City parks master plan moves forward - Moab Sun News moabsunnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from moabsunnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Editor’s note •
This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting important local journalism.
The former head of an influential state budget office has landed more than $350,000 in public funding to launch a new program and has carved out a full-time position for herself at the University of Utah.
Kristen Cox, who left the Utah Governor’s Office of Management and Budget in September, stirred controversy as she took a central role in the state’s initial pandemic response. Public health leaders indicated they were frustrated and felt edged out by the level of GOMB’s involvement, according to emails obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, with Cox writing in one message that while she considered members of the medical establishment part of the solution, “relying on them exclusively has put our country into a serious and avoidable crisis.”
| Updated: 4:21 p.m.
Utah is last in the nation for the amount of federal COVID-19 funding that has flowed into the state so far, a recent per-capita analysis shows.
And that’s a sign of good things, economists and officials argue, saying it points to the state’s relative economic resiliency during a pandemic that has taken a far greater toll in other areas of the country.
“We rank low in terms of federal funds in response to the pandemic because we rank high on our economy,” said Phil Dean, a research fellow with the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.