Annette McRae for Senate District 20

06/05/2026

Today I spent some time exploring the Dragon and Bonanza area with my husband.

One of the more interesting stops was near the old Dragon Cemetery, where weather and time have carved natural arch-like formations into the rock. It’s a reminder that in Uintah County, history is everywhere. Sometimes it’s written in headstones, and sometimes it’s written in stone itself.

Places like Dragon tell the story of the people who helped build our communities through hard work, mining, ranching, and energy development. At the same time, the surrounding landscape reminds us that we are only the latest chapter in a much longer story.

Days like today reinforce why I care so deeply about District 20. We have a rich heritage, remarkable landscapes, and communities worth preserving for future generations.

Grateful for the opportunity to spend the day exploring another corner of Uintah County.

06/02/2026

🚨DISTRICT 20 RECEIPTS — Day 6

In 2021, the current District 20 senator sponsored SB 176, which removed “alleviation of impacts” from the purpose of the Community Impact Fund and explicitly allowed CIF dollars to be used for projects that increase natural resource development. The changes were made retroactive. (Primary source: SB 176 enrolled text)

Supporters argued the bill would give rural counties greater flexibility.

The result was that more than $109 million in spending tied to extraction infrastructure was retroactively validated, while funding for water systems, roads, healthcare, and other community needs faced increased competition from the very activities the fund was originally created to offset.

District 20 deserves Stability by Design: guardrail legislation that keeps Community Impact Fund dollars focused on mitigating community impacts through one coordinated infrastructure strategy.

Learn more: The Plan: Stability by Design | Energy & Infrastructure mcraeforutah.com

06/01/2026

🚨 DISTRICT 20 RECEIPTS — Day 5 🔥
The current SD-20 senator voted YES on multiple Great Salt Lake restoration bills…

…but voted NO on four specific water-conservation mandates that would have reduced consumptive use — the water that never reaches the lake.

(Primary sources: le.utah.gov vote records)

Supporters call the restoration votes “environmental leadership.”

Reality: You cannot restore the lake if you keep letting the water that should fill it get diverted upstream.

District 20 deserves Stability by Design — real Water First planning that connects every drop across the Uintah Basin, Wasatch Back, and Daggett County before the systems break.

mcraeforsenate.com

What do YOU think, District 20?

Is voting YES on restoration bills enough, or do we need actual mandates that cut consumptive waste? Drop your thoughts 👇


Paid for by Annette for Utah

05/28/2026

This basement drainage solution at Vernal City Hall is a great micro-example, but it highlights a massive macro-need across District 20: we must stop using expensive, highly treated culinary water to water lawns and landscaping. 🌸💧

As Vernal grows and upgrades its infrastructure, we need to transition from these one-off fixes to a dedicated, city-wide secondary water system.

That means planning for "purple pipe" non-potable networks. I want to see the city aggressively mandate dry-priming or installing secondary irrigation lines in all new subdivisions, commercial zones, and major road reconstruct projects. Incentivizing landscape meters now prepares our communities for a full, secure dual-pipe future.

In the Utah Senate, I will fight for infrastructure grants that help cities like Vernal scale up these systems. Let's build the smart, separate water networks Utah needs for the next generation.

🌸 Main Street flowers are back for the season, and we’re excited to see downtown filling with color again this summer.

We also understand the concerns many residents have regarding current water conditions, and we want to share some important context about how these flowers are watered.

The flowers along Main Street are not watered using Vernal City’s culinary water supply.

During construction of the Vernal City Hall building, a naturally occurring groundwater spring was discovered beneath the property. That groundwater must continually be pumped away from the building to prevent flooding in the basement level of City Hall.

Rather than letting that water go unused, Vernal City pumps it into a storage tank and uses it to water the downtown flowers. If it were not used for irrigation, the water would instead be discharged onto the City Hall storm lawn.

This groundwater is non-potable, meaning it is not suitable for culinary use, and there is currently no feasible way to transport and treat it for use in homes. Using it for the flower's irrigation allows us to maintain the beauty of our downtown without drawing from the city’s culinary water supply.

As an additional note, the flowers for this season were purchased last fall before we knew what this year’s water conditions would look like.

We appreciate everyone doing their part to conserve water and help protect one of our community’s most important resources. 💧🌸

05/28/2026

Listen up, District 20. While Senator Ron Winterton was busy sitting in the big chair heading the Senate Government Operations Committee, a quiet little battle over your backyard was unfolding right under his gavel.
Enter HB 457.

The bill started its life trying to dictate how counties handle long-term growth planning. The early drafts aimed to tie the hands of local planners by forcing state-forecasted "growth elements" and top-down mandates onto counties—the kind of central planning that treats the pristine open spaces, farms, and limited water supplies of the Wasatch Back like a generic, paved-over extension of the Wasatch Front. It was a developer’s blueprint masquerading as "planning."

But here is where the story gets good.

While Senator Winterton was presiding over the committee, it wasn't him leading the charge to defend our local borders from state overreach. It was his challenger, Annette McRae, doing the ground game—ringing alarm bells, firing off emails, and mobilizing local voices to demand that the committee stop the top-down creep.

The pressure worked so well that the bill had to be completely overhauled. By the time it left Winterton’s committee on March 3, it had been stripped down to its 5th Substitute, renamed County Governance Modifications, and forced to leave the heavy-handed county growth mandates on the cutting room floor.

That isn't a victory for Ron; that's a salvage operation by the public.

Holding the gavel isn’t the same thing as holding the line. True leadership means proactively protecting your district's water, open space, and community character—not waiting for a challenger and a wave of angry local emails to force a rewrite of a bad bill in your own committee room.

Stability by Design means guardrails, not state-mandated overrides. It means local voices decide how Wasatch and Summit counties grow—not Salt Lake City bureaucrats and big-box developers.

Thanks for the paper trail, Senator. Next time, let's elect someone who fights for District 20 from the floor, instead of just chairing the meeting while the community does the heavy lifting.

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05/28/2026

🚨Welcome back to District 20 Receipts, where today’s episode is titled: “Oops, I Forgot Rural Utah Exists Again.”

Let’s talk about Day 4.

Our incumbent senator sponsored SB 174 because apparently, the biggest crisis facing our state is that city doctors are being forced to do things against their vibe. Supporters are calling it "conscience protection."

But let’s look at the actual blueprint of rural healthcare. In Daggett County, there is exactly one clinic. One. If that single provider exercises their "conscience exemption," the entire county’s medical system doesn't just slow down—it vanishes. You’re not protecting a conscience; you’re converting a medical clinic into an empty building with a waiting room.

If you live in Salt Lake, a doctor’s refusal means you drive two blocks over to the next clinic. If you live in Daggett County, a doctor’s refusal means you better hope your medical emergency can wait for a 60-mile road trip.

Passing a sweeping healthcare bill without a geographic safeguard for single-provider areas isn't a policy—it's a structural oversight. It’s like designing a house and forgetting to put a front door on the master bedroom, then telling the owner to just climb in through the window.

District 20 deserves Stability by Design—laws that actually look at the map before they take effect. We need guardrail legislation that protects provider conscience without turning rural Utah into a medical desert.

Learn more: The Plan: Stability by Design | Public Safety

mcraeforsenate.com

05/27/2026

🚨 DISTRICT 20 RECEIPTS — Day 3 🔥
The Healthcare Heist
Welcome to Day 3, where we pivot from local property lines to the State Legislature — a place where “the will of the people” is sometimes treated more like a polite suggestion than a mandate.
2019: Utah voters went to the ballot and clearly approved full Medicaid expansion. The people had spoken.
But the Chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee helped steer SB 96 through the process anyway. The result? They replaced the voter-approved plan with a watered-down “diet” version that created a massive coverage gap for working families earning between 100% and 138% of the Federal Poverty Level.
Supporters called it “fiscal responsibility.”
In practice, for families in places like Daggett County that means:
• Zero hospitals 🏥❌
• 60-to-80 mile drives just to see a doctor 🚗💨
When coverage gets yanked, medical problems don’t disappear — they just turn into expensive emergency-room dashes and medical debt for the rural families who can least afford it.
They’re campaigning on Stability by Design.
But if 2019 is any indication, that “design” involved taking a voter-approved healthcare plan and carving out a hole big enough to drive a rural ambulance through.
District 20 deserves better.
We need real Stability by Design — a unified plan that actually delivers reliable healthcare access for rural families while protecting taxpayers. No more hollowed-out compromises that leave the most vulnerable paying the price.
Learn more at mcraeforsenate.com
This is accountability in action — straight from the public record.
Drop a 🔥 if you believe rural Utah families deserve real healthcare stability.

05/26/2026

🚨 DISTRICT 20 RECEIPTS — Day 2 🔥
The Sequel Nobody Asked For…
Welcome to the Duchesne County dynamic, where “space” is apparently an illusion and 660 feet of buffer zone somehow equals “too much breathing room.”
May 2013: The Duchesne County Commission decided that keeping industrial oil-and-gas wells a full 660 feet from a family’s front porch was way too far.
So they chopped it in half — down to 300 feet.
That’s the exact length of a football field.
Imagine sitting on your couch, looking out the window, and seeing a massive drilling rig parked at the opposite end zone.
Surface-owner groups specifically asked for the stronger 660-foot buffer to protect homes, property, and health.
The commission slashed it anyway.
Supporters swore this was the only way to save energy jobs and development in the Basin.
Fast forward — we’re still wrestling with EPA ozone nonattainment while trying to grow responsible energy production.
They’re calling their new campaign Stability by Design.
But if 2013 was the design, “stability” meant forcing a false choice: energy jobs or protecting rural families.
District 20 doesn’t need either/or politics.
We need real Stability by Design — a unified plan that delivers strong energy development and smart safeguards for families, property rights, and long-term prosperity. Responsible energy done right, with guardrails that actually work.
This is accountability in action — straight from the public record.
Learn more: The Plan: Stability by Design | BackRunner Rail Strategy
Drop a 🔥 if you want energy growth that actually works for everyone in District 20.

05/25/2026

🚨 DISTRICT 20 RECEIPTS — Day 1 🔥
Oh, honey. Welcome to Duchesne County, where conflict-of-interest guidelines must be written in disappearing ink and board meetings double as masterclasses in corporate synergy.
November 2018: One local leader is simultaneously wearing three hats at the exact same table:
• Duchesne County Commissioner (representing the people 🗳️)
• CIB Board Member (holding the public checkbook 💰)
• Paid consultant for the engineering firm building the Uinta Basin Railway (quietly getting the bag 💼)
Motion hits the floor to award $27.9 million in Community Impact Fund money straight to the railway project.
The motion passes.
Verbal disclosure of the consulting relationship during the meeting?
crickets.
Supporters promised this railway would finally break the Basin’s classic boom-bust cycle.
Turns out the only cycle that got busted was basic transparency — while public dollars flowed straight into a project tied to the same person’s professional ecosystem.
This isn’t a unified infrastructure plan.
This is political musical chairs where one player is sitting in every seat.
District 20 deserves better.
We need Stability by Design — a real, connected plan for water, energy, rail, housing, and infrastructure that puts local control and full transparency first. No more silent pipelines. No more disappearing ink.
Learn more: mcraeforsenate.com
The Plan: Stability by Design | BackRunner Rail Strategy
This is accountability in action — straight from the public record. Drop a 🔥 if you’re ready for decisions that actually serve District 20.
Be sure to follow, like, and share my profile so you don’t l miss out on what’s to come.

05/21/2026

Tonight representing Duchesne City at the Western Uintah Basin Mosquito Abatement Board meeting. Local government may not always make headlines, but these conversations and decisions matter to our communities every day. Grateful for the opportunity to serve and stay engaged.