This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Gov. Gary Herbert demonstrated foresight and leadership with his veto of Senate Bill 229, "Transportation Funding Revisions." While well-intentioned to help meet the state's need for highways, this bill would have actually tied the hands of the Legislature and governor and made it more difficult to fund other critical needs.

In effect, this bill said that highways are so important that they are automatically funded without any discussion or debate or consideration of other state needs. Rather than discussing an override, the Legislature should also push the pause button.

A main power of any legislature is the "power of the purse," the ability to decide how tax dollars are spent among a number of important functions of government.

SB229 would have handcuffed the Legislature by automatically increasing the amount of state sales tax dedicated to highway construction by 30 percent of the growth, or nearly $60 million by 2013.

This $60 million is on top of the $295 million annually directed from sales tax to highways, together with the millions collected from the gasoline tax and automobile registrations, the traditional source of highway funding. Legislative budgets are prepared based on current law. So if this bill became law, it means this $355 million a year would be off the table before the Legislature can even consider funding public safety, corrections, human services, health and, of course, higher education.

Historically in Utah, the state sales tax is how state government funded not only its portion of the cost of higher education but also everything else to aid the public good. Since the mid 1990s, higher education has also been funded through income tax, though sales tax is still an important source of funding colleges and universities.

In the state budget just passed, it accounts for 69 percent of higher education funding ($462.7 million out of $667.8 million in tax funds). For other state programs it is their only source of funding.

I support funding transportation; we all need and use the highways. But as commissioner of higher education I also have an obligation to point out that our state colleges and universities are also in need of state support.

Since 2008 our colleges and universities have grown by about 20,000 full-time students, while state funding has decreased by over $100 million. Some of this has been made up by students through tuition increases, and some covered by more efficiencies. Legislators should not arbitrarily limit the ability of other state services such as education to make their sales pitch for needed state dollars.

If SB229 were implemented, it would likely hurt our highest growth institutions the most — Utah Valley University, Dixie State College and Salt Lake Community College — as they have absorbed the most students during the past three years of budget cuts. Legislators who support these institutions have a good reason to be grateful the governor acted as he did.

Finally, it is important to note that the State Board of Regents, Governor's Commission on Educational Excellence, and the business-led group Prosperity 2020 have all rallied around the goal of increasing the level of education to where 66 percent of our adult population has some training or education beyond high school.

If the motivation for SB229 was to aid the state's economic development efforts, I submit that equally, if not more important, is a well-educated workforce. In that case, an autopilot increase of sales tax to higher education would also be in order.

It is clear that for Utah to prosper, we will need an increased level of educational attainment to be competitive with the rest of the country and, indeed, the rest of the world. This cannot be accomplished if we rely solely on students to fund expansion through their tuition.

It will also take support from the public through their representatives in the Legislature.

William A. Sederburg is Utah's commissioner of higher education.