Spencer Cox, governor of the great state of Utah,
been very involved with the Rural Online Initiative from it's inception
and I'm one of it's biggest cheerleaders and fans.
Well the Rural Online Initiative is one
of the best rural economical development initiatives
that we've done in the history of the state of Utah.
I firmly believe that.
I talked to my dad who was the mayor of our small town when I was a kid
and he kinda joked about the flavor of the day,
when it comes to rural economical development,
and how many things they've gotten wrong,
and we try something and it doesn't work.
So it wasn't a real bottom up approach.
The Rural Online Initiative is different
because we're investing in people.
We're investing in them.
The infrastructure broadband
is, is not ubiquitously available but it's-
we have some of the best broadband in rural Utah anywhere in the nation.
A-anywhere in rural America.
And we're adding more rural broadband every day.
And so the infrastructures there, and now people can have-
you don't need a freeway, you don't need a train.
If you're in one of these towns like Fairview that got bypassed by I-15,
now you have an information highway.
A super highway, that allows you to participate in the global economy.
But it's a unique skill set.
And people need to learn how to take advantage of the tools that are out there.
And that's what's missing and so the Rural Online Initiative gives anyone
the opportunity to learn how to take advantage of those tools
and how to do it from their living room.
And that's, that's powerful.
And, we've already seen that it's working, we just need more of it.
Well, remote work is something that I've been a fan of for a long long time,
before I was lieutenant governor I ran a rural telecommunications company.
And so getting broadband out to rural areas is what I did.
I believed in the power of remote work, and I was told that it just couldn't work.
That- that it just wasn't feasible.
And then about a couple years ago I started pushing then Governor Herbert
to let me try a project with state workers to let them work from home.
And I started that, and it worked better than we expected,
we were shocked by the results.
People loved it, which didn't surprise us.
They were happier, which didn't surprise us,
but their work productivity went up significantly.
And so I really started pushing this out to the private sector
because we didn't have opportunities in rural Utah.
I didn't know anyone in Fairview who was working remotely.
And then the pandemic hit.
And I became one of those remote workers.
I started working from home multiple days a week.
Dealing with the pandemic but everybody was remote.
And so it made sense I could do it in Fairview.
We had fiber to my house.
Um, I could do it as well there as well as anywhere else,
my speeds were better than in downtown Salt Lake City.
So why not?
And now I think people have caught the vision.
That it is possible.
And now I do know people in Fairview who are working remotely.
And it's cool to see them getting job opportunities
that they never would have had.
This is one of the frustrating things that I've had to fight
as lieutenant governor, now as governor,
was this idea that there's no talent in rural Utah.
It's just not true.
And if there is any truth to it, it's only true
because the talent has no choice, and has to go somewhere else.
And that's where-
I talk often about-
my dad always said growing up, and I didn't understand it,
he said, at the time, our best crop is our kids.
And I got that part, but he always said and then we export our best crop.
And so we're exporting our kids.
And so too many talented people who want to be there,
who could live there, can't because they don't have the opportunities.
So, given the opportunities they would stay.
Given the opportunities they would move back.
And there are people there doing-
they're underemployed now because they want to live there.
They're either commuting to the Wasatch Front and living there,
or they're living there and doing something
that they wouldn't otherwise do.
They have the education background
and the talent to do something else, they just don't have an opportunity.
It's worth the sacrifice to stay there.
But I tell companies all the time who are having a hard time finding people,
that there is a wealth of talent out there
if they're just willing to go out to rural Utah.
One of the things that was really important
to me was to focus on remote work as a state.
That trial project that we did was so successful
that I convinced Governor Herbert to have a goal
of 2,500 people working from home by the end of last year.
And well, then the pandemic hit and we far exceeded that 2,500 number!
But what we've decided is that we wanna keep that.
We wanna keep it in every job, every agency that they can.
I mean there are some where you can't work from home.
But if you can we wanna make that available.
It's helping in so many ways.
It's helping us with recruiting.
it's helping us of course with rural,
'cause now people can apply for jobs that couldn't apply for those jobs before.
Again, it's helping with flexibility.
We've got more women who can now participate
in the workforce who couldn't before.
Who couldn't help their families in tremendous ways
and still be there for their kids when they come home from school,
which is so important.
So, there are so many wins that are coming from remote work
and we believe that Utah can be a leader nationally in remote work the right way.
There will always be people who want to get out of the big city.
Who wanna get out of just the noise and the pressure.
It, it's not for everyone, right?
Rural Utah is not for everyone.
I say that all the time.
For many people it's a great place to visit but you could never live there.
But for others who thrive in that environment
and want that, that's gonna be true anywhere in this country.
And again I just think showing the power of remote work
in improving the workforce can help, again, it can help the economy,
it can help people in their personal lives,
it can help them with their families
and that's something that translates across cultures and across states.
It's different for everyone.
For many of us it's because that's where we're from,
it's part of who we are, our roots are there.
So I hear it all the time, I hear people come to me and say,
I'm so jealous that you got to move back, that you got to the-
I wanted to do that but I couldn't.
For other people it's just a different way of life.
They love the outdoors.
Now we have people coming from other states who found out
by the way, that now they can work anywhere they want.
And they want to live in rural Utah and enjoy,
walk out their front door, get on their mountain bike, and just go.
Go on a hike, just have that-
they want horses, they want, they want the live that it brings
and now that Amazon can deliver to your front door
you don't have to have a mall right next door.
You don't lose the inconveniences
that you may have had before, but you get all of the benefits.
Well there's no question that Utah's been recognized over the past few years.
We've been discovered.
Some people think that's great, some people think it's not that great,
but more and more people are coming here.
Our tourism industry is just booming, and I hear it all the time.
Like I would love to live here.
People come and visit, and then they start saying well I could live here.
And so that's happening for sure.
And I think that's driving some of it.
We're seeing it in Park City and some other places.
But all across Utah.
We've got some neighbors
who lived, raised their family in New York,
they had ties to Utah, they came back to teach at one of the universities here,
and they bought a little place in Fairview.
Then they would come down on weekends and then they just decided,
what are we doing, we love it here we wanna live here full-time
and that's what's impacted them that first taste of Utah
is visiting the mighty five, our national parks, our state parks, skiing,
and then deciding, hey, I wanna live here.
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