Politics kill transit list?

"You're kidding yourself if you don't think the needs and priorities are going to change over the next couple years," he said. "It's probably better not to have the list of projects."

As to Hatch's accusation about legislative politics, Valentine said: "I have no reaction to it, because it's not accurate."

Still, county mayors, council members and even some county voters say the decision by the Legislature to not approve the process for picking projects may cause the tax proposition to fail at the ballot box.

Clay Christensen, a South Jordan resident, said Wednesday he didn't like that he won't know specifically where his money would go if he voted for the tax increase.

"The government is taking in this huge chunk of money," he said. "They need to be accountable for what they spend it all on."

Derek Befus, who was riding TRAX in Salt Lake City toward his home in Lehi, said lawmakers are asking voters for a lot of trust, which isn't good "without detailing intentions." Still, Befus said he supports TRAX and commuter rail and would vote for a separate proposition in Utah County that would raise sales tax to build commuter rail and roads.

County Councilman Mark Crockett said Wednesday that supporters of the transportation tax now have a tough job to sell the proposition to voters. "I think it certainly would have been easier for voters to have more specific information about what their money would buy," he said.

Council members Jenny Wilson and Michael Jensen agreed. "It's a gamble, to a certain degree," Wilson said.

Salt Lake business leaders, who are running a $500,000 campaign in support of the transportation proposal, told the Deseret Morning News editorial board on Tuesday that they didn't think it would make a difference whether voters knew what projects they were voting for or not.

"I'm confident that the answer will be one that at the end of the day, people will be glad what they voted for," said Robert Grow, a Salt Lake City attorney and founder of Envision Utah.

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E-mail: nwarburton@desnews.com