USTAR wants $25 million a year and, over time, $250 million for four new buildings — two each at the U. and USU, he said. Creative financing, which Zions Bank could help find as the state's official financial consultant, may be able to save the state some of the buildings' financing, Anderson said.

USU will soon host a 60-member "neuroscience" research group from "a major Eastern university" in an attempt to lure them here, officials said.

But at the same time, university administrators warned, other research universities and state-funding development programs are trying to lure away our higher-education researchers who have become "superstars" who bring upward of $500 million a year in research grants and who must be kept here.

By comparison, the State Office of Education's plan for primary and secondary school computers seems cheap.

Associate state superintendent Ray Timothy asked legislators for $25.8 million to replace older computers and buy new computers.

Over five years, K- through second-graders would have a new computer for every four kids, third- through sixth-graders would have a computer for every two kids and seventh- through 12th-graders would each have their own laptop computers.

That's achievable if there is more staff to train teachers in computers and more technicians to keep the machines going, Timothy said.

Each of the state's 40 school districts would have to match state funds to get the new computer/training/tech-support money, he added.

But Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said that $25 million amounts to about 1 percent of the state's basic education allotments — known as weighted pupil units.

Will teacher unions be willing to give up "1 percent of WPU for computers" when usually much of the yearly WPU goes to increased teacher and administrator pay? Valentine asked.

Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, said he's been disappointed in the past, when new state money has been made available in matching programs, just to see local districts take money away from other programs to get the state match, not raise any new revenue themselves and other critical local programs in the process, he said.

Finally, Jeff Herring, head of state human resources, said a new salary/benefit comparison study shows Utah state government workers made headway financially in 2005 because of a good pay raise given by lawmakers starting July 1.

Overall, the state went from paying 18.68 percent below private market and other governments in salary and benefits to paying only 13.62 percent below market.

That's a 27 percent increase in bettering the state's sub-par pay and benefits performance, one legislator noted.

State workers have seen low salary increases recently because of what were then drastic drops in state tax revenues during the economic downturn. While things are improving now, a chart Herring showed indicates that state workers were actually better off financially compared to co-workers' pay rates in the private and public sector during the late 1990s.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. hasn't yet decided what kind of pay raises he'll recommend for fiscal year 2006-2007. Those and his other spending proposals will be factored into the Legislature's annual budget process that begins in January.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com