With the election less than three weeks weeks away, administration officials now concede the much-touted plan won't be released until after the ballots are counted and the next governor is picked, and with the winner of that race unlikely to have made a single solid commitment on tax reform.
Walker still vows to produce the plan belatedly, before the end of the year. But no matter how good it is, the question remains whether the post-election timing will render the proposal dead on arrival.
"To be honest, it might. But I hope not," says Gary Cornia, a tax expert who serves on the Walker reform team.
In announcing the ambitious tax overhaul in December, Walker promised an Aug. 1 delivery date.
"I feel urgent about this. . . . In the end, I want action, not another study," she said in a Dec. 5 Capitol news conference. "It's got to be part of the election debate."
Walker lost her bid for re-election in May by failing to win the Republican nomination. Then after the study deadline came and went, she acknowledged it was being postponed because it was taking more time than expected, but still held out the prospect of a pre-election release.
That possibility now is dead.
"Throwing it out two or three weeks before the election is just not fair to the Juniors," Walker said, referring to the two major gubernatorial candidates, Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. and Democrat Scott Matheson Jr.
"She wants to put something out there that's well thought out and well researched, that's sound enough it can be built upon," said Walker spokeswoman Amanda Covington. "I don't think it will be irrelevant. It's something that will still be talked about."
But Covington conceded chances are slim for immediate action.
"She doesn't have unrealistic expectations that anything would happen in this next [legislative] session," Covington said.
Huntsman and Matheson received a private briefing from Walker's group on problems with the current tax system, and each has expressed interest in pursuing reform if elected. But their statements on the campaign trail have been deliberately vague.
"Whether it's Scott Matheson or whether it's me, I think there are some elements there that are going to have to be driven home," Huntsman said in an interview. "From what I've seen, I am not running for cover. In fact, if it's put on the table, I'm here to tell you that the next governor is going to have to expend a lot of political capital in the next year to get it done."
But Huntsman said everything will be up for discussion if he is elected - from imposing sales tax on services to removing the sales tax on food. He suggested some loopholes might be closed and held out the possibility of tax breaks for fledgling companies.
Matheson has said one of the needed reforms is adjusting income-tax brackets for three decades of inflation.
"We need income-tax reform," he said.
The Democrat also has praised elimination of the sales tax on food as a "worthy goal," but expressed concern about the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. He has repeatedly talked about doing something to end the "zoning for dollars" practice of cities offering tax breaks and other incentives to lure retailers and their sales tax revenues from one jurisdiction to another.
But Matheson said he is a realist and called tax reform the "art of the possible."
Cornia, a professor at Brigham Young University, acknowledged that without the pressure of a political campaign "nothing will stop" the next governor from shelving the committee's tax-reform package.
"But both candidates have seen the presentation . . . and I believe they understand that we have a serious financial challenge in funding education in Utah," said Cornia.
