LotGate: What Happened in the Wasatch Back’s Summer Scandal For a few weeks this summer, a fight over development and local control on the Wasatch Back turned into a public dispute with Gov. Spencer Cox’s office after one of his senior advisers threatened Wasatch County’s state funding. Jeffrey Pierce started calling it “LotGate.” The immediate threat is over now. Wasatch County says its funding is safe. But the episode is worth going back through because one pretty basic question was never answered. The story started with Philo Development and 144 proposed homes on about 740 acres of state trust land east of Heber. Wasatch County rejected the development agreement in August. At the same time, Philo was pursuing a separate project called Wasatch Highlands under Utah’s new preliminary municipality law. That law came from SB258, passed by the Legislature in 2024. It created a pilot program allowing landowners in qualifying undeveloped areas to begin forming their own municipalities, complete with appointed leadership and municipal land-use authority before eventually transitioning into a regular town. Wasatch and Summit counties didn’t like the law and began discussing an effort to repeal it. Then Cox senior housing adviser Steve Waldrip showed up at the Heber City Council on August 18. Waldrip said he had a message from the governor. After criticizing Wasatch County’s development decisions and its opposition to the preliminary municipality law, he told local officials their state funding was “now at risk, meaning none.” He specifically mentioned Class B and C road funds and said funding was suspended for counties that “openly declare war on the state” over growth issues. That got people’s attention. B and C road money isn’t simply a discretionary grant the governor hands out to counties he likes. Utah law directs the money to counties and cities through a statutory formula, with half based on weighted road mileage and half based on population. Wasatch County receives roughly $2.1 million a year from the program. Pierce argued that threatening those funds to pressure a county over its land-use decisions and legislative lobbying could amount to official misconduct under Utah law. The official misconduct statute does make it a Class B misdemeanor for a public servant, with the required intent, to knowingly commit an unauthorized act purporting to be an act of the person’s office. But that is Pierce’s legal argument. I haven’t found any court, prosecutor or ethics commission finding that Cox or Waldrip violated that law. And then the dispute cooled down. Wasatch County officials met with the governor’s office on August 28. The county later said state officials acknowledged their initial approach had not been constructive and confirmed there would be “no negative impacts to state funding in Wasatch County.” No B and C money was ultimately withheld. Wasatch County also didn’t abandon its opposition to SB258. On September 2, the County Council formally asked the Legislature to repeal the preliminary municipality program. Wasatch Highlands is still alive too. The Lieutenant Governor’s Office continues to list it as a preliminary municipality, and a state population review found that it met the initial population, density and contiguity requirements for the process. So the practical result of LotGate is fairly straightforward. Wasatch County didn’t lose its road funding. The state backed away from the threat. The county continued lobbying against SB258 anyway, and the underlying development fight is still going. But there is one part of the August 18 meeting that never really got cleared up. Waldrip said he was delivering the governor’s message. When Utah News Dispatch later asked Cox’s office whether Cox had actually directed Waldrip to threaten Wasatch County’s funding, the governor’s office declined an interview and did not answer the question. Sources: Jeffrey Pierce on X; KPCW; Utah News Dispatch