This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
When business and government become entangled, it can be difficult to sort out who is doing what. And which of them ought to cut it out.
Take the recent flop of Proposition 1, the ballot question that would have raised the local sales tax rates in many Utah counties by a quarter of a cent on each dollar spent to raise money for roads, highways and, most contentiously, the Utah Transit Authority. While a fair number of last-minute mail ballots are still being counted, it appears that the motion was voted down in Salt Lake and Utah counties.
The local business community, as represented by the Salt Lake Chamber, was all for Prop 1. Those folks like UTA. A lot. Last year they gave the transit agency's board the Chamber's President's Award of Excellence in recognition of how big expansions of the TRAX light rail system had been brought in ahead of schedule and under budget.
A lot of business folks like having a healthy public transit system because it makes it easier for their employees to get to work. Fewer cars on the road. Fewer parking lots that have to be built. Better for recruitment of both employees and new businesses. Less likely to bring the feds down on our case for air quality woes. And, when it came time to pass the hat for the money to pay for the commercials and signs and mass mailings, the construction firms and makers of buses and trails were, of course, happy to kick in.
But that good business award was presented on the same day that the same board of directors was called on the carpet before a committee of the Utah Legislature to be lectured about a nasty audit that faulted the agency for excessive pay, bonuses and travel and fishy sweetheart development deals with connected businessmen. And as other folks were reasonably ticked off over the fact that those shiny new trains cost so much that bus service had to be curtailed.
The image of UTA as a bunch of back-scratching rich folks was the big reason Prop 1 lost. Outside lobbying probably wasn't necessary. But there was some, much of it from another group that certainly considers itself as pro-business as any chamber of commerce anywhere in the land.
The day after the election, an outfit called Americans For Prosperity issued a self-congratulatory press release celebrating the defeat of Prop 1 and claiming some credit that its statements, stunts and 20,000 phone calls helped to shoot it down.
AFP, of course, is the group founded and funded by David and Charles Koch, two Wichita-based oil barons who are spending tons to move government to do, well, nothing. Nothing that will get in the way of their dreams of world domination. Or at least their desire that nobody burns less gas, that nobody has a chance at health insurance except by being in thrall to an employer, that nobody be protected from pollution or any other crime against nature by any mean old government.
So, on Prop 1, it was big business against bigger business. Guess who won.
Ironically, UTA was delivered into AFP's hands, not by being a government agency, but by copying the worst aspects of how many private businesses, usually the biggest ones, are run: Big executive bonuses and perks. Boards of directors that do the bidding of top management rather than the other way around. Obscure governance structures that are not really responsible to anyone. That's Wall Street all over. Nobody with a master of public administration degree would go for that stuff at all.
Meanwhile, students up at Utah State University are rightly digging into the details of just how Koch brothers money that is being given to their school might be warping the information that is being imparted to them by bought and paid for faculty. Here's the likely answer to that:
It is way past time for people to stop using the terms "captialism" and "free market" interchangeably. The free market, as demonstrated by the pro-UTA Salt Lake Chamber, values service, innovation, healthy competition, win-win deals and investments in public infrastructure that, at least over the long run, are good for employer and employee, seller and buyer.
Capitalism, as worshiped by AFP types, values capital. And. Nothing. Else. It assumes as a given, and as good, that more and more wealth will be gathered up into fewer and fewer hands, in a way that isn't even sustainable for the top 1 percent. And if they have to destroy any attempt to offer health care to working people, and take away the bus that will get them to work, it's just a cost of doing business.
Your cost. Their business.
George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, pretends not to hear when they say his favorite college basketball team plays in Koch Arena. gpyle@sltrib.com