[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:04] Okay, thank you. Welcome to the Utah State Tax Commission meeting. It is 9 a.m. on Thursday, March 12th, 2026. We are located at 210 North 1950 West in Salt Lake City, Utah. We have three of us who are here in person as well as Shantay. And we'll go ahead and announce the folks in the room first.
[0:32] I'm Commissioner Rebecca Rockwell, starting with Commissioner Deeds.
[0:38] Commissioner Johnny Deeds.
[0:40] Diana Haring, Executive Director.
[0:42] Sean Danesburg, Executive Assistant.
[0:44] Thank you, and now we have half of the commission,
[0:48] and several others who are appearing remotely today for various reasons.
[0:53] So we will start with Commissioner Chair Valentine.
[0:57] Thank you, Madam Chair.
[0:58] I am John Valentine and I'm the commission chair and I appreciate Commissioner Rockwell
[1:05] sort of been as the chair this morning.
[1:09] Commissioner Jennifer Frascus.
[1:13] Cleed.
[1:14] He the executive director.
[1:22] John Nielsen, director of property tax.
[1:25] Sure.
[1:25] I'll speak.
[1:26] Tax commission economist.
[1:29] Okay.
[1:30] It looks like that is everybody.
[1:33] Thank you for being here today.
[1:36] We are going to start with the first item on the agenda, and that is public comment.
[1:43] Are there any individuals or groups wishing to address the commissioners for up to three
[1:48] minutes on matters not related to appending a reasonably imminent appeal to the tax commission?
[1:57] Seeing none, we'll move on to the next item.
[2:00] The next item is consider approving the commission meeting minutes of February 12th,
[2:07] 2026, and I will look to Commissioner Frescus for a motion.
[2:12] Thank you. I move to approve the open and closed commission meeting minutes of February 12th, 2026.
[2:19] Thank you. All those in favor?
[2:23] Aye.
[2:27] The next item is consider approving a settlement agreement for Walgreens company versus Salt Lake County Board of Equalization.
[2:37] This is case number 1909-02349-TX in the 3rd Judicial District Court, state of Utah.
[2:48] And I am looking for a motion from Commissioner Valentine, unless we have any discussion.
[2:59] Commissioner D.
[3:00] Yes, if I may interrupt briefly, I need to recuse myself on this matter as I represented one of the parties previous to joining the commission.
[3:10] So I will step out while this act I was handled.
[3:14] Okay, thank you, Commissioner Deeds.
[3:16] We will come and retrieve you after the vote.
[3:29] Okay, Commissioner Deeds has exited the meeting, so unless there are any questions, we will
[3:36] look to a vote from Commissioner Valentine.
[3:39] Thank you, Madam Chairprutem.
[3:41] I move that we approve the settlement and authorize our Council to sign on behalf of the commission.
[3:51] Okay, thank you.
[3:52] This is an action item, so this will be a roll call vote, starting with Commission Chair Valentine.
[4:00] Aye.
[4:01] Commissioner Fresquez.
[4:03] Aye.
[4:05] And Commissioner Rockwell votes aye.
[4:08] That motion passes.
[4:12] The next item on the agenda is to consider publication revisions.
[4:18] And before we do that, we will retreat Commissioner Deeds.
[4:21] Okay, thank you.
[4:25] You're done.
[4:33] Okay.
[4:33] We're now back to our full forum, so we will move on to the next item, which is Consider
[4:41] Publication Revisions.
[4:44] We have Publication 20, Business Personal Property Taxes, and Publication 25, Sales and Use
[4:52] Tax General Information.
[4:54] These are information items only and now that they're announced we'll just go ahead and move on to the next item which is commissioners reports. Does anybody have a report they would like to make?
[5:10] Sure, for just a moment, we've had a couple of others who joined us perhaps we had to just identify them quickly.
[5:18] Oh, yes, okay.
[5:21] It looks like we have Ms. or Bailey Ru, Bailey Royball.
[5:29] Could you please announce yourself?
[5:58] Thank you, Lauren. We're glad to have you here, and we'll give one more chance. It looks like we have a Bailey Roybal on the line from Twila County Board of Equalization.
[6:11] Bailey, could you please announce your presence for
[6:23] the record?
[6:32] Okay, well, the commission notes that we have Bailey Royball from Toilet County Board of Equalization,
[6:39] appearing in our meeting.
[6:41] And now we'll go ahead and move back to the pending agenda item,
[6:46] and that is commissioners' reports.
[6:48] Do any of the commissioners have a report to make?
[6:51] Madam Chair, I've got a couple quick comments on a report if I may.
[6:56] Thank you.
[6:57] We've just finished the legislative session and it was difficult as most legislative sessions are.
[7:06] Our team was outstanding, Madam Chair.
[7:10] This team that we've developed to try to respond to the many, many, many bills that were filed and required us to review.
[7:20] It is just amazing to see how well that we have responded within the short time frames that we had to do.
[7:29] I'll let you, Madam Chair, comment on the physical note process, but on the process of the bills themselves, we negotiated.
[7:38] I cannot even tell you how many bills that we negotiated with sponsors to try to make them so that they could be administered.
[7:45] We did not participate in any policy arguments or discussions.
[7:50] But what we attempted to do is to make certain that the policies that the legislature was attempting to move forward
[7:57] were something that would actually be workable by taxpayers and by the tax commission.
[8:03] And so again a big shout out for the whole team.
[8:06] I'll be probably forgetting somebody if I mentioned them all, but it was just amazing to see how well everybody worked together
[8:14] to be able to respond to this last legislative session.
[8:19] Thank you.
[8:20] And yes, I would like to also give a big shout out to all
[8:25] of those involved in the fiscal note process, the office
[8:31] of the legislative fiscal analyst ultimately bears the responsibility
[8:36] of issuing fiscal notes on bills,
[8:39] But they could not do their job without the assistance of the state agencies.
[8:46] And in particular, those involved in the fiscal noting teams here at the Tax Commission,
[8:53] we have on the administrative side, Heidi Riley and Jason Gardner,
[9:01] who work on fiscal impacts on the office of the commission side.
[9:06] We have Eric Cropper, Jacoba Larson, Alex Jarosovic, and Kristina Langberg, and we also have
[9:17] been fortunate to have Tracy Nuddle and Bob Reese on our legislative team this year.
[9:26] where an all of our folks have been a tremendous asset in ensuring that our bills are both
[9:36] administerable and that the fiscal impacts are properly communicated to the office of
[9:43] the legislative fiscal analysts.
[9:45] We do know that we had several bills this year that passed through the legislature that
[9:53] we're not funded and we know that we have work left to do to ensure that we have the funding
[10:02] to properly administer those bills. We have been working with the governor's office
[10:08] of planning and budget as well as those on the legislative teams, legislative staff in communicating
[10:19] those needs. And we will continue to work those bills and make sure that they get funded in the future.
[10:27] But despite the challenges and difficulties, we performed very, very well. And our people are
[10:41] just a testament that goodness and diligence and integrity exist in the process of state
[10:56] government.
[10:57] So thank you.
[10:58] Thank you.
[10:59] One final note.
[11:00] I cannot, we could not do this with all of the members of the tax commission, the downstream
[11:07] in the various different agencies responding timely.
[11:11] This was very, very, a very good response this year.
[11:16] We had some very short time for anti-several times,
[11:20] and people rose to the occasion to respond
[11:23] and to determine agency impacts.
[11:25] So, big cudo to the whole staff at the University of Utah State Tax Commission.
[11:31] Yes, and we also need to recognize
[11:33] that Commissioner Frescus and Commissioner Deeds bear a heavier responsibility in the appeals process
[11:43] during the legislative session because they are down to members of the commission.
[11:51] And so all of the work that is done here is a team effort.
[11:56] and we also need to recognize our executive director, Diana Herring, who is at the helm of the ship on the admin, especially on the admin side in making sure that the process runs smoothly and well, both with regard to the legislative issues that come up during the session, as well as the overall performance of the agency.
[12:23] So, thank you all all around to everybody.
[12:31] That completes my comments, Madam Chair.
[12:34] Thank you so much.
[12:35] Do any commissioners or executive director have a report to make?
[12:41] I was just going to add to the love fest of I'm going to provide a little bit of numbers
[12:47] that what did they pass just over 950 bills or something and over 500 bills have a direct
[12:57] impact on the agency and so I don't I could be wrong. I don't think any other agency deals
[13:04] with that type of impact but our group is just astounding and not only is it the legislative
[13:12] group that is generally involved in the session but it's everyone that catches the work
[13:17] down stream that has the bigger workload or has to wait to get an issue resolved until the rest
[13:22] of us can get our heads back into our real jobs. I guess this is a real job too, but yeah,
[13:29] I just wanted to say thank you for everybody. The technical expertise, I don't think people
[13:33] realize how technically astute state employees are, little and tax commission employees, and how much
[13:41] that institutional knowledge and that professionalism and expertise is absolutely essential to
[13:47] to running state government, certainly in our agency
[13:51] and every other one as well.
[13:53] So I just wanted to say thank you for everyone
[13:56] and all the work in the teamwork
[13:59] that we have in working through the issues
[14:02] all during session, whether it be session related
[14:04] or not, that's all I have to say.
[14:07] Yes, well said, well said, and with that,
[14:10] we have also completed item number eight on our agenda,
[14:14] which was the executive director's report.
[14:16] So thank you, Deanna, for that, and yes, thanks all around for a job well done.
[14:26] I see no other items on the agenda, and with that I will take a final motion from Commissioner
[14:33] Deeds.
[14:34] Motion to adjourn.
[14:36] Motion to adjourn is non-debatable, all those in favor say aye.
[14:41] Aye.
[14:41] Bye.
[14:43] Motion passes, meetings adjourned.
[14:46] Thank you so much, everyone.
[14:48] Thank you.