President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has public image problems, pollsters report. But when Democrats and independent voters are taken out of the mix, most Republicans so far approve of the new initiative’s cuts, and some think they haven’t gone far enough.
So will GOP-led Utah follow other red states in creating their own DOGE?
Not exactly, Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters Friday — his office’s version will be called “Government Reform, Innovation & Transparency,” or GRIT.
“We’ve been begging for something like DOGE for decades, and I’m so excited that it is actually happening,” Cox said, adding, “Let me be very clear to people that are watching this: We do DOGE like six times a year in this state. Every single year, we DOGE the hell out of our budget.”
Utah’s version won’t look like the one Trump’s adviser and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, created, Cox said after signing an executive order making the initiative official.
Led by the Governor’s Office of Budget and Planning, state agencies are now tasked with identifying places to further cut costs and time spent on their work, as well as ways to “[enhance] service delivery.”
Every “division, office, bureau, or program” is required to propose at least one “improvement project” under the executive order.
“GRIT is starting with asking the very tough questions about what is actually working, what’s wasting time and money, and what needs to be rebuilt from the ground up,” Cox said.
The state will establish a website to track, Cox said, “how much money we’ve been able to save, how much time we’ve been able to shave off.”
When the governor was asked if the new website will disclosure all of the changes happening in the agencies that serve Utahns, Sophia DiCaro, the head of GOPB, nodded from behind him.
Utah’s second-term governor doesn’t like everything he’s seeing from DOGE, he said.
In the months since Trump took office, Utahns have been included in sweeping layoffs, lost financial help for reproductive health care, had medical research canceled and seen services in its five national parks reduced.
According to a HarrisX poll for Deseret News, majority-Republican Utah feels better about Cox than they do about DOGE.
While 51% of Utahns report having a favorable view of their governor, and 35% an unfavorable view, 46% like DOGE and 43% disapprove of it.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Garry Isaacson and Janna Clyne joins veterans and supporters gather at the Capitol in Salt Lake City for a protest in response to Trump administration policies on Friday, March 14, 2025.
“There’s slashing going on, which we desperately needed,” Cox said. “But unfortunately, they’re not looking at outcomes. And sometimes you slash something and the thing gets worse, right?”
Although the governor assured reporters GRIT won’t include “mass layoffs,” he added, “There may be some changes that happen.”
Some of the reforms that his office will make in an attempt to make the state run more efficiently could include hiring more people, Cox said. But if federal cuts gore a state program and damage its functionality, from the governor’s perspective, that is up to the Legislature to fix.
This story is developing and may be updated.
