Taxes and Education in Utah, Again. Or, Say it ain’t so, Governor Herbert

"Cash-strapped Utah" has an income problem; that is, it needs more money (what's new) to continue supporting such deserving programs as keeping the gray wolf out of the state or moving the prison from potentially lucrative real estate to a swamp. It seems our sales tax base is eroding, for reasons the government did not say. Perhaps Utah citizens are buying more products online, and thereby not paying sales tax, or perhaps those citizens are cutting their personal spending because wages are not rising as fast as the cost of goods. But, the reasons for the downturn in sales tax revenue are not the subject of this muse. No, I'm looking at what Utah is proposing to do about the decreased revenue. 

The first item that comes to our legislature's collective mind, whenever money is concerned, seems to be how can we cut what we spend on education. Our legislature seems to have forgotten, or better said, have never read Thomas Jefferson (he's one of those Founding Fathers we love so much here in the Beehive state) on the subject of Education: 

The tax which will be paid for [the] purpose [of education] is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance. --Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786.

Back in 1930, voters in Utah agreed, and passed a constitutional amendment:
“All revenue from taxes on intangible property or from a tax on income shall be used to support the systems of public education and higher education as defined in Article X, Section 2.” (Utah State Constitution, Article XIII, Section 5(5))

There you have it, in black and white. The citizens of Utah voted to pay for education by committing all the state income tax to education. Perhaps, back in 1930, there was no need to offer incentives to draw business to our state; perhaps they didn’t need to incentivize extractive industries, perhaps they didn’t need to make our real estate moguls more money, or perhaps there were no gray wolves threatening them. (OK, enough with the wolves.)

Anyway, the citizens made it known they wanted public K-12 education for everybody. Were they looking ahead, to a time when a high school education would become necessary for any job? We don’t know what drove them to make this decision, to tax themselves for the purpose of education, but in hindsight, it was a good decision.

Fast forward to December 2019. Our best-managed state, as Governor Herbert likes to remind us, is looking at ways to increase revenue, without upsetting big business, the wealthy, real estate kings and, most importantly, campaign donors. Now the legislature has public school funding in its target-finding laser sights. There is a very serious proposal from the Legislature’s Task Force on Tax Reform that would “amend” Article XIII, Section 5 (5) and allow income tax receipts to be re-directed to the general fund, thereby reducing the amount of money available to public education.

For many years, Utah has been a leader in the race to the bottom of per-pupil spending. The good news, Utah has found a race it can win, consistently. The bad news, Utah students suffer. And, it could be argued, the state will suffer long-term, when the residents cannot compete for good paying jobs due to lack of educational development. Or perhaps those companies won’t move to Utah because we will have a functionally illiterate workforce.

Let’s be perfectly clear on how well Utah has run this race. Our per-pupil spending is the lowest in the nation. Utah spends $6,953 per pupil; the national average is $11,762 per pupil. That’s right, our best managed state is at the bottom of the class, we rank as number 51 out of 51. Isn’t that something to be proud of? WE’RE NUMBER (5)1!

It can’t be said that the Utah Legislature hasn’t tried before to cut education costs, those high-minded people tried for an educational voucher system, so you could send Sally and Johnny to a school that teaches what you want your children to hear, as opposed to fact-based “liberal” education. The voters said no thank you and defeated that program. Now Utah is hot and heavy into the charter school fiasco, whereby “schools” that lack in credentials, with teachers that don’t have the proper education, can have a go at spending state tax dollars-and then fail to be acceptable schools. Look at Treeside Charter School in Provo, or American International School of Utah. Both have failed, and the financial loss will, in the end, cost Utah more millions. The students are the ones that really lose in this ill-planned assault on education, however. Perhaps our legislature could learn more from Mr. Jefferson:

Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation. --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.

Now, to be fair, the task force has included some other measures that are also repugnant, in my opinion. They want to increase the sales tax on food (after all, everybody needs food), and they want to increase the per-child deduction on the fore-mentioned income tax. A double whammy hit on the less fortunate, to be sure. Low-income residents will see the grocery bill rise (due to the sales tax increase), and then they have to wait for a “credit” on their income tax to offset the higher weekly food bill. Those families with children will pay less income tax-that’s right, those that have more children in school will pay less to educate them.

So, what can be done? If this sloppy, poorly-thought-out plan makes it through a special session of the legislature (very likely), and a ballot measure comes forward to amend the state constitution to allow the diversion of income tax money away from schools, vote against it! And perhaps more importantly, let your legislative representatives know how you feel about education!

Our children’s education, and the future of our state’s economy, are worth more to me than moving the prison, or funding extractive industries.

Well, those are my thoughts on this chapter of education funding in Utah. Thanks for reading; your thoughts and comments are, as always, welcome.

R.M. “Bob” Hartman