Next step: Goes to a House committee.

A bill that would dissolve the Utah Transit Authority, grab the local sales taxes voters approved for transit and hand them over to the Utah Department of Transportation has a steep climb ahead on Capitol Hill.

UTA is hostile to HB166, UDOT doesn't know how to run a transit system and didn't ask for the pleasure. The League of Cities and Towns vehemently opposes the bill, which carries a multimillion-dollar fiscal note. The legislative session ends in just two weeks. Transit-minded taxpayers might pitch a fit if the state - which has never spent a single penny on UTA - spends their local tax revenues on asphalt instead of buses and TRAX.

The bill even got bumped off this morning's House Revenue and Taxation committee agenda amid speculation it was going nowhere.

UTA calls it the first-ever, all-out legislative frontal attack on the transit agency.

But the bill shouldn't be construed as an attack on UTA, said Wayne Harper, R-West Jordan, but rather as an efficient melding of administrations. "The two entities that serve 80 percent of the [state] population should work together," he said.

UTA attorney Bruce Jones said UTA and UDOT already work well together, which has helped both agencies get federal funds.

UDOT deputy director Carlos Braceras declined to comment on the merits of the bill, except to say UDOT is a neutral party that "did not initiate this."

There have been legislative rumblings against UTA in the past, irritation over generous UTA management paychecks and resentment that the board of trustees doesn't answer directly to voters. Two years ago, lawmakers passed a bill requiring the board to include elected officials.

UTA sees a touch of revenge in HB166 for Salt Lake County's decision to spend three-quarters of its recent quarter-cent sales tax increase on transit and not roads, Jones said.

Harper and Syracuse Republican Sen. Sheldon Killpack, who has agreed to carry the bill in the Senate, denied the bill was any kind of payback.

Killpack said the bill would address the reality of a metropolitan area that stretches from Brigham City to Payson by eliminating a "patchwork" approach to transportation that no longer works.

"We need to address growth and congestion in the most responsible manner," he said.

Both lawmakers sidestepped questions about the propriety of the state taking over an agency supported by local taxes implemented through local elections.

Combining transit with transportation under a single governmental structure has long been an issue of the Utah Taxpayers Association, said Mike Jerman, the organization's vice president. The association didn't write the legislation, Jerman said, but fully supports it.

Roads and rails serve the same purpose, that is, to move people. "It really makes no sense to keep these two entities separate," Jerman said.