I couldn’t help smiling when I read the front page headline in the March 8 Salt Lake Tribune: “Guv, legislators put tax plan on ice.” The subtitle to the headline reads, “After weeks of holding closed-door talks and taking fire from businesses and community, Herbert now hopes to hold a special session by summer.”
Our governor and legislative leaders are wise indeed. “By this summer,” public school educators will have dispersed to summer jobs, career-enhancement classes and family activities. They will no longer have close access to colleagues and the discussions such access facilitates; taxpayers will have forgotten what they paid to the state in state income taxes; and our kids and their teachers will be on summer break, the thorn in business leaders’ sides. The aggregation of these events puts the Legislature and the governor in a better position to accomplish what they want: a reduction in the state income tax.
I have been following this debate closely from the initial news article to an opinion piece published in the March 7 Salt Lake Tribune. The Utah Taxpayers’ Association appears to approve a reduction in the income tax and an increase in sales tax revenues taken from service-providers. Public school educators do not approve the decrease in income tax, knowing what it will mean to school funding. The Trib’s pages have been filled with the debate and rightly so. I urge all public school educators to pay attention and continue their thoughtful protest.
Now is not the time to grow silent. All taxpayers hold a stake in the education of our children, not only the consumers of it. It is well-past time for all taxpayers to increase what goes into the education coffers in the constitutionally designated way, and to ease the financial burdens placed on our schools. An increase in sales taxes combined with a decrease in income tax revenue won’t do for our children what needs to be done.
Please don’t allow the concerns of summer to douse the debate.
Danna Walsh, Draper