The 45-day Utah legislative session was undoubtedly a busy one for Rep. Stephanie Gricius.

The District 50 representative either sponsored or co-sponsored 29 bills and had her name attached to some of the most contested items passing through the Utah House and Senate.

Among these items were a bill banning the addition of fluoride to public drinking water and a bill requiring school therapists to disclose to parents details of what they discussed in a session with a child.

Gricius, R-Eagle Mountain, recapped her role in the session on Tuesday while participating in a “Legislative Wrap-Up” forum alongside Speaker of the House Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Rep. Val Peterson, R-Orem, at Utah Valley University. The event was hosted by the Herbert Institute for Public Policy and the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce.

“Only 12 of those (29 bills) were my own harebrained ideas,” Gricius joked at the meeting. “There were several caucus meetings where I was standing up in front of the room trying to explain all the crazy that was going on in (my head).”

When asked what her most challenging bill was, Gricius said it was the bill banning the addition of fluoride to public drinking water, which passed through the House and Senate and now sits on Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk.

If signed, the bill will primarily impact Davis and Salt Lake counties, the two places in the state where fluoride is put in public water on a countywide level. Utah County does not put fluoride in its water.

Gricius said the bill was already drafted when a federal court ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency in September of last year, determining there was credible evidence to establish the level of fluoride added to public water poses human health concerns.

“That lawsuit then triggered our water districts and had them come forward, saying, ‘We now have case law that says there is a potential for harm, and now we’re concerned about the legal liability,'” Gricius said.

The bill would also give pharmacists prescribing authority to distribute fluoride to people who want access to it, as fluoride is proven to prevent tooth decay.

But the ban has received wide pushback because of fluoride’s benefits. Gricius said the governor’s office told her “at least 1,000 people” asked Cox to veto the bill.

“So far, he has signaled that he will sign it, which will make us the first state in the country to not put fluoride into our drinking water on a statewide level,” Gricius said. “Now, it doesn’t impact natural fluoride. But that one was, both externally and internally, very controversial, and took a lot of work to get across the finish line. We muscled that thing out of the House.”

She also addressed the bill she sponsored that requires school therapists to receive parental consent to do therapy with a student in school. The bill also establishes that parents can set parameters around what therapists are permitted to discuss with the children.

“We actually had some school districts who were pulling kids in and doing group therapy without parental consent in our schools,” Gricius said. “And I’m a believer in therapy … but there has to be parental involvement in that process, otherwise it doesn’t work.”

She said she worked with different stakeholder groups to get on the same page with the bill, then once the session started, 10 additional groups voiced their disapproval. Some mental health experts argued the parameters would make it more difficult for therapists to identify kids who are suffering abuse at home.

“That was another one where people were getting blown up, and our caucus was getting really blown up over the policies. But we continued to work with those groups throughout the course. And I think that one passed the second-to-last day of the session after a good solid year’s worth of work,” Gricius said.

A third bill she defended Tuesday was the collective bargaining ban, which she was not a sponsor of. She acknowledged collective bargaining can be positive in “some circumstances” but argued it prevented those not participating in a union from being allowed to bargain with their employer, claiming only 35% of teachers in the state are in a teacher’s union.

“Really what this bill did was create a pathway for everyone to be able to go and self-advocate. And in Utah, we’re big believers of personal responsibility. You should be able to go do that,” she said.

Schultz weighed in on the bill, too, saying it “kind of (blew) up into something bigger than what it really needs to be.”

He said that beyond Salt Lake City, the only public employees who collectively bargained were the teachers. He argued taxpayer dollars were funding some union employees and said collective bargaining was to blame.

“I don’t think that’s fair to the taxpayers,” Schultz said.

However, not everyone inside the meeting at the Clarke Building agreed. While Schultz was speaking, two people interrupted him in opposition, with one woman exclaiming, “We need to protect workers!”

Shultz responded directly to the interrupters, saying, “Again, the vast majority of the teachers are not members of the union, and so I’m sorry, I don’t believe that you have to be a member of the union to be treated fairly.”