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Show Taxes Show Sharp Increase "Expenditures of Utah state government have increased almost al-most tenfold during the past thirty yeaTs, from $3 1-2 million in 1916 to $33 million during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1945," says Utah Foundation, the non-profit tax study organization in a research report released this week. "Such growth in total expenditures warrants j the active interest and study of every citizen and taxpayer of Utah. "One of the major questions is the extent to which the scope of services provided by the state government has expanded, and the extent to which expenditure expen-diture increases are accounted for by higher costs of providing the same or fewer services. Another An-other major question is 'the proportion of Utah's total economic econ-omic ouput which it is desir- able to devote to state government govern-ment functions. "Expenditures for public education, edu-cation, public welfare and relief re-lief activities, state roads, and general adminstration have accounted ac-counted for 80 to 90 per cent of total state expenditures throughout the thirty-year period. pe-riod. State expenditures for education rose from $1 million in 1916 to more than $12 million in 1945. State road expenditures were $830,000 in 1916, and increased in-creased state expenditures for public education and road pur-poposes pur-poposes constitutes a shift in the responsibility from local units of government to the state. Local property taxes, par-icularly par-icularly for roads, have borne progressively less of the burden as state-collected revenus have been substituted. "Public welfare and relief expenditures ex-penditures were a minor item of state cost until the early thir-1 ties, but 1945 accounted for more than one-fourth of state government expenditures." |