Utah’s capital may be forced under a new bill to cede authority to state law enforcement in pressing to improve public safety on its streets — or face losing aid for the homeless and, potentially, funding for roads.
A new bill would force Salt Lake City police to partner with the state to target the homeless — or lose crucial state funding.
Utah’s capital may be forced under a new bill to cede authority to state law enforcement in pressing to improve public safety on its streets — or face losing aid for the homeless and, potentially, funding for roads.
HB465, first released Monday, comes as Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have put Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and her police department on notice to intensify their efforts in breaking up homeless camps and targeting illegal drug activity.
The measure appears to make real a tacit threat issued late last year by Gov. Spencer Cox, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, calling for city officials to improve public safety or face some kind of state intervention.
As drafted, HB465 would require police departments in the state’s largest cities hosting homeless shelters to enter into “a public safety interagency agreement” with the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) to address how safety can be improved and “to ensure the proper functioning and operation” of city law enforcement.
Such a pact, the bill says, would also allow the state to deploy its own law enforcement resources and a specially created “response team” to increase public safety, either on its own or in joint operations with city police, when it deems the municipality in question has failed to respond in a timely manner to “public safety events.”
Those “events” are defined in the bill as illegal homeless encampments and “large-scale illegal drug distribution occurrences” that significantly affect public safety.
And by focusing on cities “of the first class” — those with populations over 100,000 — that host shelters, HB465 appears to solely affect Salt Lake City and St. George. Since mid-December, the governor and GOP legislative leaders have only vented frustrations at Utah’s capital over perceptions of disorder and heightened crime, urging Mendenhall in a letter to figure out homelessness enforcement.
Meant to ‘support’ SLC, sponsor says
The bill’s sponsor, House Majority Assistant Whip Casey Snider, said it is intended as “collaborative” and “not punitive” and is also not meant to detract from a 27-point action plan Mendenhall released last month to bolster safety enforcement, including stepped-up police patrols and arrests.
“I appreciate Salt Lake City’s efforts to develop a long-term plan to improve public safety in our capital city,” Snider, a Republican from the Cache County town of Paradise, said in a statement. His bill, he said, “aims to support the city — and other large cities — to address public safety and formalize partnerships that benefit our communities and our state.”
Snider added in an interview that if “the city works together collaboratively with DPS, I don’t see this as having any adverse impacts.”
The measure sat with the House Rules Committee late Tuesday, awaiting assignment for its first committee hearing as the Utah Legislature nears the midpoint of its 45-day session.
Mendenhall spokesperson Andrew Wittenberg said in a statement that the city “appreciates the state’s desire to expand our partnership on public safety, though we don’t necessarily believe legislation is required.”
“As we outlined in the public safety plan,” Wittenberg said, “it will take a coordinated approach to achieve the results we all desire. We appreciate Rep. Snider’s invitation to collaborate on this bill in recent days and look forward to continuing those discussions.”
The Legislature’s 2025 general session ends March 7. If passed as now written, HB465 would take effect May 7.
‘We have to have collaboration’
Mendenhall’s public safety plan also offers city property for a 1,000-bed temporary shelter while urging other government partners to improve coordination on statewide homeless services; expand mental health and substance abuse treatment programs; increase jail capacity; build more supportive housing and make other systemic changes.
The mayor has said the plan is less likely to work without all the recommended pieces, urging against taking an “a la cart” approach. Wittenberg said last week that Mendenhall’s senior leadership team is continuing to work with legislative leaders on the issue.
Andrew Johnston, the city’s director of homeless policy and outreach, underscored Tuesday how capacity is lacking across regional homeless services, including jail beds, shelters and residential treatment programs, as well as supportive and deeply affordable housing.
In a presentation to the City Council using a dozen cups, all overflowing with water, he demonstrated how homeless Utahns flow through a system in Salt Lake County that is maxed out at every level. Focusing as a city on just one aspect of the spectrum, he added, may actually make the overall situation worse.
”We have to have collaboration,” Johnston told the council. “… If we just do it alone and throw stuff at it and throw stuff at it, this could get even worse before the Olympics come” in 2034.
Homeless aid, road funds at stake
HB465 would set a July 1 deadlinefor the Salt Lake City Police Department to secure an interagency agreement with the Utah Department of Public Safety. If no agreement is reached, the city would face a reduction in money it receives from a state account that aims to help cities with the impacts of hosting emergency shelters.
According to language in HB465, if the city were to balk at an agreement past Oct. 1, it would then also lose road funding from the state Department of Transportation.
Though it’s unclear how involving state law enforcement might boost the effectiveness of the city’s plan, HB465 would form a “public safety rapid response team” at the Department of Public Safety to respond to unsanctioned camps and illegal drug activity.
Snider, the bill’s sponsor, said he envisioned the department giving city police a 12-hour window after a formal complaint is lodged to respond on its own, before state law enforcement might step in.
Under the interagency pact that HB465 outlines, Salt Lake City would be required to reimburse the department for any costs in deploying state law enforcement resources to boost public safety.
The Department of Public Safety would be tasked with independently evaluating the city police force’s effectiveness and reporting to lawmakers yearly on the agreement’s terms and its progress.
SLC’s progress, now online
An initial report card issued last week on Mendenhall’s plan showed stepped-up foot and bike patrols and targeted drug investigations since mid-January had disrupted several encampments, including along the Jordan River — and snagged illegal weapons and large quantities of illicit drugs.
The enforcement blitz yielded 460 jail bookings, according to the city’s report.
Officers issued 337 citations — 89 of those for illegal camping — and seized 42 guns along with thousands of fentanyl pills and sizable amounts of marijuana and other THC products, cocaine and methamphetamine.
The city has published an online dashboard to track the new public safety plan’s ongoing results, at www.slc.gov/publicsafetyplan.
“It’s not enough to take action,” Mendenhall said in releasing the dashboard. “We must also ensure residents can see the progress we’re making.”
The page is also tracking several related measures advancing on Capitol Hill, including HB329, a multifaceted bill altering state rules on homeless shelters and services; HB199, a similar bill targeting substance-use treatment programs; HB312, which would alter arrest, detention and other criminal-justice rules to address jail overcrowding; and HB276 and HB56, which modifies rules on civil commitment for those with substance-use and mental-health issues.