More To Say

President Donald Trump ran for office promising to build a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The wall is projected to cost billions of dollars. But even if Trump gets congress to pony up the money, he’ll still have to deal with the people who actually own the border. See, the United States doesn’t actually own it. The federal government is indeed the largest landowner in the region, but most of the land itself is privately owned. And lots of those owners are against building a border wall. KUER’s news director Andrew Becker recently traveled to the border learn why. Link to original story: https://www.revealnews.org/article/this-land-is-our-land-many-property-owners-wont-sell-for-trumps-wall/

For the LDS Church, pornography is sinful. Church leaders preach that watching it will cause the Holy Spirit to depart from a Mormon’s life, and that porn can break up marriages. Mental health professionals are still debating the dangers of pornography. But for practicing Mormons, the stigma surrounding it is evident. We’ll hear the story of a man who decided one Sunday to talk over the pulpit about his relationship with pornography.

On the next More to Say, we’re picking up on a conversation we started last week about affordable housing in Utah. This is part of KUER’s project the Hive Mind — where you ask our reporters questions and they try to find the answers. This time it’s all about tiny homes. Maybe you’ve seen them on Instagram, those beautifully apportioned, incredibly small houses. Lots of people are obsessed with the idea, and some people actually live in them. But things get complicated for one couple when a nosy neighbor spots their tiny home in a friend’s backyard. Link to original story: More about The Hive Mind: http://kuer.org/term/hive-mind#stream/0

It’s no secret that rent around Salt Lake City is really high. And if you drive around downtown, you’ll see tons of new apartment complexes under construction. But the thing is, most Utahns can’t afford to live in them. At least, not according to the common definition of affordable housing: about 30 percent of your yearly income. There’s a staggering need for cheaper apartments around the state, but hardly any incentives to build them. Because those pricey places — they’re not sitting empty. KUER listeners involved in our Hive Mind project wanted to learn more about affordable housing in Salt Lake City, and reporter Whittney Evans has been on the case. More about The Hive Mind: Link to original story:

On December 1st, 2016, 21-year-old Madison Jensen died of heroin withdrawal in the Duchesne County Jail. She’d been violently ill, but no one in the jail did anything about it. Her death is part of a pattern — because Utah has seen more inmate deaths per capita in the last few years than any other state in the nation. And the way Utah jails are run is mostly kept secret. There have been some changes since KUER’s Whittney Evans reported this story. The Utah legislature passed a bill during the last session that requires jails to report in-custody deaths annually. The bill also says jails must disclose their policies for treating inmates withdrawing from drugs. Meanwhile, the Department of Corrections is planning to write new rules for running jails — and make them public. For now, though, Utah jails continue to operate under the secret policies created by Gary Deland. Original Story: http://kuer.org/post/secrecy-nothing-new-gary-deland-utahs-former-prison-boss-who-wont-reveal-jail

It’s hard to keep teachers in Utah's Monument Valley. It's beautiful there, sure, but you're hours away from a real grocery store or a movie theater. Now, though, there's a program to keep teachers invested in the community. And it's actually really simple: Pay them more. Jody Lee-Chadde teaches 4th grade, and they’re paying her $70,000 to do it. Link to original story: http://kuer.org/post/will-you-be-here-next-year-keeping-teachers-navajo-reservation#stream/0

When you think about Las Vegas, you might picture casinos, opulent hotels and neon signs. Like the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, Circus Circus or that huge cowboy on Fremont Street — Vegas Vic . Turns out, lots of those signs were made by the Young Electric Sign Company, headquartered right here in Utah. KUER’s Julia Ritchey used to live in Nevada. It's where she fell in love with neon signs and even started a story on them. Although she couldn’t quite finish it until she moved to Salt Lake City. Link to original story: http://kuer.org/post/how-utah-company-became-nevadas-go-shop-neon

This week on More to Say we’re putting out an episode we made back in November, about a police dispatcher. When someone calls 911, we don’t really think about the person who answers. But the person on the other end carries a heavy burden. When something goes wrong, or someone dies, the dispatcher has to live with it. Original story: http://kuer.org/post/emergency-dispatchers-mental-toll-high-stress-job#stream/0

Last February, a former student at Utah State University wrote a Facebook post. She said she’d been raped by an instructor in the piano department, and that the university hadn’t taken her seriously. But then other students started coming forward, and now USU is changing how it handles sexual assault. Deseret News reporter Gillian Friedman and KUER’s Lee Hale join Doug Fabrizio to talk about it. Link to story: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900015150/Report-Discrimination-sexual-misconduct-went-unchecked-in-USU-music-department.html

The More to Say team is small, and you're an important part of it. It's KUER's Spring fund drive this week. We're raising money for all of KUER's programming, including our podcasts. So this week we're playing a couple of our favorite moments from the podcast. Thank you for supporting the station. Link to give: http://pledgekuer.org/

On March 19th, the website MormonLeaks released an audio recording. It was an anonymous woman and a man named Joseph L. Bishop. She accuses him of sexually assaulting her in 1984 — at the Missionary Training Center in Provo. He was the MTC President; she was a young missionary. Link to original show: http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/authority-abuse-and-lds-church

If you commit a crime in Utah and a judge says you’re too mentally ill to defend yourself in court, you’ll get sent to Utah State Hospital in Provo. That’s how it’s meant to work anyway. The problem is they don’t have enough staff to treat everyone. So, jails are picking up the slack. On top of that, a mental hospital at capacity means less room for people who haven’t been arrested. Link to original story: http://kuer.org/post/pressure-utah-free-more-psychiatric-beds

Michelle Quist is a conservative columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, and she's on the paper's editorial board, too. She's also Mormon. And she's found herself at odds with parts of those communities. Some of her recent columns have dealt with the #MeToo Movement, the death penalty and guns. She's made a habit of challenging Utah's moral compass. More about Michelle Quist: https://www.sltrib.com/staff/mquist/

This week, we took a little field trip up to the state capitol where KUER’s Nicole Nixon and Julia Ritchey have been basically living the past few weeks while they cover the 2018 Utah Legislative Session. In a state like ours, a lot of the time the politics are pretty predictable, but every year there are surprises, so we got the inside look from Nicole and Julia.

Most of the lawsuits filed in Utah are debt collection suits, usually in the realm of a couple hundred dollars, and nearly all of the debtors being sued (98.5 percent of them to be exact) don't get legal help. But if you don’t answer the suit — and “answer” means something really specific here — you’re giving all the power to the debt collector. There’s a group of BYU students and their professor who are trying to help debtors. KUER's Lee Hale joins Doug Fabrizio to talk about it. Original story: http://kuer.org/post/byu-law-students-want-give-utah-debtors-fighting-chance

Americans love their national parks. But the agency that oversees them, the National Park Service, is facing budget cuts. And, worse, they’re $12 billion behind on a growing to-do list that includes repairing guard rails on steep cliffs and replacing broken campsite toilets. Their solution? Higher entrance fees. But KUER's Judy Fahys explains it's not that simple. Original Story: http://kuer.org/post/looking-fixes-national-park-fans-worry-fees-will-climb-12b-do-list-wont-go-down#stream/0

These days it’s perfectly normal for lawmakers at the state and federal level to be on Twitter. President Trump, of course, tweets frequently. And Utah’s representatives are no different. Local lawmakers Todd Weiler and Jim Dabakis are both Twitter users with lots of followers. But what does it mean when a politician blocks someone on social media? Should that even be allowed to happen? KUER’s Julia Ritchey joins Doug Fabrizio to talk about it. Original story: http://kuer.org/post/when-online-civility-tested-lawmakers-hit-block-button

Doing away with the death penalty is usually thought of as a liberal cause, and the arguments are often about the morality of executing someone, or wrongful convictions. But now some conservatives are lining up against capital punishment too — for reasons of their own. KUER’s Whittney Evans joins Doug Fabrizio to talk about why. Original Story: http://kuer.org/post/death-penalty-repeal-groups-including-republicans-say-utah-moving-closer-ending-executions

It’s not uncommon to pay over a hundred dollars for a science or math textbook — and new editions are frequently published. For students struggling to pay for higher education, a pricey textbook can mean the difference between going to class and dropping out. KUER’s Lee Hale joins Doug Fabrizio in the studio to talk about the problem. Original Story: http://kuer.org/post/end-hundred-dollar-textbook#stream/0

KUER’s Nicole Nixon has been looking into the sexual dynamics at Utah’s State House. She spoke with some of the women — legislators and lobbyists — who work there. With powerful men in media and politics around the country facing allegations of sexual misconduct, the Utah Legislature — so far — has been spared a major scandal. But the people Nicole talked to describe a condescending and sexist culture on the hill. Original Story: http://kuer.org/post/amid-sexual-harassment-reckoning-women-utah-legislature-navigate-grey-area