Utah lawmakers field requests for big bucks

You know another legislative session must be getting close when state bureaucrats, employees and business leaders start asking for money — hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tuesday, legislative leaders heard university presidents, bankers and high-tech experts say if the Legislature will just give them upward of $300 million, in 35 years that investment will yield the state $5 billion in new tax revenue, 123,406 new high-paying jobs and $62 billion more in salaries.

State Office of Education officials said if the Legislature will just give them $25 million over five years, they will get every high school student his or her own laptop computer and train thousands of teachers on how to use the new technology to better educate and prepare students to compete worldwide.

And state personnel officials said while legislators made "a great stride" in the right direction by giving healthy pay raises to state employees this year, state workers still lag behind the private sector and other government pay and benefit scales by 13.62 percent.

Members of the Legislature's Executive Appropriations Committee seemed a bit overwhelmed by all the opportunities to spend more.

By far the largest cash request came from university presidents and organizers of USTAR — the new research/investment program aimed at creating high-tech, high-profit industries from basic research done at the University of Utah and Utah State University.

USTAR leader Dinesh Patel said Utah's pay scales are now 80 percent of the national average and the percentage of high-tech jobs is decreasing in the state work force. "We used to say to (outside) businesses, 'Come to Utah for our low wages.' Now they go to India or China for low wages."

In 10 to 15 years, USTAR, properly funded, will bring thousands of high-paying jobs to the state, he said.

To earn a decent living in Utah, "now both husband and wife need to work. For a state that prides itself on being family friendly, we have the highest percent of women in the work force. This is certainly not acceptable."

Lawmakers must be patient in this investment, Patel said. "Only brothels and casinos can be profitable overnight. We don't have those options."

Scott Anderson, president of Zions Bank, another USTAR supporter, said political and business leaders can't afford to miss this opportunity while other states are taking and pouring millions, even billions, of dollars into research, capital development and business start-ups.