This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Weinholtz said Tuesday that he would support a small income tax increase in order to bolster Utah's public education funding — which drew a quick condemnation from Gov. Gary Herbert as an "Eastern, liberal mentality."
Weinholtz embraced the proposal put forward by Education First Utah, a lobbying group that promotes investment in education and is led by prominent local business leaders, of increasing the state's income tax by seven-eighths of a percentage point. The potential change has been estimated to bring about $518 million in additional funding to Utah schools every year.
"If we're going to say we're serious about education, we need a slight tax increase to bring proper funding in," Weinholtz said during a candidate forum hosted by the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. "Education is important enough to me and other Utahns that I know this is a solution they'll support."
Education First touts a poll that says 70 percent of Utahns would support a 1 percent increase in income taxes to support education.
Weinholtz has also said he supports adjusting Utah's flat tax, adopted in 2006 under Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman, to return it to a more graduated model in which people with high incomes would pay more. Such a move would likewise generate more education dollars for the state.
States that have tried to raise taxes have seen it blow up the economy, Herbert said, and he doesn't want to do that in Utah.
"I just know that from history, as we see that kind of Eastern, liberal mentality take place, we saw what happened in Illinois; when they did the same thing, they lost 100,000 jobs in six months," the governor said. "You don't want to, in fact, kill the goose that lays the golden egg."
Illinois' job picture isn't exactly as Herbert portrayed. The state has added nearly 65,000 jobs this year, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, although employment has fallen by more than 27,000 in the past three months.
It is one of the points that the candidates disagree on, in which the rhetoric and reality perhaps don't perfectly align.
In essentially every campaign event, Herbert touts the money the state has put into education during his tenure — $1.8 billion over the past five years. Weinholtz said the governor hasn't done enough, that Utah schools are still the poorest in the nation and that per-pupil spending has fallen.
Weinholtz is correct that Utah is 51st in the country in per-pupil spending, trailing every state and Washington, D.C. And according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, Utah's inflation-adjusted spending per student has fallen from $6,583 to $6,500 since Herbert took office.
Herbert notes that he came into office during the depths of recession and that since the economy started to rebound, there has been $1.8 billion put into education. That figure includes money for colleges and universities, much of it in the form of new buildings on campuses.
The governor says $900 million of that has gone to K-12 education, which is true.
On public lands, there is a stark contrast between Herbert and Weinholtz.
Weinholtz on Tuesday called on Herbert to drop his support for an effort spearheaded by Republican legislators to sue the federal government and demand that Congress turn over to the state more than 30 million acres of federal lands. Weinholtz also has repeatedly criticized Herbert for wanting to "sell off" the land to the highest bidder.
"He is actively campaigning to waste $14 million of your money on a land-grab lawsuit that has been declared unwinnable over and over again," Weinholtz said. "This is not only poor stewardship of our public lands, it's fiscally irresponsible."
Herbert has repeatedly expressed concerns about the way the federal government manages land within Utah's borders; he signed the legislation into law that initiated the Legislature's legal effort, and he has approved the budgets that include funding for the pre-litigation efforts. But neither Herbert nor Attorney General Sean Reyes has said whether the state's top law enforcer will give the green light to file the lawsuit.
Herbert has said he would not sell the land and accused Weinholtz of misrepresenting his record. Indeed, under state law, Utah would get to keep 5 percent of the proceeds if the land is sold. Herbert said Tuesday that Utah would not seek to claim ownership of national parks and wilderness areas, which is partly true. The state would not seek to claim parks or most of the monuments, but the legislation specifically allows the state to demand that the federal government turn over the 1.7 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Herbert asserted again Tuesday that a study by the U. and Utah State University found that the state could get enough money from the acreage to make it profitable for the state. But that report actually found that the state could only make money if oil was selling for $62 a barrel and drilling continued to grow. Oil is selling at about $49 per barrel, and there has been almost no new drilling in the state this year.
On health care, Weinholtz has blasted the governor and the Legislature for not significantly expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in order to help provide care to low-income Utahns.
Weinholtz said the Legislature passed a meager plan that would cover 9,000 people, knowing that 127,000 would go without health care and give up as much as $700 million in federal Medicaid funds every year.
"We take care of each other, particularly the needy among us," Weinholtz said, "so to turn our backs on these people, I think, is morally bankrupt, but it's also fiscally irresponsible."
While he opposed full Medicaid expansion as it was proposed under Obamacare, Herbert touted his plan that he said would have been a Utah solution to the coverage issue.
The number of Utahns who could have benefited from full Medicaid expansion or his Healthy Utah plan were actually underestimated — but so were the costs — according to revised projections for the program.
The revised figures project that a higher percentage of uninsured Utahns would join the program, which means under either Medicaid expansion or Healthy Utah, 164,000 uninsured Utahns — 55,000 more than initially projected — would be covered by 2023.
The cost to the state for simple Medicaid expansion would rise from $49 million to $87 million per year, under the new figures, and the federal funds the state would receive would jump from $576 million to $913 million per year.
For Herbert's Healthy Utah plan, the changes are similar. The state would have to come up with $108 million and the federal government would provide $1.2 billion per year — more than double the initial projection — to cover the 164,000 uninsured low-income Utahns.
The Legislature twice rebuffed Herbert on his attempts to pass Healthy Utah and a similar proposal, fearing rising costs made the program unsustainable.
Twitter: @RobertGehrke