By Representative Brian King, D–Salt Lake City
House District 28
Email: briansking@utah.gov
Are you happy with the funding levels Utah provides for public and higher education? Most people are not. We see our kids being taught in mobile trailers, teachers who pay out of their own pockets for their pupil’s basic school supplies and our public colleges and universities cancelling classes and capping enrollment. I’m not satisfied with the level of resources we commit to public and higher education in Utah. Are you?
Providing access for each child to an excellent public education and affordable, quality higher education is something that Utah has always placed at the top of its priorities list. However, that commitment has wavered in recent years.
Under the Utah Constitution, all funds raised through the state income tax are dedicated to public and higher education. Two years ago Utah implemented its single rate tax structure, and as a result we lowered the income tax rate of the highest earners by 2%. That tax cut resulted in shrinking tax revenues, and a $200 to $300 million loss to public and higher education funding. Actions which may have been justified during boom times should be reconsidered when revenue doesn’t meet our needs.
Today, Utah faces the largest budget deficit it has experienced in over 70 years. As a state, we must either cut expenditures or raise revenue, or both. In the last 18 months the legislature has made up our budget deficit almost exclusively through budget cuts: the state budget has been reduced by almost 20%. Public and higher education combined make up the single largest component of our state budget. About 40 cents of every state tax dollar we collect goes to pay for the cost of educating our children. For this significant investment of about $5 billion, our children show academic results that are generally comparable to other states despite the fact that we rank dead last in per capita pupil spending in the United States.
Therefore, we simply cannot afford to cut the amounts we commit to educating our children. Money isn’t the complete solution to educational achievement, but good intent and fervent desires go only so far without adequate funding. It is simply unrealistic to think that we can reduce our financial commitment to education without harming our children.
For that reason, I’ve introduced HB 90, which looks to those who are doing the very best in these challenging times to provide some additional assistance to public and higher education. This bill restores the marginal state income tax rate on those earning $250,000 or more by 1% and for those earning $750,000 or more by 2%. Less than 2% of Utah residents would be affected by this change in law.
Most thoughtful Utahns recognize the importance of investing to create and maintain a strong public education system. The Chamber of Commerce and others in the business community have recently voiced their concerns about our deteriorating public and higher education systems. Utah’s businesses understand that public and higher education are critical to Utah’s ability to successfully compete in an increasingly challenging national and global economy. In addition, having a high level of education in the state immeasurably enhances both the tangible and intangible quality of living in Utah. An investment in public and higher education- in our children – is an investment in our future.
So if you believe we need to improve the quality of Utah’s public and higher education, a critical step we must take is to increase the money we commit to our children. The process for stopping the slide in our test performances is long and multi-faceted. But improving funding to move up from our last-in-the-nation status in the resources we dedicate to public education is an essential first step.
