Egos seem to be fueling tax-cut impasse
Bob Bernick Jr.
Several weeks ago, Huntsman told the Deseret Morning News that should two bills pass — which deal with gubernatorial authority — he would veto them.
I can't remember a time when a governor threatened a veto so early in a session — or threatened a veto at all.
Then last Friday, Huntsman told me he would call a special session this spring, vetoing bills and/or do whatever else was necessary on tax cut/budget items to get the tax reform he wanted.
Again, I don't recall a governor making such a specific special session threat.
(House and Senate GOP leaders say former Gov. Olene Walker threatened to veto a budget bill and call a special session if she didn't get more money for her grade-school reading initiative, but that threat was made in private.)
A new Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows that 83 percent of Utahns approve of the job Huntsman is doing in dealing with the 2006 Legislature.
That is a very big number.
It brings with it considerable political capital.
And it looks like Huntsman is willing to spend some of it.
As of this writing Thursday morning, GOP senators refuse to go along with a tax-cutting compromise Huntsman has offered.
The governor is, I believe, going the extra mile in trying to get out of the current general session — which ends at midnight March 1 — with at least some reasonable tax cuts.
All Senate Republican caucuses are closed. So I have no personal insight into what the senators are thinking, how the votes are falling out.
But it is odd, and kind of depressing, to see a handful of part-time legislators blocking tax changes that most of the rest of the Legislature may well want, certainly tax changes that Morning News public opinion polls show citizens want.
For example, more than 80 percent of Utahns who want a tax cut this year want the sales tax removed from food at the cash register.
But some senators are refusing to budge.
Huntsman offered to give up this session on his "flatter" rate income tax reform (even though, again, by far most Utahns support it).
The governor has pushed personal income tax reform for months — spent a great deal of time with his tax experts in putting a plan together.
But the so-called H3 proposal — which lowered taxes by far on most Utahns but would have raised it a bit on a few — may not have had enough votes to pass in both the House and Senate, anyway.
So giving it up as part of a larger compromise may have been politically smart.
Huntsman was also ready to give in to GOP senators over removing the sales tax from food — long another Huntsman goal.
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