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Show " Governor earmarks Ua Ub bonus money The Ua-Ub oil shale lease bonus saey, set aside to help balance this smI year's state budget, has now appropriated for that purpose. money will not be coming to the Utah Basin as local government of-ccals of-ccals and residents had hoped. In this year's Utah State legislative feson, elected officials from the Uin-Ut Uin-Ut Basin fought a hard battle to keep f nnx tax on fossil fuels from rais--1 8- They won the war, but along the , ytetoneofthebattles. Inorderto 1 ! e state budget without in-easing in-easing severance tax, Rep. Gayle icKeadmie entered a bill that allow-f allow-f state to use the $10 million paid ? state by the White River Shale j?ratl0D p31"1 of toe Ua and r- shale tract lease conditions. That p' contained the stipulation that d the state be able to make it , I1, current fiscal year without mney , it would be return-I return-I fl " original intention of public PJriects m areas impacted by 'development. , statement Wednesday, Gover- S (..J0011 Matheson expressed what lo! o adrecently become aware J 'ip6 of nling, the state is in ' Sd7 and Ua"ub money would 1 MlJg0tothestate-Matheson said i tJ'ld the oU shale money be w' wit he is taking another $14.4 million which had been set aside at the beginning of the year for emergency situations, and even then the state will need to find anouther $15 million. Nearly $40 million is needed, just to pay the costs of what the state has spent in terms of flood control, and doesn't begin to cover damages caused caus-ed by flooding throughout the state. That figure is now estimated at between bet-ween $200 million and $300 million. The federal government has already conceded con-ceded to pay a portion of that damage, but at this point it isn't known just how much the state will need to come up with. Matheson is predicting the entire state deficit between $50 and $57 million. Wednesday he outlined a plan he hopes will address most of the problem. pro-blem. He wants to immediately implement imple-ment an already Utah State Legislature 2-mill property tax increase in-crease for local governments in counties coun-ties declared disaster areas. He also wants to speed up the collection of sales tax from large retailers. Matheson said this plan would address ad-dress a portion of the problem without raising taxes. By collecting sales tax on a monthly basis from retailers who annually pay over $1 million in sales tax, rather than on a quarterly basis, Continued on page 3 Governor... Continued from page 1 a one-time revenue surge of between $40 and $45 million would be provided, he said. Besides appropriating the Ua-Ub bonus money, increasing property tax by 2-mills, and monthly collection of sales tax, the governor also wants to do three other things to help balance the budget: 1) Lift the restriction on use of tax money paid under legal protest pro-test awaiting determination of liability, liabili-ty, which would make about S8 million available, 2) Redistribute the money now tied up in a land grant trust fund, which is about $4 million, and 3) "Call in" unpaid and overdue taxes owed, which would generate about $3 million. This would basically mean taking a hard-nosed attitude with those delinquent delin-quent in paying their taxes. The Utah State Legislature will convene con-vene a special session on June 23 to deal with the problem of paying for the flooding and address Governor Matheson's suggestions. So far, Uintah County is only 1 of 10 counties, out of 29 total, that has not been requested by Matheson for federal disaster assistance, since flooding in Uintah County has so far been minimal. |