This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated.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 gets it.
He knows that he can cut ribbons, but he cannot build factories. He knows that he can jawbone the Bureau of Land Management, but he can't drill oil wells. He knows that he can complain about the Affordable Health Care Act, but he can't, by himself, get a handle on the soaring cost of health care.
What Herbert can do is draft, propose and sell a state budget that focuses on what the state can do. What it must do. And that is to provide the highest quality education Utahns can afford, from kindergarten to graduate school, so that a state that is already highly thought of as a good place to do business and a wonderful place to live can make the most of both its economic potential and its quality of life.
So the $134 million that Herbert would add to the amount Utah spends for public and higher education is, by size and by importance, the highlight of the governor's proposed budget for the 2013 state fiscal year.
It is just enough money to accommodate the expected influx of 12,500 new students into Utah public schools, plus an additional 1 percent in per-pupil spending that Herbert suggests be used to give teachers a long-overdue raise. So it is really no more than the minimum necessary for our schools to keep up with the demands being placed on them.
But, given Utah's recent history, doing the minimum, plus a fraction, has to count as a victory. Or it will, if the Legislature heeds the call of the governor, the business community, teachers, parents and, according to opinion polls, the public in general. It is that last group that says time after time they know the schools need more money. They know it enough to be willing to pay more in taxes, if that's what it would take.
Herbert isn't so bold as to call for a tax hike. He knows that the Legislature can go years without funding the state's skyrocketing enrollment increases, preferring the foolish economy of tax cuts instead. So taking the projected increase in state revenue and putting a full third of that into schools is all that the politically savvy Herbert thinks that the market will bear.
The governor's budget-writing pen is also constrained by the fact that projected higher costs for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program — due to increased enrollment and expenses — will take another $163 million.
Lawmakers, of course, are the ones who have the power of the purse in Utah, and the final spending plan will be one that they approve. Still, legislators should note the marker Herbert has laid down about the importance of education, and never let it be far from their minds.