The property tax, in Utah a mix of statewide and local levies, supplies about 23 percent of the funding for public education here. It also may be the most hated tax on the books.

It falls the hardest on retired and other middle-income households - faults it shares with the governor's “flatter” income tax proposal - and can be the basis of huge funding inequities from one school district to another.

No boost in Utah property taxes is on the table. Yet. But a moment of honesty from a member of the governor's tax reform brain trust last week raised an issue that should not be forgotten when the Legislature reassembles next month to consider Huntsman's plan.

Members of the State Board of Education Friday heard a briefing on tax reforms and their underlying theories from Gary Cornia, Brigham Young University public management professor and the governor's favorite tax expert. Cornia not only agrees that something must be done to raise more money to handle soaring school enrollment, he can prove it mathematically.

But what he's also trying to prove is that a flatter income tax, while initially cutting education revenue by some $70 million a year, will eventually catch up to the state's needs by stimulating the overall economy. Income taxes are volatile anyway and so, Cornia argues, shouldn't remain such a large part of the mix.

An alternative, he suggested Friday, is the generally more stable property tax. More stable, at least, until the housing bubble bursts.

By Tuesday, both the governor's office and Cornia were stressing that no one is seeking to raise property taxes - though Cornia, speaking for himself, argues that it wouldn't be so bad if they were.

The hazard in all this is that it is a DNA-based predisposition of state legislators everywhere to glory in cutting state income taxes and leave members of local schools boards with the deep personal honor of raising property tax rates on their neighbors.

Utahns should figure out just how much it would cost them in property taxes to win an income tax cut that a great many of them would never see.