Utah Rising

What Utah Rising is

Utah Rising: A Free Enterprise Vision for Utah's Economy is a business-led, statewide economic strategy jointly presented by the Utah Chamber and Salt Lake Chamber. Utah Rising's own materials give two different launch dates: an August 5, 2026 press release says "fall 2024," while a January 2026 news post on Utah Rising's own site says "April 2024" — not yet reconciled. The initiative is reviewed and updated by Utah business leaders every two years. Its Steering Committee is chaired by Spencer P. Eccles; Derek Miller, President & CEO of the Utah Chamber, is quoted extensively on its materials but holds a separate role. Per its own materials, it sets goals across six focus areas — workforce and education, housing, transportation, livability, business environment, and natural resources — each paired with a named "signature project," including a $1 billion investment in mental health-professional training and doubling FrontRunner rail service along the Wasatch Front.

On April 29, 2025, then-GOEO Executive Director Ryan Starks and the state's Industrial Assistance Account Committee approved a 10-year, $3.2 million taxpayer grant to the Salt Lake Chamber Foundation for Utah Rising — three days before Starks announced he was leaving GOEO to lead EDCUtah, an organization under the same Chamber's umbrella. The grant was later canceled by Starks' successor over conflict-of-interest concerns. Full detail on that sequence is on Ryan Starks' own case file.

Utah Rising's own stated opportunities and challenges

Per its own "Opportunities & Challenges" page, Utah Rising frames its strategy around five identified economic opportunities and five identified challenges.

Five opportunities, per the initiative's own framing:

• The "AI-age" — positioning Utah's workforce to compete in artificial intelligence
• An "energy decade" — leveraging Utah's mixed energy portfolio, including oil, gas, coal, geothermal, wind, solar, biomass, hydroelectric, hydrogen, storage, critical minerals, and what the page calls "potential modern nuclear"
• A new downtown sports, entertainment, culture, and convention district, citing over $3 billion in private investment and $1 billion in public investment, the arrival of the Utah Hockey Club, the possibility of an MLB team, and nearby investment by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near Temple Square
• Four "generational real estate investments": The Point (600 acres of state land at the Salt Lake/Utah County line), the Inland Port, Utah City (an 800-acre Utah Lake shoreline project), and Falcon Hill (aerospace/defense expansion near Hill Air Force Base)
• The 2034 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, with an estimated $6.6 billion economic impact

Five challenges, per the same page:

• A mismatch between workforce skills and the needs of a knowledge economy
• Housing affordability
• Growth pressure on energy availability and the environment
• Rising youth and young-adult mental health concerns
• Utahns experiencing intergenerational poverty and homelessness

Still active through the 2026 session

The grant's cancellation in July 2025 didn't end the initiative. Utah Rising's own website lists recent activity including a piece titled "Advocacy in Action: Utah Rising Priorities Take Center Stage in the 2026 Legislative Session," a legislative recap titled "From Vision to Action: 2026 Legislative Session Outcomes," and webinars on specific focus-area topics ("Water 101," among others). The initiative also maintains a video series with one entry per focus area — Workforce, Transportation, Business Environment, Housing, Livability, and Natural Resources.

The Chamber's own 2026 Legislative Scorecard gives the precise figure behind that claim: 17 priority bills, 100% success rate, out of 260 business-related bills the Chamber tracked during a session that introduced over 1,000 bills, passed more than 540, and appropriated a $31.63 billion budget. The Chamber names four priority areas its advocacy advanced that session: expanding housing supply, strengthening the workforce talent pipeline, accelerating critical mineral development, and long-term Great Salt Lake protection — the last two directly overlapping with existing research elsewhere in this project (S.B. 254's critical-minerals framework, and this project's extensive Great Salt Lake reporting). At a June 18, 2026 ceremony at the Utah Capitol, the Chamber named four "Free Enterprise Champion" legislators — Sen. Scott Sandall, Sen. Evan Vickers, Rep. Doug Owens, and Rep. Karen Peterson — plus Rocky Mountain Power President Dick Garlish, honored separately as a distinguished member. The specific list of which 17 bills counted as "priority" is published only inside an interactive flipbook document, not as readable text; it has not been reviewed for this piece.

In an August 5, 2026 press release announcing a new action-plan phase, the Utah Chamber stated that it "achieved a 100% success rate on its priority legislation" during the 2026 session, including policies the release says advanced Utah Rising's stated goals.

That means Utah Rising was an active legislative advocacy presence — one the Chamber itself says was fully successful — during the same 2026 session that produced both H.B. 545 (the Legislature's unfunded response to the audit's IAA findings) and OLAG Report 2026-18 itself.

Derek Miller has also remained a prominent public voice specifically on Utah Rising's Workforce and Education focus area — telling Deseret News that AI could be the state's largest economic shift since the 1869 golden spike, and appearing on a May 19, 2026 Axios Live panel on AI, sponsored by Anthropic, alongside GOED Executive Director Jefferson Moss and Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost.

The family connection

Utah Rising's Steering Committee includes The Larry H. Miller Company. Its CEO is Steve Starks — Ryan Starks' brother. The same grant Ryan Starks personally approved went to an initiative whose governing Steering Committee includes a company run by his own sibling, alongside GOEO, his own office at the time.

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Steering Committee

Utah Rising's own published roster. Rows marked with a cross-reference link to existing reporting elsewhere in this project.

Technical Committee

Local & Regional Chambers of Commerce Committee

A third, smaller committee: Box Elder, Cedar City, Kanab Area, Washington Area, Carbon County, Moab, and Vernal Area Chambers of Commerce.

Open questions

Questions worth asking

• Ask GOEO/GOED: why did the office sit on Utah Rising's governing committees while also approving and administering a taxpayer grant to it?
• Ask the Salt Lake Chamber: did Steve Starks' role as Larry H. Miller Company CEO, or his brother's role approving the grant, come up in any internal discussion of the Steering Committee's makeup?
• Ask the Utah Chamber/Salt Lake Chamber: has Utah Rising's Steering/Technical Committee membership changed since the grant was canceled in July 2025?
• Ask the Utah Chamber: which 17 specific bills count as its 2026 priority legislation, and do any of them touch the Industrial Assistance Account or GOED oversight? (The number and topic areas are confirmed; the specific bill list is published only inside an interactive flipbook, not as readable text.)
• Ask World Trade Center Utah and Utah World Trade Center Corporation: are these the same organization?
• Ask Utah Rising or Utah County officials: who is developing Utah City, and has it received any public financing tools (TIF, PID, or similar) comparable to the other named projects?

Sources