This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
Of course it's easier for Utah legislators if they ride into town each January with a big chunk of their most important decision — the state budget — already made.
That gives members a lot more time to fool around with such pipe dreams and inanities as taking "back" federal lands that never belonged to Utah in the first place, fussing about sage grouse and wolves, micromanaging the sale of alcohol and claiming that some people's religious freedoms are somehow put upon by the forward progress of human rights.
It would be far better for the lawmakers, and for the people who elect them, if they would argue over something really important, over perhaps the most important decision most lawmaking bodies have before them in all but the most extraordinary years.
And that's where to put the taxpayers' money so that it will do the greatest good for the greatest number.
That's the argument Gov. Gary Herbert is making to members of the Legislature for the second year in a row with his annual budget message. He wants to end the practice of automatically siphoning large amounts of sales tax revenues off to predetermined baskets, mostly the state's highway and water funds.
When so much of the state's revenue — an estimated $77 million in sales tax income in the next fiscal year — is routed to highways and water projects before the Legislature even gets organized, there is no real effort to set priorities and distribute limited resources. Which leaves a lot of time for foolishness.
Herbert's primary concern — other than avoiding the embarrassment of watching lawmakers make fools of us all — is that money automatically diverted to highways and water projects isn't available for his favorite thing to spend money on, and that's public education, all the way from pre-K to Ph.D. He rightly sees that as the best investment the state can make in its own future — economic, political and social.
As Herbert is wont to say, when it comes to education, it isn't all about the money, but it's some about the money. And education in Utah needs some more money.
The huge influx of population the state is expecting will include many, many children, more than a few of them from homes where English is not the primary language or where the time and other parental resources to help children learn are not in surplus.
Highways and water projects, meanwhile, should be funded more by user fees and less by the general fund.
Utah lawmakers should end the earmarks, and do their jobs.