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Show DOES THE TAXPAYER HAVE ANY RIGHTS V The educators of Utah, the school board members, mem-bers, the school officials, and the teachers, have had introduced into the legislature this year a very ambitious am-bitious program. Some of the legislation has been introduced by the State Tax Study Committee and groundwork was laid for it in constitutional amendments proposed pro-posed by the 1946 special session of the legislature and approved by the vote of the people at the elections elec-tions last November. Still more legislation has been introduced at the present regular session, calling for expanded school programs, greatly increased salaries for educators and increased benefits in many ways. Every right-thinking citizen of this state is anxious to see as fine an educational system as can be obtained, and at the outset, the educational program has a great many backers among parents, students and taxpayers. The program is an expensive one, however, calling call-ing for greatly increased revenues for school purpoes, a function which already is taking the largest share of our tax dollar. Legislators considering the many bills before them will be faced with the serious responsibility re-sponsibility of making a wise decision as to how near we can come to the ultimate desire of a fine educational educa-tional system and still stay within the bounds of how much the taxpayers can afford to pay. In the face of these weighty problems already laid before our legislators, it is surprising to note that the educational groups have also had the temerity to introduce into the legislature, Senate Bill No. 166, the object of which is to remove from our statutes the requirement that school boards publish, in their annual financial statements, an accounting of to whom, and in what amounts, all of these tax monies are paid. ' Taxpayers should support all efforts to provide for the students of Utah the finest educational system sys-tem they can afford. Certainly they will oppose vigorously, vig-orously, this effort to "cover up" or withhold the records of how their money is spent. |