Lawmakers agree with governor on 3 top needs

GOP state legislative leaders are saying, at first blush, that they like the three priorities in Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s 2008 state spending plan — teacher pay, health insurance for the uninsured and better air quality.

But the devil is in the details, the Republican lawmakers said, and while the governor "can deal in generalities, we can't," as House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, put it.

Speaking Tuesday at his Education Summit at Salt Lake Community College, Huntsman said he'll try to push tax money into those three areas for his fiscal 2008-09 budget, which will almost certainly top $12 billion. He plans to publicly release his recommended budget in early December, as required by law, and the Legislature will adopt next year's spending plan before it adjourns at the end of February.

The governor's priorities reflect pressing needs in the state. Utah has a growing number of uninsured residents — 300,000, including 46,000 children.

And according to state records, stringent new federal air-quality standards for particulate matter were violated about one-fifth of the time during the past winter in northern Utah. For summertime ozone levels, Salt Lake and Davis counties had 18 "red alert" days when the standard was violated, and Utah and Weber counties had 19 such days.

The governor's three priorities are likely "in agreement with the Legislature's," Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, told the Deseret Morning News. Even so, legislative leaders said solving the problems could be very expensive.

At the start of the 2008 legislative session, legislators will put $20 million of ongoing tax money into public schools to make whole last session's promised $2,500 pay raise for each teacher. Valentine said they will also find enough one-time moneys to ensure a $1,000, one-time bonus for each teacher will be paid, despite calculation errors that left the 2007 teacher-pay plan short of cash.

Curtis said that last year, legislators promised teachers a $2,500 pay raise, "and we are still committed to that. We don't know the type of pay raise that the governor wants in the future, in 2008, so we'll have to see what that is."

Curtis looks forward to details on the governor's budget priorities. "In the big picture, we all agree there should be health insurance for all. What are the details?" he said.