Meet Derek Brown of Utah’s 49th Legislative District

It was late at night when Derek Brown, current state legislative representative from Utah Legislative District 49, realized it was time for a career change. The sun had set long ago, and his family was sleeping while he continued to work on a trial brief.

“I knew attorneys that had worked in the firm for decades, put in the time for their career, then one day they looked up and their kids are gone. It’s not where I wanted to be,” says Brown. Earning his undergraduate degree from BYU and a J.D. from Pepperdine School of Law, he had taken a job in a Washington, D.C. law firm.

“I remember one trial where I didn’t see my boys for three or four months,” says Brown. “I would be up early and come home late. It was very hard, really rough. In the middle of that, I was up at two a.m. writing briefs, and my wife came in. ‘I understand why and what you are doing,’ she said, ‘but FYI: this doesn’t work for me.’ I agreed with her. I decided it didn’t work for me either.”

Brown began to looking around and soon found opportunity on Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill, first as counsel Senator Bennett’s and then Senator Hatch’s office. During that same period, he and his wife started a recording production company that was centered in Salt Lake City and commuted between the two cities. By 2005, business was busy enough that Brown’s decided to move back to Utah. Now days, Derek splits his time between the production company and teaching as an adjunct professor of law at BYU.

With a growing business and a growing family (the Browns welcomed their fourth child to the family earlier this year), Derek kept busy. But in 2010, despite feeling like he had had enough politics after living in Washington, D.C., Derek found himself looking to be involved again. Dissatisfied with the then current representative, Democrat Jay Seegmiller, Brown got behind another Republican who was planning on running for the seat. Then, a week before the filing deadline, he got a call. The presumptive Republican nominee was pulling out of the race. Would Derek be interested in running?

“It caught me off guard,” says Brown. “But I decided to go for it. I jumped in with both feet. Man, though, I don’t think people realize how much time goes into it. I certainly didn’t.”

Having made the decision to run, Brown sought advice from an old friend and mentor that had served in the legislature before years before. The advice he gave was not about politics, but time management.

“[The friend] said ‘you have no idea how much time [the legislature] will take,’” says Brown, remembering the conversation. “’Get ready now, put your life in order, and get ready for a flood.’ He was right. It’s just non-stop. It’s always in the back of your brain, constant pressure, of something going on.”

The busy season begins before the legislature even opens for business, says Brown.
“Lot of groups who want to meet before the session are trying to contact you because once the session starts, they know it’s really crazy and they won’t be able to catch you.”
This is to say nothing of the Utah legislative session itself.

As we spoke about the Utah legislative experience, it was hard to forget that Brown had a law degree and had worked for two U.S. Senators.

How hard could it be?

Hard enough, apparently. Elected in 2010, Rep. Brown described the legislative session as the “single more exhausting thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m there from seven to nine, and that’s not including preparation,” says Brown. “I’m up early to read the bills for the next day, and I’ve got to analyze the different aspects of the law and, under the time constraints of the session, it’s brutally difficult. The text will often refer to different places in the code, which requires cross-referencing and further analysis. Bills are anywhere from ten to a hundred pages long.”

Analysis is just the beginning, though, says Brown. The sheer quantity of legislation covered magnifies complexities.

“It’s seven hundred votes in thirty working days,” he says, “and votes over very diverse topics.”

Although he is a Republican, Brown isn’t easily put in a box. Last year, when a Democratic state senator proposed legislation banning discrimination against gays, Brown was the House sponsor, surprising many.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Brown said to the Salt Lake Tribune at the time. “This is a value not only of mine and my friends and family, but it reflects the values of the community I live in, the values of the constituents I represent.”

Looking into what is the “right thing to do” is a good way to describe Brown’s judicial philosophy. Follow the money back to the beneficiary, he says, and you will find the real reason for the legislation, especially when dealing with his two pet peeves: special interest groups and micromanagement of cities.

“What’s frustrating,” says Brown “is the level of special interests. One particular industry will push and get laws passed are to the exclusion of others industries, companies, or individuals. One particular company that I know of will hire three or four lobbyists that will benefit themselves to the exclusion of others, including forcing cities to do stuff they would not otherwise do.”

The irony of a politicians complaining about the heavy hand of the federal government and then passing legislation dictating law to cities is not lost on Brown.

“Here we are pushing back against the federal government,” he says, “and then we turn around and tell cities what to do.”

Special interests add levels of complexity, too. Legislation, Brown says, is often “deliberately complex. Insiders benefit from complexity, often because they, or their lobbyists, wrote it, and got it passed by the legislature.” Follow the money, and it always leads back to the source.

“When you have something so complex that only a few understand it, someone has to benefit if they understand what’s going on.”

Even though he is running for reelection, Brown isn’t waiting until he wins to begin planning for the 2013 legislation session. He’s already begun to work on bills and issues he believes are important to his constituents.

Among other things, Brown is looking at tightening loopholes in Utah’s elections laws, working with the Department of Consumer Protection to update the laws protecting consumers against deceptive business practices, and reviewing licensure requirements to determine if they are protecting the public or proving to be a barrier for entry.

And all this while campaigning for reelection and shuttling his sons to play practice for Hale Center Theatre’s production of “Oliver!” As ever, Brown puts a premium on his family, and he puts them first, even when it might mean more work. It never seems to dampen his mood.

“When it rains, it pours,” he says, describing a busy day, but for a guy who is also a concert pianist (Brown put himself through school playing at restaurants, Lagoon, and for weddings), he does a great job managing his time and making the pieces fit.