt Lake County just so happens to be where the highest concentration of Democratic voters in the state is, and so, by dividing them among those four districts almost evenly, it diluted their power and assured that those seats were solidly Republican seats. So they couldn't look at that. They had to keep communities together, so you couldn't divide Salt Lake County up into four. You had to try to respect the boundaries. There were a number of principles that you had to try to respect the boundaries. There were a number of principles that they had to follow. So that passed in 2018.

Bryan Schott: 45:52

And then in 2020, in that session, the legislature gutted it. They changed it because the rules said, under what was passed by the voters, that the independent commission would draw these maps, present them to the legislature, and the legislature couldn't change them. They had to vote them up or down, and if they voted them down, they had to explain which of those principles it broke. Okay, right, I know this is really complicated, but it's important to understand where this is coming from. Okay, so they gutted it. Instead of giving them the power to draw the maps and the legislature can only vote up or down they made that commission and advisory commission. They were funded by the state. You know they still had a certain number of members, but they were advisory. They would draw some maps and present them to the legislature, but the legislature didn't have to take them into consideration at all. And that's exactly what happened in 2021. The Independent Registration Commission drew these maps, presented them to the legislature. The legislature said, hey, cool, now we're going to draw our own. And they drew their own and they're incredibly gerrymandered. You look at the congressional maps gerrymandered legislative maps, gerrymandered legislative maps. It's hard to gerrymander when the state is so overwhelmingly republican, but they really did the work to concentrate the republican vote in certain areas.

Bryan Schott: 47:16

So then, um, a coalition of groups led by the league of women voters in utah, utah, sued, saying this is an illegal. Jerry man, man Mander, it. It goes against the constitution of state. It it's it illegally divides us up. And at the same, and just before that, the Supreme court had ruled that gerrymandering cases, except for racial gerrymandering cases, are up to the States. We're not going to deal with those anymore. So it would be all in Utah. Yeah, so they sued.

Bryan Schott: 47:49

And then earlier this year, a lower court, a Utah district court, said yeah, the legislature overstepped their bounds when they changed this ballot initiative. Because if you look at the Constitution constitution it says that the legislature makes the laws, but it also but it says all political power is vested in the people. That is literally what it says in the utah constitution, and the people have the power to write law through a ballot initiative. And during arguments the courts were saying, okay, so I don't understand how this works, because if the people pass a law, the legislature just gets the veto power. They always have it. So they could pass a law the people could, and the legislature could gut it. And the legislative lawyer said well, they could just pass another law, but then they could gut it again. And the way it was working up until that point was that the legislature had veto power over anything that the people wanted to do. And so the district court said the legislature overstepped, they altered this too much. They only can change the law when they have a vested interest, and the Utah Supreme Court agreed with that. So now that's gone back down to the lower court and the lower court is going to have to look at the changes done by the legislature and determine whether they were narrow if the state had a vested interest in making those, not lawmakers, but the state, because they're making policy for the state and it's more than likely that the lower court judge will say nope, you did not, so the maps that you drew cannot stand and they're going to have to redraw. There's a very high like likelihood that the maps that are only drawn once every 10 years will have to be redrawn before the 2026 elections.

Bryan Schott: 49:52

So after that happened in august, lawmakers rush into a special set session to put Amendment D on the ballot, and Amendment D basically says that the legislature can override any law passed by the people. They were trying to retroactively make what they wanted to do, what they did with Prop 4. They wanted to retroactively make that. Okay, but then they didn't follow another part of the constitution that said you had to publish it in a newspaper for two months prior to the election. And the way that they wrote it, uh, the way they they described it. It did it differently than um it it, the way that they described it, was opposite of what it actually did, of course, okay. So that's where we're at. Um, it was opposite of what it actually did, of course, okay, so that's where we're at.

Bryan Schott: 50:47

And so I am wondering, because there was a lot of backlash to this, and I'm wondering how that's going to play out. I think that I get the sense that Republicans kicked up maybe not a huge hornet's nest, but a little bit of a hornet's nest and you might see some Republicans who are in close races get beat. You might see some Republicans who are in close races get beat. You might see some Republicans who are in comfortable races have much closer margins. I'll be fascinated to see how that plays out. So those are things that I think voters need to pay attention to. It's hard to read these constitutional amendments, it's hard to read these ballot initiatives, but you do need to find a way to educate yourself on it, because you know, if you don't care about politics, politics is still going to care about you. You know, and, as my grandmother used to say, if you don't, if you don't learn it, you're going to feel. Feel it.

Erik Nilsson: 51:40

No, because I love that and it's always interesting, especially in I mean in places where there's a lot of I mean, whether it's a very left state or a very right area. People want let's assume I'm a very staunch Republican for a minute and say, oh, my party's doing this because they're trying to combat all these leftist ideals. I want to shut those down. They have the power to shut them down Now, great. But what people don't realize is when you allow something to happen against your enemy, you also open it up for them to use against you at some point.

Erik Nilsson: 52:10

So let's say, for some radical reason, that all of a sudden the state turns into a blue state and then all of a sudden it flip-flops of who gets the power and who doesn't. And so I mean I think there's a lot of people that, going back to your point about identity politics and how tribal it becomes, people want to be on this tribe. But instead of being like, okay, take off your hat, your political hat, and be like who wins, who loses.

Bryan Schott: 52:31

Yeah, but people don't think that way anymore. I know when I first started covering the legislature, there was a lot of long-term thinking when they would set the budget. The budget process the way it was described to me early on was we are trying to predict how much money we're going to have in our bank account at the end of the year. Because they set the budget on projected revenue. They have no idea what it's going to look like and sometimes it comes in short and then you have to rush into a special session to cut the budget. That happened a ton in the late 2010s. There were so many budget shortfalls. Actually, it wasn't the 2020s, it was like 2000, probably 2003, 2004. I mean, we had the economic crisis and the legislature was coming into session and just cutting and cutting and cutting. They had probably three or four special sessions in one year just to cut the budget. Because now they have taken steps where they instituted rainy day funds. The state has a lot of rainy day funds that can be tapped in case of an emergency and that can be tapped in case of an emergency.

Bryan Schott: 53:52

But in terms of a lot of the policy things, the culture war has really taken over and there's a small but vocal group of people who really can get the attention of lawmakers Because they're up there all day really can get the attention of lawmakers because they're up there all day. If you look at the Utah Eagle Forum, they have been one of the most influential groups for 20, 30 years. Gail Rezeka is very powerful and she's actually evolved with the times. I remember when I first started and this was before everyone had an iPhone in their pocket and everyone used a landline she had one of the most feared phone trees in the state. If she wanted lawmakers to hear about something, she would activate this phone tree and they would just start calling and all the people in her organization would just. And if you got targeted by one of Gail Razica's phone trees, it was not nice for you. Or if she wanted to get attention for an issue. That it has changed now, but she's still very influential, you know. But you're seeing a lot of other groups and a lot of this got exacerbated by the pandemic and the misinformation.

Bryan Schott: 55:09

And then what happened in 2020 with Trump's election, and it's really hard to have a government that is looking out for everybody when you have such a partisan incentive. You know people who are living in the fever swamps of news, getting their news from Twitter, getting it from some of the stranger areas of the internet. You know Epic Times, gateway, pundit, those sites. Unfortunately, there's a growing number of people up at the legislature, people who represent us, make the decisions. That is their news diet and that has spawned out of the pandemic that has spawned out of what happened in 2020. And then you have people who are saying that if they lose an election, it's not legitimate, worried about the future of this country because you cannot have a functioning democracy when only one side is willing to cede power if they lose. Yeah, you know, um, I just watched. I just watched a movie, um, and if you have a chance to watch this, I think I know you're talking about, and I've it's all my to watch this this weekend actually, but keep, but keep going.

Bryan Schott: 56:43

It's called War Game, yeah, and it is a documentary, and they literally do a war game exercise. They bring in people who have worked in five presidential administrations, military experts, people with a long list of accomplishments, a long list of experience, and they war game another January 6th and it is harrowing. I mean, I was watching this and this movie is. It's incredible because the game is designed so well. What they do, the scenario they're working with is there has been an election. It is a contested election. It's incredibly close.

Bryan Schott: 57:27

Congress is getting ready to certify the results, as they did on January 6th in 2020, or 2021, so this will be January 6th, 2025 or whenever. And one side is saying the election was stolen. But you've got members of the military siding with the losing side and people are trying. There's a riot happening. Members of the military siding with the losing side and people are trying. There's a riot happening outside of the Capitol and you have the government trying to figure out how to stop a civil war and it gets really close to spiraling, how to control us several times. It's, it's, it's wild. It is such a good film.

Erik Nilsson: 58:05

Because I think it was Malcolm Gladwell that he did a episode on revisionist history, about the war games that they do from time to time, just, and that's just in like normal programming where they'll all right. Here's a situation, this war broke out here, what do we do? And go through like the whole playbook of it. But this one's so interesting because it is so timely. It is so, I mean, contemporary with what we've seen in the past. And then again, like as we look at this election and because a democracy is only as good as its peaceful transfer of power, and to see, like those threats and see how many people are worried to be like and here's what could potentially happen.

Bryan Schott: 58:36

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an optimist, by any means.

Erik Nilsson: 58:41

Because it reminded me when you were talking about War Game. Have you seen the? I didn't like them. I think they could have done a lot better job with it. But the Civil War movie that came out a couple months ago, I like that a lot.

Bryan Schott: 58:51

I did too, because I do like the hypothesis of Well so and we can talk about that, because I got into it with my wife and my brother-in-law about it, because they really did not like it there's a book I read a couple of years ago. It's called the Next Civil War by Stephen Marsh. He's a Canadian political scientist and the way it starts is terrifying. He says America is coming to an end. He says I don't know how, but he lays out five possible scenarios for the end of America and they're all terrifyingly real. And what he does is he will have a narrative like a fictional narrative, but then he talks to experts about how that's possible.

Bryan Schott: 59:36

The first scenario takes place somewhere, I think in the American Southwest, perhaps Texas. There's a town. They have two bridges to get out of town. One is the short way to the major highway and the other one it takes you a long way around. The feds come in the bridge the shorter bridge. It doesn't meet structural standards so they're going to shut it down. They have a local sheriff who says that's not going to happen. They have a local sheriff who says that's not going to happen, so he moves it. He moves the barriers, takes over the bridge, says we're taking over this. You have militia types flock to that town to support the sheriff.

Bryan Schott: 1:00:17

He's challenging the president. The president has to send National Guard troops there to sort of keep the peace. And they're contemplating what would happen if military forces turn their guns on American citizens and how that would lead to the end of America. Because the next civil war is not going to be fought like the one in the 1860s. You're not going to have the blue coats and the gray coats. It's going to look fought like the one in the 1860s. You're not going to have the blue coats and the gray coats. It's going to look more like the troubles in Northern Ireland, where you just have a prolonged stretch of political violence. They have another scenario, dealing with climate change, where a hurricane floods New York and people have to leave and they're refugees in their own country and they have to go to parts of the country that they don't normally live and meanwhile climate change is making it harder to grow corn crops and food is now super expensive, and that's going to obviously lead to a fracture, to to a fracturing of our society.

Bryan Schott: 1:01:31

There's another scenario that he lays out where a young man gets radicalized by right wing white supremacist propaganda. He, no, he doesn't have a lot of friends, he's isolated things we see today, yep. And at that point he finds out that the president United States is going to be coming to his town for for an event, and so he tries to go to the thing, but he can't get in right the secret service. So he stops at this shop. He's got a gun on him. Well, the president decides to make an impromptu stop in this restaurant, walks in, he shoots the president. And the reason why? That would lead to the fracturing of the United States, because if the president does die in office, the vice president becomes the president. You're going to have half the country see them as an illegitimate president. We're already going to see whoever wins this next election as an illegitimate president. Or we're not going to follow, or you're going to see states rebel, and these are all terrifying things that could happen.

Bryan Schott: 1:02:41

And it's because we are so polarized and it's driven by cable news. And the thing about cable news is nobody watches cable news, but they drive the conversation Because it used to be that the fringes on both sides you had the far left and the far right. They were just as radical as they are today today, but nobody listened to them. They didn't have a megaphone and it was hard to find each other. Now, with social media, they have an outside voice and the people in the middle who aren't paying attention to that stuff, but they are just trying to keep their heads down.

Bryan Schott: 1:03:19

Or I don't pay attention to politics, but they're driving the conversation on both sides of the spectrum and that's a terrifying place to be when you watch the things that the legislature does. There have been times where I'm sitting in a legislative hearing and someone will say something that I ran into on a QAnon board, and I purposefully spend times in some of the most terrifying and disgusting places on the internet, because I know that those things that happen there um are going to bubble up and come into our politics and I want to know where they came from. And I will hear them and and I'll sit in there and all of a sudden I'll just pop up like, oh goodness, that's Q, q and on stuff, but that, but even Q and on, has become mainstreamed in large parts of the Republican party and it's just. It's a terrifying place where we are at right right now.

Erik Nilsson: 1:04:16

Absolutely, and it's I mean it's hard when I mean again, there's like this whole voice of like, oh, can't trust mainstream media cable news which, and like they trust mainstream media cable news which they have to radicalize because that gets people to listen.

Bryan Schott: 1:04:30

That gets clickbait and all of that Anger.

Bryan Schott: 1:04:31

Anger is what gets people to watch.

Bryan Schott: 1:04:34

There are people I think that one of the things that hit really hard that I heard people talking about it, women mostly saying that when Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate, they were saying Tim Walz is the dad that Fox News took from me.

Bryan Schott: 1:04:52

Because you have people who just sit and stew with Fox News all day and they have it on all the time and they're just getting angrier and angrier, and then they go to bed angry and then they get up and they're just, they're just getting angrier and angrier, um, and, and then they go to bed angry and then they get up and they watch Fox news and and you just see, that's that's how a lot of people have become so radicalized and, and social media plays a big part of it. But it's just, you know, a lot of the media is just 24, seven agit prop yeah, um, and then we and and people don't want to hear things that challenge their own preconceived notions, yeah, and it's. It's really quite terrifying. It's hard to it's terrifying to think about it, but I spend a lot of time thinking about it because it scares the crap out of me.

Erik Nilsson: 1:05:44

Yeah, and I mean as someone who does the one who pays the most attention to it to be scared of is. I mean, it says a lot, and so I liked the way. So we talked about amendment D, which I mean to help give people the power.

Bryan Schott: 1:05:55

It was a long discussion. I hope people understood that.

Erik Nilsson: 1:05:58

Yes, and, but I want to go back to the other one you were mentioning, amendment a.

Bryan Schott: 1:06:02

Yes, yeah oh, and, and both of these amendments are void. Okay, so they will appear on the ballot, uh, but none of the votes will be counted. Okay, um, uh, they were voided by a court order, um, and it was too late to reprint ballots there are certain there are a lot of deadlines when it comes to elections. I mean a lot of running elections. There are people who think that you know they're programming the machines to flip votes or change.

Bryan Schott: 1:06:27

No, there's just a lot of deadlines, a lot of paper, pushing A lot of stuff that happens and you have to print the ballots by a certain date because you have to get them to the overseas voters. You have to get them to the military, to people living abroad, to Mormon missionaries. You know, you give them an opportunity. I guess the Mormon missionaries will go to their homes a lot of places. But the people who are living overseas, who are registered to vote, you have to get the by federal law. You have to get the ballots to them when a certain time. So it was too late to reprint the ballots, you couldn't do that, so they're just not going to count it.

Bryan Schott: 1:06:58

But Amendment A is a longstanding goal of the legislature and it goes back. And the reason it has to be a constitutional amendment is that our constitution has a built-in mechanism to fund education. So you have to think about it this way Everybody pays income taxes, right? Individuals and corporations pay income taxes and the money that comes into the state from the income taxes per the Utah Constitution, can only be spent on public education, higher education and some limited social services for disabled residents. It used to be just public education and then in the 1970s they amended the constitution to bring in higher education and then a few years ago they amended it to bring in some of the social services and then everything else in the budget is funded by sales tax fees, things like that. So all of the income tax money can only go to those specific purposes. They cannot pull that money out and use it in other places in the budget, per the Constitution. So they have two funds and it used to be called the Education Fund, because that's where all the money, and the General Fund, which is everything else. A few years ago lawmakers changed the name of the education fund to the income tax fund, which technically says where the money comes from, but it used to tell you where it would go, because they were getting hammered over the education fund, over doing things with the education fund.

Bryan Schott: 1:08:41

When you get a tax cut. Okay, lawmakers have cut taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few sessions. Those income tax cuts come out of future revenues that could go to school, schools, higher education, public education and some social services. That's how it's paid for. So we've had these big surpluses, like we've had higher than expected income tax collections, and what lawmakers did is like oh, we're just going to cut taxes. So what that does is it reduces the amount of money in the future that could go towards those things. That's how the Constitution is set up.

Bryan Schott: 1:09:23

Lawmakers have been worried for a long time that this part of the pie that funds everything else in the budget is getting smaller. Well, this part of the pie income taxes, things are getting larger. Well, they've been cutting income taxes, but still. So they put Amendment A on the ballot and Amendment A would open up. They call this the constitutional earmark. So you'll hear people talking about the earmark, the earmark. That's what they're talking about.

Bryan Schott: 1:09:52

This set aside this guaranteed funding for public education, and what it would do is it would open up that income tax money and allow it to be used in other parts of the budget. And the way that they wrote it was interesting. It just said that they had to create a framework for funding schools, but there were no guarantees on how much they had to fund the public schools and then they could use that money anywhere else. Essentially, the goal of this amendment is to allow lawmakers to go into that pot of money that's supposed to go to public education, higher education, and use it for other parts of the budget. We're like the only union, the only state in the union that does this. Everybody else has like one big pot of money and they fund everything out of one, all the revenue state going to one big pot of money doesn't do that here, okay, and and it's in the constitution, so lawmakers can't get around it.

Bryan Schott: 1:10:51

So they wanted amendment a, which would change that constitutional earmark, allowing them to use the income tax revenue for other parts of the budget. What happened was this first debate happened in 2023. In the 2023 session. They can only put constitutional amendments on the ballot in even number of years unless the governor takes steps for it, unless they really need it passed. So in 2023, the legislature was like we're going to pass this. And they were negotiating with the Utah Education Association, which is the state's largest teachers union, has a lot of sway. And when they were negotiating this potential amendment in 2023, the Utah Education Association said we're going to remain neutral Because if they came out and said we don't like it, there's no way it would have passed in the first place. And the other part of this that people need to understand is only the legislature can put constitutional amendments on the ballot on the ballot. So if a constitutional amendment passes and the public doesn't like what it does, they can't change it. Only the legislature can.

Bryan Schott: 1:12:09

What the legislature did with this constitutional amendment in 2023 is they passed a law that would get rid of the state portion of sales tax on food. So when you go to the grocery store, buy groceries, there's sales taxes, there's local sales tax and then there's the state portion of sales tax. It would get rid of the state portion of the sales tax on food, but only if Amendment A passed. So they passed this bill. It was sitting there, and then they added some extra funding to schools. That would go into effect if Amendment A passed got it. The difference between the two of them, though, is opening up. That constitutional earmark would be in the constitution. Very hard to change, sales tax on food. Extremely easy for the legislature to change. So they're they're not bound by that. So the UEA remained neutral. 2024 session comes. The expectation was they were going to negotiate more. They were going to try to fix the change, the language, or something. Nothing happened. The legislature didn't do anything with it. So what they passed in the 2024 session is what's going on in the ballot.

Bryan Schott: 1:13:15

Right after that, the UEA came out and said we are opposed to this, and that really upset lawmakers, because they were mad that the UEA didn't try to talk to them during the session, but it was also not a lot of outreach by lawmakers during the session. So we are opposed to that. And then the UEA filed a lawsuit against the vouchers program that lawmakers passed in 2023, which allows money that's supposed to go to public schools. Parents could use it to pay for private education, homeschooling very little accountability with that. The UEA filed a lawsuit challenging that. And then they added Amendment a into their lawsuit right after amendment d got thrown off. And they said with same same reasons, you threw amendment d, were challenging amendment a.

Bryan Schott: 1:14:05

The legislatures realized they were going to get in trouble, so earlier this week they filed um they they filed papers with the court and said go ahead and void it. We know that we're going to lose. It was supposed to be heard before. The Supreme Court next week Got it. So that's where we are. But Amendment A would have fundamentally changed how public schools are funded in this state. Lawmakers have a lot of. There's been a lot of history with this. Back in 2007, the legislature passed a vouchers program straight up vouchers program allowing public school for public funds for public education.

Erik Nilsson: 1:14:39

It's the one that Huntsman worked on right or during that time. Yeah, it was during the.

Bryan Schott: 1:14:43

Huntsman administration. They passed this. No, I think it was Levitt, because Huntsman came in in 2008. Yes, okay, so it was Levitt. They passed it. But the UEA swung into action, collected enough signatures, put it on the ballot and it got crushed at the ballot box. It never went into effect and lawmakers were, they were very. They did not cross the UEA much for a long time. After that. Now we see the voucher. It's called the Utah Fits All Scholarship, but it's a vouchers program and lawmakers rushed it through the first time, slammed it through in the first couple of weeks of the session, passed it with that super majority, two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate, so the UEA could not try to challenge it at the ballot. Boom done. And then this year, earlier this year, it hasn't even gone into effect yet. And then they went and doubled the funding for it and it had never even gone into effect. And they're like well, it's got overwhelming demand. Nobody's gotten a single one of these scholarships yet. What are you talking about? There is no demand.

Erik Nilsson: 1:15:49

There's no supply. And it's so fascinating because, again, there's so many news outlets, there's so much other information that it's hard to sift through sometimes. Yeah, because everybody has an agenda that they're trying to push, which I. I love that there is someone who can digest everything and go.

Bryan Schott: 1:16:05

Well, you know I, people say that news outlets have an agenda and and you know I mean or, or your your coverage is biased. You know, um, when you see corporate news outlets and they're like you have a left-wing agenda, you have a right-wing agenda. No, they have a profit agenda. That's pretty much what it is. News used to be a loss leader for the networks, meaning that they would lose money on it, but it was a public service. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Good Night and Good Luck, edward R Murrow one of my personal heroes um, that they lost money on that, uh, and then they decided that they needed to make money on it.

Erik Nilsson: 1:16:48

Yeah, and it's. It is an interesting again because people are so polarized it becomes more and more of an issue, which I mean kind of takes us into what you're doing now to help keep people more informed. So I mean, maybe give us a little intro into your new venture.

Bryan Schott: 1:17:03

More news is better, and when I left the Tribune earlier this year, I realized there's still a lot of stuff to be reported here in the state, and we've got some great reporters working on the politics beat. I mean, there's a lot of people doing a lot of really good work, but that doesn't mean there's not room for other people, definitely, and so I've launched my own, my own website. It's called Utah political watch, and what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to make it complete. I'm I'm trying to do is I'm trying to make it complete. I'm. I'm not wanting to take any ads. I'm not wanting to sell any ad time. That's not who I am. I don't sell ads. Um, I want this to be funded by my readers, and so I'm trying to say hey, if you value what I do, um, would you consider maybe throwing me a few bucks? And the initial response has been fairly good. Um, it's got a while to go before it's sustainable, but I've got some running room to try to work on that. But this is just, and when you see it's happening so much at the state and the local level, you have governments who are hiding things, who are trying to keep things away from the press, trying to manage the press, trying to manage the message.

Bryan Schott: 1:18:26

When I first started in covering the legislature, reporters were on the floor. There were some certain areas where reporters could sit on the floor of the legislature and then things started to change a little bit and so then reporters could no longer sit on the floor, but we could go out on the floor. There were places like, if I needed to talk to someone in the legislature, I could go to literally the door of the house or into the Senate and I could like get the attention of a lawmaker and then see if they'd come out in the hall and talk to me. Or if they were not having an actual, if they were not in session before they gaveled into session during the day, I could be on the floor and talk to lawmakers. Yeah Well, that's changed. We are no longer allowed to go out on the floor and we're no longer there. There are now certain places in the Capitol where we used to be able to go, where we're not allowed to go, and now they limit the ability to talk to lawmakers and they shield themselves from us and they control the message.

Bryan Schott: 1:19:35

You look at what the House of Representatives does. They have their official podcast and they talk to lawmakers and it's softball questions and it's lawmakers who won't talk to me but they'll go on that podcast because they're not going to be challenged. And there are politicians who will not talk to certain outlets or certain reporters and a lot of the times it's me because they don't like the line of questioning, they don't like to be challenged and that's so weak. It is such a weak response. But when you have a super majority and you're not challenged in what you want to do and you're able to pass pretty much whatever, you want, to hear a dissenting voice, to hear a voice questioning you, asking you to rationalize why you're doing something or saying that's not true. They don't like that.

Bryan Schott: 1:20:31

And there's a lot of people who are very thin skinned. There's a lot of people who think they are much more important, have much more influence. A perfect example this year is former Speaker of the House Brad Wilson. Speaker of the House for a number of terms, very powerful in the House, very powerful individual in the state decided to run for US Senate and gets creamed. And it did not surprise me, because outside of the Capitol, nobody knows who the speaker of the house is. Nobody knows who that is, um, but he got creamed, uh and, and he spent $3 million of his own money trying to get that seat.

Erik Nilsson: 1:21:09

Yeah, there's a whole article about all this fundraising. Was him alone pretty much.

Bryan Schott: 1:21:12

He put a lot of his own money in. So you know, when you have people holding politicians, public officials, elected officials to account, because even when they go and talk to members of the public, it's members of their own party. You know, just this week, speaker of the House Mike Schultz went down to talk about Amendment A and Amendment D with the Utah Eagle Forum, went down to talk about Amendment A and Amendment D with the Utah Eagle Forum. At their event. They go to events with far-right figures, who I wrote about this last year Mike Schultz went to. He headlined an event featuring a guy who is a quote-unquote constitutional expert, but he's a Christian nationalist and his interpretation of the constitution is completely wrong. He makes up quotes. He wrote a book. This guy, his name is David Barton. He wrote a book that was voted by historians as the most inaccurate book of all time. But here in Utah he's seen as a constitutional expert, you know, but that's, that's who they're talking to and it's this echo chamber. Um, and so you know, there's still a lot of stories to be told and people who need to? Um hold politicians accountable. Um, who need to ask the tough questions, um, there are a lot of journalists here in the market who do that. They do very good work, but that doesn't mean there's not room for me to continue doing it as well.

Bryan Schott: 1:22:42

So I'm giving this thing a go and I'm seeing if it could run. And you know, I mean it comes back to. I don't know if you see this tattoo that I have. It's one of my favorite quotes from the great HL Mencken, whoist in in baltimore in the early 1900s. But, um, he had a great quote that said the only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down. And you know, it's it's hard to not think these guys are rock stars or they're really cool. They're not cool, they're just people. Yeah, they're just people's it. It takes you a long time to figure that out, but you know, um, you've just got to it's. It's so important what the government is doing and the more eyes you can have on it, the better. So that's why I've done that.

Erik Nilsson: 1:23:31

Totally, and I'm excited for it because, again, there's few people, if any, that have been covering this for as long as you have.

Bryan Schott: 1:23:41

The only person I know who's been covering it longer than I have, uh, is my old partner, bob Burnick, who's semi retired, but we still talk from time to time and, um, uh, and he covered it for for for 40 years. I used to always like to say, uh, he knows where all the bodies are buried and I know where some of the bodies are, where most of the bodies are buried, yeah.

Erik Nilsson: 1:23:57

I can't even imagine the things he's seen, heard and done, and which only falls very similarly to you, but a lot of this, a lot of this, um.

Bryan Schott: 1:24:06

Have you seen true true detective season one? Yes, I like to think of myself as um the coal rust of Utah politics. Time is a flat circle. Yes, you know, politics is a flat circle. Or? The other thing I like to say is I've seen this movie before I know how it ends. Yes, absolutely. I'd be appreciative if people went to my website, utahpoliticalwatchnews and signed up for my newsletter. You can sign up for free or you can sign up for a subscription and support my work.

Erik Nilsson: 1:24:35

Definitely Make sure to go um work. Definitely Make sure to go support Brian. I mean, he pours his heart and soul into it. If you can't hear the passion in his voice, as he talks about this. Yeah, beats a real job. Keep him doing the thing that we love that he's doing, he loves that he's doing. And another voice of truth, another voice of news to help people. More news is always better.

Bryan Schott: 1:24:58

We're losing news outlets. People are becoming less informed. Uh, and that's.

Erik Nilsson: 1:25:04

that's just not a good place for this country to be Um, and then, lastly, I want to end with the question I was every guest with is if you could have someone on the small Lake city podcast and hear more about what they're up to. Who would you want to hear from?

Bryan Schott: 1:25:16

Oh, that's a that's a really good question. Um, I mean, my, my world is mostly politics, but, uh, I think I think you'd have a lot of fun interviewing, um, keith Stubbs. Do you know Keith Stubbs? He runs wise guys the comedy club. Yeah, I love Wise Guys and I don't know him too well, but I've admired the fact that he's stuck it out. He's made this work. There are some really great comedians who come through Some of the names I am just astonished that he's able to book them, but they'll come through, and so it might be interesting to talk with him about how he's been able to make that happen.

Erik Nilsson: 1:26:16

No, I totally agree, Especially the whole Wiseguy story, because they've had multiple locations, They've tried to figure things out and most people would say screw this, not worth it, go try something else. But to your point, I live pretty close to Gateway and the location there, so I'll always keep an eye on who's coming through and sometimes I look at the schedule like how are these people coming through here?

Bryan Schott: 1:26:36

He's got a club in Provo. He's got a couple here in Salt Lake city, I know he's got one up in Idaho, I believe, and then one, uh one in Las Vegas, vegas, and you know, I mean that's, that's someone it's taken. A success for him has been a long time coming, obviously. Um, you know, I've they. They used to do, uh, there was a time a long time ago where the A&E Network used to run like 10 minutes. They would have a show and it was comedians doing their bit and it was like live from the improv or something, and Keith Stubbs was on there doing his stand-up yeah.

Bryan Schott: 1:27:16

And this was a long time ago. There were a lot. A long time ago there was a lot of shows featuring stand-up. Before comedy central came along, mtv had a show called the half hour stand-up hour. Um, hbo. When I was, when I was in grade school uh, like fifth, sixth grade it was we used to sneak, stay up late or sneak out to watch on HBO George Carlin um, they had the young comedian show, which was that was always a big one, um and uh. So you know, I've been I've've been a fan of standup comedy for a long time. Thought I wanted to do it once, and that's not for me. I'm not that funny, I'm not an incredibly fun funny person, but you know there are a lot of people out there who have a lot of good things to say and Keith gets a lot of them to come here, which is really interesting.

Erik Nilsson: 1:28:14

No deal. I'll have to reach out to him and see if we can get him on, but I'm, I'm Well, brian. Thank you so much. It's been fun to sit down and talk with you, excited for the newsletter, definitely subscribe Everybody. Go give it a follow. Throw a couple of dollars at him because we got to keep the good people keeping the good news where it is. But thanks again, brian, and excited for the new venture.