Ordinarily, I'm not one for superstition and omens. But as I returned from Gov. Olene Walker's briefing on tax reform Monday morning, a message appeared on the commercial van next to me at a downtown stoplight.

It said: "Pressed4Time."

It's a very clever name for a dry cleaning business, isn't it? It also summed up, nicely, the underlying message of Walker's presentation. This is particularly true as it applies to funding Utah's public school system, where growth in the student population is outstripping the state's ability to pay for it, under the existing tax policy.

If the economy remains robust, the state can probably get by for a few years. But a decade from now, absent some changes in tax policy and the state's demographics, the outlook is not hopeful. "Down the road there is a crisis awaiting if something isn't done," Walker said.

This is a different tone than I'm used to hearing as it applies to funding Utah's public schools. Conventional wisdom has been that economic growth would meet the needs of the burgeoning public school population. But Walker's tax advisers caution that Utah relies heavily on taxes that are volatile. Moreover, the state's tax base is eroding. Without some meaningful intervention, the day of reckoning approaches.

Walker, herself, is Pressed4Time. Her term as governor ends in about six weeks, which means she's got to do some marathon lobbying and arm-twisting to keep this issue in the forefront as Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr. launches his administration and the general session of the 2005 Legislature gets underway.

Groups that have a vested interest in the respective proposals will find a million self-serving reasons not to continue this work. We're talking full employment among CPAs, tax attorneys and lobbyists as they dissect the proposal and rationalize why their particular ox should be spared.

This is precisely why Walker has kept the tax-reform process close to the vest. The men and women who wrestled over Walker's tax recommendations — sometimes until 3 o'clock in the morning — aren't interested in preserving tax breaks or exemptions for certain industries or groups. Rather, the advisers were attempting to devise a means to right Utah's tax ship.

To be quite honest, I haven't digested the entire volume of recommendations. As a person who relies on a CPA to prepare her income taxes, I'm hardly an expert to explain the implications of eliminating the corporate income tax, adopting a flat individual income tax or taxing consumer services, among many other recommendations in Walker's proposal.

Many of the proposals make sense on a gut level, but others are more complex, and five hours after meeting with the governor, I'm in no position to completely understand the domino effect of many of these recommendations. I have a better sense of the political fallout, which would be substantial depending upon the different perceptions of whose goose is being cooked.