A smart veto

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon seems to have a knack for understanding what his constituents want. He stood up against public funding for a soccer stadium, although Republicans in state government steamrolled him and built Rio Tinto Stadium anyway. And now he has vetoed a property-tax hike passed at the worst possible time by the Democratic majority on the County Council. Recessions are not solved by taking more money out of wallets, no matter what the needs of government bureaucrats may be.

The council's majority raised an issue about that veto this week in what can be viewed only as an attempt to embarrass the mayor. The council's legal adviser said Corroon's veto was worded so poorly that it literally eliminated the property tax and all cuts included in the budget. Even if this were so, the council merely would have to reinstate those things with an override majority, something that ought to be easy to obtain. However, as Corroon has said, his veto statement makes his intentions clear, something with which the county attorney agrees.

It's a lot of hot air about nothing, but it serves only to reinforce what the mayor has done, which is to save the average homeowner in the county $10 more in taxes.

And while that may seem paltry, it could have been $10 more added onto a pile of other local-government tax hikes, depending on where you live in the county. Salt Lake City, for example, raised taxes for its library system. The cost of that will be $7.80 a year on a $280,000 house, but $50.95 on a business valued at $1 million. Bluffdale decided to impose a utility franchise tax on its residents, which will cost an average of $14 per month.

This is just a sampling of local-government tax hikes in Utah. Each dollar is a dollar less that local residents can spend on whatever they like — money likely to find its way into local businesses, which could use it to recover during this time of contractions and layoffs.

Consider, too, how the average Utah household, with two parents and three children, ends up giving 24.2 percent of its hard-earned money in direct taxes to Washington, Utah and various local governments, according to the Utah Taxpayers Association. Truly, each of us pays a multitude of taxes. And yet several governments, operating separately, tend to forget this as they add a dollar or two here and there.

Corroon said he didn't think this was a good time for the county to pile on. He's right. Times won't always be this bad. In the meantime, the county can find other ways to close its budget gap.