Some members of the Utah Legislature and the Salt Lake County Council are determined to drive a stake through the heart of the law enforcement fee in the unincorporated areas of the county. If they do, they should give the county new taxing authority to make up the lost revenues.

The Legislature allows cities to impose municipal franchise taxes to help pay for services. However, these taxes are not allowed in the unincorporated areas of Salt Lake County, which function like cities in everything but name. There, the county provides municipal services through a separate fund and taxes that apply only in the unincorporated areas.

If the Legislature repeals the fee to provide for police services in the unincorporated county, as seems likely, the county will have to rely on sales and property taxes to pay for these services. But the county imposed the law enforcement fee in the first place because those other sources of revenue were not adequate to pay the bills, particularly when sales tax collections took a plunge during the Great Recession.

We don't doubt that the law enforcement fee is unpopular with taxpayers. But if it goes away, these same taxpayers may be looking at sales or property tax hikes to make up the difference. That assumes that the growth of sales tax revenues during the slow economic recovery may not be enough to make up for the absence of the law enforcement fee.

That fee now is about $162 annually for homeowners. It is more for commercial properties and for apartment complexes. There is some justice in this, because some businesses create a greater need for police protection than single family homes do. Churches and other nonprofit organizations also pay the fee, which is fair. After all, they use police services, too.

Taxpayers are going to pay the bill one way or the other. They might prefer to do it through a sales tax on the delivered value of energy, or a gross receipts tax on telecommunications providers. Rep. Wayne Harper, R-West Jordan, sponsored a bill last year that would have given Salt Lake County authority for those taxes, but it went nowhere. That's unfortunate, because those ideas have some merit.

This year, Harper is sponsoring a repeal of authority for the law enforcement fee effective next year. That would give the county time to figure out how to pay for police with traditional sales or property taxes in its next budget.

Spending cuts alone won't do the job. Sheriff Jim Winder cut spending by $14 million in the last budget cycle. Somewhere, new revenue must be found.