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Show - Under the Capitol Dome j 1 th. :t. ... BV Harry Maxlow ' NoW that Gov. J. Hrucken Lee's stP v,,ni.il "state of the State" mos-Ed- """I boon delivered to the nst Utah Legislature, the gib 1" tion is nUK'h pf 11 Wl11 M f acted into law?" 2 There is little doubt that part E , hi governor's legislative pro- ,,, will finJ its wa-v into the Ctutes There is just as little fit that some of it will be ' &Pi4 by the wayside. The eovernor's basic promise Js simple. Either, he said the t"te cuts down on services, par-. par-. icularlv to schools, or the property pro-perty tax .goes up. Actually, the answer is not that 5 S'some services can be cut down, ft That ts pretty well agreed by r ose who have a habit of look- 6 STat things realistically. But ies vou cannot refuse to give the best nf existing services to school chil-!p chil-!p dreii just because their numbers nk are increasing'. , , Neither can the state go on us- in? property tax, or the threat la- of hikes in property tax, as a revet- enue cure-all. There must be other sources of revenue. Some of them have al-"K al-"K ready been suggested to the Legislature. Leg-islature. Many of Jhem are somewhat some-what unrealistic. Some have no chance of passing. Among the suggestions (none of these, incidentally, come from the governor) are a higher income tax rate on higher income bracket taxpayers, a one per cent hike in corporation franchise taxes and an increasetin the state's one per cent mine occupation tax. Perhaps the answer lies in the intimation of the governor that maybe a little decrease in services can be linked with a little increase in-crease in taxes as a method of solving the fiscal problem. Certainly the legislators have some methods which will help without hurting anyone too much. All the tax studies made in the past year have pointed out some inequities that one sound income tax law could solve without any increase in taxes but with considerable more revenue to the state. Also inclusion of such things as uranium, oil and gas under the mine occupation tax will bring more money without cutting into the pockets of the already heavily burdened taxpayers. But these sources are not enough. There will have to be some clear thinking on monetary matters, some "hold the line" attitudes at-titudes on unnecessary expenditures expendi-tures (and some real careful judgement jud-gement on what spending is unnecessary). un-necessary). ' Certainly the 1955 legislators cannot easily afford to add too many new expense burdens on the state. It seems likely the state will abandon its program of state aid for emergency school buildings. But the program need not come entirely to a stop. No one, including includ-ing the governor, is advocating taking away some extra taxing power given districts to help raise funds. Also, a new building code setting up some realistic standards stand-ards will not hurt. This is the session when it looks like some real progress will be made on legislative reapportionment. reapportion-ment. The ligeslators all are aware of the problem. So is the public. And most of them seem inclined to go along with a moderate approach ap-proach to the problem. Already the legislature has indicated in-dicated its support of the Upper Colorado Project, one of the items called for by' the governor. His idea of splitting the sales tax revenue surplus between the schools and the building fund is getting favorable comment. The general condition of government barring any new spending splurges splur-ges is not too bad. Admittedly, the 1955 Legislature faces some tough problems. And the governor's program will not supply all the answers. But there are some hopeful signs in the first 10 days of session. ses-sion. The legislators are aware of the problems. And, they all seem inclined to do their darnedest darned-est to come up with some sort of an answer. |
