Legislators haggle, settle on $220 million tax cut

Utahns will get a $220 million tax cut — probably coming this year.

That idea sounds easy enough. But Utah GOP lawmakers' politically painful road to an agreed-upon total for tax relief was not easy, coming with some bruised egos and ruffled feathers.

Now come even tougher decisions on exactly how the state's two personal income tax systems will be changed and what food sales tax cuts must come to achieve the $220 million.

The tax cut number didn't come without theatrics. First, House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, walked out of a leadership meeting last night. He came back only to get into an argument with Senate President John Valentine, who then walked out himself.

"At least I went back. He just left," Curtis joked Friday afternoon as he explained to an open House Republican caucus exactly how leaders and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. reached a total amount to reduce taxes by this session.

Valentine, R-Orem, made a rare visit to the House GOP caucus to announce that his caucus, too, had agreed to the $220 million tax cut. "We're buddies now," said a smiling Valentine.

But he hadn't been gone long when various GOP House members started criticizing the senators' budget and tax stands.

And while House Republicans were grousing about the "journey" Huntsman, who is also a Republican, and the Senate seemed to be steering them on, GOP senators said that with tax cuts now in hand, the majority party can build the $10.9 billion budget for 2007-08.

"There was a strong sense of urgency to have the budgets done in a timely fashion," Valentine told reporters. "We felt like we were getting down to the point of crunch time."

He said GOP senators, who met in closed caucus, weren't easily persuaded that the size of the tax cut should be larger than the $150 million they'd agreed upon at the start of the session.

"It was very difficult to move the Senate caucus to the higher number of $220 million," Valentine said. "We felt the other needs of the state were very important," including transportation, higher education and state employee pay raises.

Valentine said that thanks to new revenue estimates that bumped up the state surplus by another $149 million, the caucus should still be able to boost public education funding by at least $300 million.