Higher cost education

In the editorial "Costly degree," The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board warned that two disturbing trends - increasing tuition rates and meager amounts of money available for student aid - combine to reduce access to higher education for many Utahns.

The Legislature may think that it is being frugal with taxpayers' money by pushing more of the climbing cost of a college degree onto the students who most directly benefit. But the fact is that a highly educated workforce is key to the state's economic development and, with the percentage of Utah adults who have bachelor's degrees falling, the refusal to make state university educations more accessible to more people is not in the state's own financial interest.

"If legislators fail to adequately fund higher education," the editorial concluded, "not only students but all Utahns will pay the price."

Tuesday

Reviewing the charters

Continuing on the education theme, the editorial "Reining in charters" praised the Legislature's decision to order an audit of the state's charter schools system. It said that the audit "should take a close, unbiased and unflinching look at the financing, operation and curricula at the schools and the achievement level of their students."

Publicly funded, separately operated charter schools have worked in other states, but only under watchful supervision to make sure they don't become wasteful, elitist or simply a drain on the traditional public schools and the vast majority of students who remain there.

Advice taken

Also Tuesday, the editorial "Making TRAX" urged the Draper City Council to go ahead and approve the UTA's already purchased path along the old Union Pacific Railroad line for the planned expansion of the TRAX light-rail system to 14600 South. Despite some understandable objections from neighbors worried about noise and vibration, the board argued that the previously determined right of way is the best choice to serve the most people at the least cost.

Tuesday night, the City Council agreed.

Wednesday

No prognosis

In the editorial "Costly exercise," the board expressed disappointment, but not surprise, that a legislative task force given the huge and indigestible mission of figuring out what is wrong with Utah's health care market spent some $300,000 and many hours staring into the fog and came up with exactly nothing in terms of recommendations.

Of course, the whole enterprise was doomed from the start, aimed as it was at anecdotal complaints about the market power of Intermountain Health Care and willfully ignorant of the real problem faced by all Americans, unaffordable health insurance.

Even if there are no policy lessons, a written report on what the panel found and where it ran aground could give taxpayers something for their money.

Change will do us good

In the editorial "A lame law," the board expressed the wish that one thing that would be swept out with the Republican-controlled 109th Congress would be the ill-advised Washington County Growth and Conservation Act.

Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Jim Matheson are still hoping to get their bill through before the Democratic take-over in January just about wipes out its chances for approval. But with the bill's sad focus on facilitating sprawl in the already rapidly swelling area around St. George and Zion National Park, this is clearly one issue on which the change of party will do Utah good.

"It is time for the people of Utah to speak out," the editorial concluded, "even as they have to go around their own misguided representatives, and warn Congress away from this destructive land bill."

The value of work

In the editorial, "Full employment," the board noted that beyond the good news of Utah's booming labor market, with unemployment actually dropping as low as 2.5 percent, is the further indication that the demand for labor has meant what economic theory says it is supposed to mean: higher wages.

The reason why the overall growing economy hasn't made the overall American population happy is that its benefits haven't been spread very far below the CEO level. In Utah, the general figures indicate that the wealth is being shared, at least a little, with those whose labor creates it.