Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley City, on Monday previewed a new version of the Salt Lake County Council and Council of Governments' transportation-project ranking methods, required under a bill passed a couple of months ago during a special session of the Legislature.

The county's report "went into more detail on what the process was" than during an unsuccessful presentation last month to the Executive Appropriations Committee, Bigelow said. The committee, which Bigelow co-chairs, postponed action until its December meeting.

The report will be available to all committee members by today so they can read it before meeting again next week, Bigelow said.

If it passes muster, county mayors and council members at last will be able to tell voters what they will be buying and when with the Proposition 3 quarter-cent sales tax increase they approved Nov. 7 by a 64 percent margin.

The new Salt Lake County tax is expected to raise $50 million per year. About $11 million is earmarked to buy land for the west-side Mountain View Corridor highway, with the rest going for new TRAX light-rail lines, commuter rail to Utah County and small road projects in the Salt Lake Valley.

The mayors, with the assistance of the Wasatch Front Regional Council, the Utah Department of Transportation and the Utah Transportation Authority have been trying to get a list together for county residents since the Sept. 19 passage of HB4001, which allows counties to raise transportation-related sales tax by a quarter-cent for roads and rail.

The ranking methods were ready for review almost immediately after the special session, but Executive Appropriations refused to convene earlier than it was scheduled to do so, kept the matter off its agenda while House Speaker Greg Curtis was out of the country and then refused to allow the regional council's executive director, Chuck Chappell, to finish his verbal presentation last month.

Republican members of the committee, calling the county's one-page explanation of project ranking criteria "vague" and lacking "meat," voted instead to delay until they got something more like a written manual than a simple list.

Though he is not on Executive Appropriations, Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, also conferred Monday with the regional council representatives on their criteria, which he believes won't work the way they are supposed to.

The report, he said, "is a vast improvement over what was originally presented." But he says the statistical analyses are bound to distort an individual project's worth.

Stephenson said he voted against HB4001 because it would shift to the county a statewide problem.

Bigelow, who also voted against HB4001, said he thought it improper to sidestep legislative responsibility by punting the spending issue to the county voters.

The bill's requirements are cumbersome, he said, but that just "helps refine those projects that are most critical," he said.

phenetz@sltrib.com