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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Dodging responsibility
The Utah
Transit Authority has loaded a gun, pointed the weapon at its foot and appears all too eager to yank the trigger. For obvious reasons, it should reconsider these actions -- and quickly.
Much better, we think, would be for UTA to hand that gun back to the Legislature, which cynically left it unattended in the first place.
During its session earlier this year, lawmakers trimmed sales taxes on groceries. That meant that in addition to people paying less for food at the grocer, the UTA would be losing about $17 million in sales tax revenue. Legislators, wanting to get credit for reducing taxes, failed to restore the UTA's shrinking revenue. Instead, it provided in the legislation that cities and counties could restore 0.05 percent of the tax to fund transit in their jurisdictions.
In other words, local and county governments would be on the hook for raising transit taxes.
The UTA has been meeting with county officials in Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties, and still hopes to meet with the Weber County Commission and officials in Brigham City and Tooele -- hoping those government entities will impose the 0.05 percent tax. Indeed, Utah County already has.
We're not yet sure how all the other counties contacted so far are reacting, but we like what we hear to date from the Weber County Commission. Its members are calling out the Legislature on this one.
Commissioner Craig Dearden minces no words: "The Legislature looks great because they made the tax cuts, but we look bad because we have to raise (taxes) to make up for the loss. If we don't raise them, we look bad because we didn't want transit."
Commission Chairman Kenneth Bischoff, likewise, appears unwilling to do the Legislature's wet work: "The Legislature should stand up and make UTA whole."
We agree completely. If the Legislature is too gutless to do it on its own, this matter should at least be put to a vote by the people.
Either way, lawmakers have -- perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not -- endangered the quarter-cent transportation/transit tax increase question that will be put to voters on the November ballot in Davis and Weber counties. If voters perceive that they stand to get hit with two transit tax increases at once -- one via city councils or county commissions, and another at the ballot box -- they may reject the much-needed quarter-cent tax altogether. We know there are transit foes in the Legislature, but we hope they're not this devious.
This is a mess created by state lawmakers, and they should have to clean it up.
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