Panelists at the Hinckley Forum discussed an unusually high volume of bills and the legislative mechanics that follow. Senator Kirk Cullimore told the audience the session set a record for introduced bills—"959 bills"—while 582 passed; panelists said the number of introduced measures can outstrip the legislature's capacity to thoroughly vet every line.

Representative Steve Eliason described the substitute process and said he had bills that reached a sixth substitute: "If you start out with a bill... a first substitute means you made so many changes to the bill that it was broader than just an amendment," Eliason said, explaining how committee and floor work can substantially reshape proposals.

Speakers contrasted the legislative amendment process with citizen-initiated ballot measures, which cannot be altered once filed. Representative Eliason said that citizen initiatives make later legislative change difficult: "on the Medicaid one, I went to the people running that and said, hey, I got a tax component I'd like you to change to that. And they're like, oh, we think that's a good idea, but we can't make any changes now."

Panelists noted that the one-subject rule in Utah's lawmaking requires many discrete bills for even small code changes and said the Senate's smaller size often leads to more deliberative outcomes than the larger House. The group urged better public messaging to reflect how bills change between introduction and final passage.