In June 2017, about a hundred local business, education and political leaders — led by Gail Miller, Scott Anderson and others — announced that they were spearheading a petition drive to raise taxes in support of public education because the government refused to act in the popular interest.
The petition and movement were titled Our Schools Now and incorporated a plan to increase Utah’s income tax from 5 percent to 5.5 percent, and the sales tax from 4.7 percent to 5.2 percent. If it passed, an estimated 700 million new dollars would supplement the meager school funds and raise Utah off the bottom of all the states. We’d still be among the poorest funded, but finally we could escape the embarrassment of being dead last in providing for education.
Surveys indicated strong popular support. Petitions were printed. Funds were donated to the cause. And nobody says business support better than Gail Miller (LHM auto dealerships, Megaplex Theaters, the Jazz, Jazz Arena, the Bees, etc.) and Scott Anderson (Zions Bank). It looked promising. The education community was cautiously optimistic.
The Utah Taxpayers Association — a business support group organized for the purpose of fighting all forms of taxes and led by a senior member of the Utah Legislature, Sen. Howard Stephenson — and a huge majority of the Republican Caucus of the Legislature, which is not only business controlled but extremely averse to ever allowing the people to override the obviously superior knowledge and judgment of the legislators, opposed the petition. But even to their eyes the movement to properly fund education appeared to be gathering momentum. It had strong public support, able leadership and ample funding. Opposition leaders feared it might actually succeed and could pass over their opposition. Heaven forbid!
So, the governor’s office and the legislative leaders requested to meet with the petition leadership team and together they banged out what appeared to be a compromise that everyone could live with. Instead of raising the sales and income taxes, they’d increase the gasoline tax by 10 cents per gallon, which would deliver about a $300 million increase in funds, and they swore that they’d funnel it to schools. Additionally, the Legislature would try to find other sources of support to bring the total increase in the education budget up to something approaching the $700 million promised by the Our Schools Now petition. It wasn’t enough to bring us off the bottom, but at least it was an acknowledgment that the schools were terribly underfunded.
Within weeks a campaign began to protest the anticipated gas tax. The Legislature did grudgingly increase school funding, but by less than half of the $700 million the tax increase would have delivered. And, at least temporarily, the gas tax increase was sidelined for study.
Then, about a month ago, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that states could tax online purchases. The governor and the Legislature calculated that this new tax would raise about $285 million. So, problem solved. They called a news conference and appeared ecstatic. It wasn’t as much as the gas tax would have delivered and less than half of what the petition aimed for, but golly gee, it was a lot of money. Problem solved. No more petition and no more threat of raising fuel taxes.
Except, most of that $285 million was already being collected. (Who knew Amazon actually pays sales tax?) So, when the dust settled, and the arguing ended, and the problem was seemingly solved, the windfall of new taxes turned out to total about $60 million. So, schools end up with a deal somewhere short of 10 percent of the originally planned increase.
There’s kind of a beautiful symmetry to the way this whole thing developed. Business is always afraid of taxes, and the Legislature’s Republican Caucus is always afraid of the people taking sovereignty into our own hands. We, The People, are too simple to make decisions for ourselves. And somehow, they always come out the winners — people power be damned.
Maybe it’s time to start again. Still interested, Ms. Miller? And you, Mr. Anderson?
J.C. Smith is a career teacher of high school social science and lifelong resident of Salt Lake City. He and his wife recently moved to St. George.