Originally published in the Deseret News.

The Utah Jazz experienced a breakthrough last year when the franchise traded Enes Kanter and promoted Rudy Gobert to the starting center position. The Jazz have played better basketball ever since. The trade created an inflection point that produced improved chemistry and defense. The young team passed a threshold.

The Utah economy may be passing through a similar threshold and, like the Jazz, is competing at a higher level. The state has grown and invested. In the process, we’ve traded away our small size and are shedding our insular reputation. In a very real way we’ve been discovered.

Continue reading Utah’s threshold economy breaks through →

Originally published in the Deseret News.

I’m always looking for public policy breakthroughs that make Utah a better place to live and raise a family. I can think of several great decisions over the years. For instance, Olene Walker sponsored legislation that created Utah’s rainy day fund. It was a lifesaver when the financial crisis hit. The Utah Compact advanced principles to guide Utah’s immigration discussion. This created the context for immigration reform policies that protected public safety, kept families together and strengthened the Utah economy. And when Salt Lake and Utah counties passed ballot initiatives supporting 70 miles of new rail transit, we invested in our future. Today it’s hard to imagine urban Utah without FrontRunner commuter rail and TRAX light rail.

There is another public policy breakthrough I’m following that has the potential to do tremendous good for our state. The Intergenerational Poverty Mitigation Act, passed in 2012, seeks to reduce the incidence of children who remain in a cycle of poverty and welfare dependence as they become adults. Utah is ahead of the curve in understanding this issue and is on the cusp of making real progress.

Continue reading Utah’s intergenerational poverty research: a public policy breakthrough →

Originally published in the Deseret News National Edition.

My mother passed away about a month ago. The passage of time has allowed me to reflect about, internalize and process the experience. I finally feel I can write about it and want to share an experience from the final years of her life. My thoughts start and end with women and song.

As context, let me provide a little background. I’m the youngest of 11 children, which tells you my mother was a warrior of sorts. Truly nothing intimidated her. My mother lived a nigh-perfect life — great marriage, loving children, spunk and spirit, a love for mankind and world travel and a sure commitment to her maker. She died at 93 in her own home, surrounded by her children, in perfect peace. While leaving a pit in my heart, her death was a beautiful experience because of the life she lived.

Continue reading Singing my mother to heaven →

Originally published in the Deseret News.

While driving in downtown Salt Lake City this week I witnessed a vivid contrast. It was lunchtime and the city I love was teeming with life. A TRAX light-rail train rambled through traffic, a guy in a suit pedaled along on a lime green bike-share bicycle, construction workers labored in a new high rise, and lunch-hour pedestrian traffic filled the streets. As if to put punctuation on our growing and thriving urban center, I saw 20 or so rather large guys dressed in power-blue-and-maize outfits walking up State Street together. They were members of the Michigan football team taking a stroll before the big game against the University of Utah. From this vantage point, Utah’s capital city was unmistakably on the rise. I felt a certain sense of hometown pride.

And then a different vantage point emerged. While at a traffic light, I watched as a man started waking diagonally through the busy intersection of State Street and 100 South. He appeared dirty and completely lost. He was bare-chested, talking to himself, and looked completely oblivious to the cars around him. The situation was as sad as it was dangerous. This man needed help.

Continue reading Two Utah’s and the need for investment →

Originally published in the Deseret News.

Salt Lake City is now the second-largest Goldman Sachs office in the United States and the fourth-largest in the world. What was in 2000 a small regional operation has blossomed into a workforce of several thousand people and growing. With the workforce of Fidelity Investments, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Wells Fargo and other financial service companies, Utah’s capital city now rightly claims the title “Wall Street of the West.” The Utah economy is larger, stronger and more diversified, thanks to the growth in this important industry.

Continue reading Salt Lake City is Earning a New Title: ‘Wall Street of the West’ →

Originally published in the Deseret News.

“I come to you at a strange time in American politics.” Well-known journalist and author Cokie Roberts expressed this sentiment in a speech this week in Salt Lake City. Thursday night’s debate underlined this statement. A full one year and three months before Election Day, 10 Republican candidates squared off in the first primary debate. Seven other Republican candidates participated in a “Happy Hour” debate before and the Democrats will join the fray this fall. Unfortunately for the American public, the extended campaign, substance-lacking debates and made-for-TV drama fall short of the task at hand. There is too much ego in politics.

Continue reading Too Much Ego in Politics Detracts from Seriousness of Noble Callings →

Originally published in the Deseret News.

“Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.” — Psalms 22:20

The escape of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman from a maximum security prison in Mexico is the stuff of movies. The kingpin of the Sinaloa Cartel escaped through a mile-long, lighted and ventilated tunnel. Now the person the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency calls “the godfather of the drug world” is on the run again.

El Chapo is a very smart and powerful man. Some estimate he has a net worth of well over $1 billion, but that’s not even close to his real power: the network he commands. It’s a mega cartel that traffics in evil. Some estimate El Chapo and his gang have been responsible for over 100,000 brutal deaths over the past decade and a half. Well before the emergence of the Islamic State, the cartels in Mexico were killing at will and using graphic images and the media to spread fear and terror. They truly embody what is referenced in Psalms as “the power of the dog.”

Continue reading America, Drugs, and the ‘Power of the Dog’ →