GOP calls the shots on Utah budget
Bob Bernick Jr.
Well, we had one for 10 years, until the Legislature in its wisdom repealed it. Oh, and legislators repealed it just a few years BEFORE the law would have forced any lawmakers from office after serving 12 consecutive years.
The main argument, as I recall, was that there was such "natural" turnover among legislators that a term-limit law wasn't needed. Yes, there is turnover. But it doesn't come at the hands of voters. It comes, as the 2006 election shows, mainly through voluntary retirements.
About one-fourth of the 2007 Utah Senate and one-fifth of the state House are new legislators.
While that sounds like a healthy turnover, if you exclude retirements, only two senators and four House members actually lost their seats at the polls — and that out of 91 legislative races.
For the 57th Legislature that takes office the first of the year, 82 percent of the senators who ran for re-election in 2006 won.
For the House, an amazing 93.75 percent of representatives who ran won.
After the tens of thousands of dollars and volunteer hours in the 2006 legislative contests, the Senate stayed the same — 21 Republicans and only eight Democrats.
The GOP holds iron-clad two-thirds majorities in both houses, as they often have over the last 30 years.
That means without any Democratic votes, the Republicans are in complete control of setting budgets, adopting Utah constitutional amendments, and passing bills and resolutions.
• As you may already know, the Utah State Tax Commission has decided to no longer include estimated budget surpluses/deficits in its monthly TC23 state revenue collection report.
The four commissioners — two Republicans, two Democrats — say that they can't adequately re-create the economic models used by former Tax Commission chief economist Doug Macdonald, who retired suddenly last spring after receiving several letters from commissioners telling him not to give his own opinion about tax matters to legislators and the public.
I thought it downright odd that the expert economists at the commission couldn't reproduce Macdonald's work, especially after one tax commissioner told me that it was "several legislators" who suggested that the commission no longer estimate running budget surpluses.
You see, over the years I've seen great discomfort among some legislators over Macdonald's estimates showing huge tax surpluses — which leads to political pressure to both spend more on state programs and give tax cuts.
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