Opposition to moving state taxes away from education

From UtahCitizensCounsel.com

On the Utah ballot this year will be seven different proposed constitutional amendments. One of those is an amendment that would remove a constitutional provision that has been on the books in Utah for more than a hundred years. That provision ties lawmakers’ hands to an extent that income tax collected by the state can only be spent on K-12 and after an update to this provision in the mid 1990’s, also higher education.

Legislators have said they would like to come up with an alternative funding mechanism for education. One organization that spoke out loudly last week against this proposed change was the Utah Citizens Counsel. On KVNU’s For the People program on Tuesday, Dixie Huefner talked about the make up of the counsel.

“We’re senior community advocates, it’s a small group, there are just 22 of us. We cover lots of areas in addition to education, health care, environment, personal security, equal rights, participatory governance.

“And all of us have had considerable public policy experience in our own sphere and care a lot about trying to continue to improve public policy,” according to Huefner.

She talked about some of their concerns over Amendment G’s proposal to shift funding.

“I think the public has no idea what it’s really doing when it votes on this. It sounds good – who’s not in favor of supporting children, who’s not in favor of people with a disability.  They just don’t begin to understand that it’s taking money away from public and higher ed, and there’s no guarantee that it’s going to fund children and people with a disability any better than they’re funded now out of the general fund.”

Huefner said Utah’s League of Women Voters also is strongly opposed to the amendment. For more information on the counsel and the breakdown on the legislation, visit UtahCitizensCounsel.org.

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