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Show Arguments For Rebuttal To Before admitting Utah to statehood, Congress enacted a law known as the "Enabling Act" which set conditions under which Utah could become a state. One of those conditions prohibited Utah from taxing property owned by the Federal Government. That created a big problem, because more than 23 of the land in Utah was (and still is) owned by the Federal Government. That meant that Utah would have a very limited property tax base and Utah's taxpayers would be heavily burdened with taxes on private property. To ease that burden, Congress said it would give the state lands to help support the public schools and other named beneficiaries such as the University of Utah and Utah State University. As noted by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1978, which cited an earlier U. S. Supreme Court decision, "the nature of the Congressional land grant was 'bilateral' in effect. It constituted a solemn immunity from taxation of federal lands ... in return for acceptance by the states of lands granted, to be held and administered by the states under trust covenants for the benefit of the public school systems." Utah accepted the terms of the Enabling Act. Since the grants included lands for purposes other than public schools, including lands which belong to the state itself and are not held in trust for schools or other institutions, the Constitutional provision accepting the land grants was written in broad language. It said that all of the lands granted by Congress were "accepted and declared to be the public lands of the State; and shall be held in trust for the people, to be disposed of as may be provided by law, for the respective purposes for which they have been or may be granted, donated, devised, or otherwise acquired." That wording has had unfortunate consequences, largely because many people failed to read all the way to the end of the sentence. The lands were not accepted by the state for just any purpose, but only for the purposes for which they were granted. As a result of the failure to read the whole sentence, public school and other trust lands were given away and used or sold for much less than fair market value, resulting in losses to the schools alone of hundreds of millions of dollars. Those losses have been made up through higher taxes on the incomes and private property of Utah's citizens. The proposed amendment makes it clear that lands granted under the Enabling Act are held in trust by the state for the purposes for which they were granted. The change does not actually change the meaning of the Constitution; the new wording has been consistently held by both state and federal courts to be what the wording in the Constitution really meant. The effect of the change will be to remove confusion, avoid future losses through misuse of trust lands, and save taxpayer funds by eliminating lawsuits questioning the status o. .ne trust Arguments For Proposition No. 3 (No opposing argument was submitted.) Arguments Against (No argument was submitted.) Rebuttal To Arguments Against Proposition No. 3 (No opposing argument was submitted.) lands. Representative Kevin Garn 27 |