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Show 5 By Harry Marlowe Utah's 31st Legislature now has a clear indication of the road along which it must travel and a pretty good idea of how far it can go. Actually, the 1955 legislature, in its third week of an eight-week eight-week session, is a lot further ahead of schedule than past legislatures leg-islatures have been. They have Gov. J Bracken Lee's most liberal budget to date, calling for an expenditure of some $69.2 million. They have the departmental requests totalling some $75 million. And, they have a pretty clear idea that before they wind up their session around March 10th that they will have OK'd expenditures expen-ditures of some $72 million. All they have to do is come up with some method of raising (finances, and how much they I have to raise depends entirely on how they hold the spending line elsewhere and how much they decide is necessary in new state services. Gov. Lee presented a balanced budget with some left over for a surplus. Yet there seems to be ample evidence to support the belief be-lief quite prevelant among legislators, leg-islators, that the governor has, as is usually the case, asked for a budget of a little less than is actually available in an effort to curb spending as much as possible. pos-sible. The governor's budget, naturally natural-ly was figured without the whole cost of the school program. Gov. Lee figures on a margin of some $8 million between the $21 million actually- needed to operate the schools, at their nor mal rate of increase based on increased in-creased enrollment, and the $13 million he figures will come to the schools from their regular taxation taxa-tion sources of income corporation corpora-tion taxes, mine occupation taxes and individual income revenues. Since he does not figure there will be enough left over to spill out more than $2 to $3 million from sales tax surplus, he figures the biggest part of this $8 million mil-lion must come from property tax hikes. The legislators have a little different dif-ferent viewpoint, apparently. They are going to. raise property tax as little as possible, if at all, if they can find the money elsewhere. And they think they can. In the process, they might have to raise a few other taxes. One such possible increase is a hike in corporate franchise taxes. An other is a bill for individual in come tax plugging some of tn loopholes now existing, still an other is inclusion of such items a uranium, oil and natural gas Un der the mine occupation act From these sources they ex pect to pick up about $2'2 million They also suspect there will hP a little more in the sales tax re serve than the governor figures' still leaving quite a hunk there to be used for needed state build ings. The lawmakers figure the sum they have to work to raise is near er $4 million than the $8 million the governor has in mind. Thev also seem to feel that if they put their program into operation, with the only actual increase in taxes coming on corporation income that they can over-ride a gubernatorial guber-natorial veto. Of course, there are some other tax hikes talked of. One would raise the tax on taxpayers in higher income brackets. In effect this would raise the maximum tax rate from 5 on $5,000 taxable income up, one per cent at a time up to a new high of 10 of $io, 000 taxable income. This is one the governor certainly cer-tainly will veto and it probably will not get past either house of the Legislature, since few Republicans Repub-licans seem to favor that measure One thing is sure. The legislators legisla-tors are well aware they need money, and if the need is great enough, they might contemplate seriously some other tax hikes not now looked on with much favor. Only time, and the actions of the appropriations committee, will tell. |