A state agency is looking to go — with apologies to Huey Lewis & The News — “back in time.”
The Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity is supporting a bill that would revert its name back to the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
HB475, sponsored by Rep. Calvin Roberts, R-Draper, also would create the Economic Development Council to coordinate economic development efforts in the state, and also have that council create a working group to provide oversight for the opportunity zone application process in 2026.
HB475 passed out of a House committee by a 7-1 vote and then the full House by a voice vote. A Senate committee voted 3-0 to advance it to the full Senate. The legislative session ended March 5, after the Salt Lake Business Journal press deadline.
Roberts told the House committee that reverting to the Governor’s Office of Economic Development would put Utah in line with other states that have “economic development” as part of their names.
“It’s been challenging for GOEO when they go to national conferences and they talk about what they do,” he said. “Most of their peers have some kind of ‘economic development’ in their title. So, there’s this big rebranding happening at the executive-branch level around all the agencies, so they’d like to, as part of that rebrand, go back from GOEO to GOED.”
The roots of GOEO go back to 1981, when the Utah Department of Community and Economic Development was created. In 1986, the office was known as the Division of Business and Economic Development within that department. In 2005, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. changed it from a department to part of the governor’s office and named it the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. At Gov. Spencer Cox’s insistence, the Legislature changed the name to the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity in 2021. For a brief period, the agency referred to itself as “Go Utah” but later switched to GOEO.
The Economic Development Council would unify and coordinate economic development projects that have regional or statewide impact and would provide a written report annually to the Economic Development and Workforce Services Interim Committee. The coordination would happen with the Utah Inland Port Authority, the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, the Utah Lake Authority, the Utah Fairpark Area Investment and Restoration District, the Military Installation Development Authority, and regional associations of governments.
“The challenge is, none of these land authorities really talk to each other and there’s no cohesive strategy,” Roberts said.
During the House committee hearing, Alissa Daily of the Utah Association of Realtors and Karson Eilers, policy director at the Utah League of Cities and Towns, spoke in favor of the bill.
“We really see this as a coordination bill,” Eilers said. “Unlike some efforts in the past that might have tried to dictate what economic development policy should be from the top down, this bill does not do that. Instead, it invites local government to have a seat at the table at the coordinating council and make sure we’re involved in the process, make sure we’re all working together in partnership to try to achieve the overall economic objectives of both local governments and the state.”
The economic development council would seem to carry on the work of the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission, which became inactive last summer. Established in July 2021, it developed, directed and coordinated Utah’s statewide and regional economic development strategies.
HB475 also would require a report by May 31 to the Economic Development and Workforce Services Interim Committee about coordinating efforts around opportunity zone application
development.
Opportunity zones are a federal, place-based tax incentive program created by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, designed to stimulate investment in over 8,700 economically distressed communities. The program was made permanent under the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.