State budget looking bleaker

State legislators have been warned that their 2010 general session could be the toughest in at least a generation, with the loss of up to 3,000 public- and higher-education and state jobs, as well as deep cutbacks in state programs as the economic recession enters its second year.

A number of real-life consequences of Utah's continued economic downturn were presented to legislative leaders Tuesday afternoon.

The bleak picture could be ameliorated with some tax increases — like restoring the full 4.7 percent state sales tax to unprepared food and increases in the tobacco and alcohol taxes. The projected state budget shortfall could reach as high as $1 billion.

But GOP Gov. Gary Herbert, who faces election next year, says he will recommend no tax hikes to the 2010 Legislature and still believes lawmakers can just trim state spending in these hard times.

"If we go to the full 17 percent cut" for fiscal 2011, "thousands of employees in public education would lose their jobs," said John Nixon, Herbert's budget director, whose office compiled the new report for the Executive Appropriations Committee, made up of House and Senate leaders from both parties.

The 19-page report details impacts of the overall 2010-11 budget and how individual state departments will fare if no more money is found to "back fill" agency and education budgets, as was done in the current budget year.

Larry Shumway, state superintendent of schools, said while some school districts have gotten by so far — teachers taking days off, less pay and so on — another cut next year would really hurt.

Comparing poor school funding now with children who get a terrible sunburn at a summer pool, the bad effects are often seen later, Shumway said. "Down the road, the cumulative effect harms our work force, it's felt in our communities, 10 years and 20 years later."

Legislators, many of them Republicans who loudly complained about the federal stimulus package, spent hundreds of millions of one-time federal funds to lessen state budget cuts this year.

But that money won't be there in the next budget, which legislators must adopt before they adjourn in mid-March. That budget starts July 1.

Herbert recently hinted that unless something catastrophic happens — like the end of the world — he would look to veto tax hikes coming out of the 2010 Legislature, which convenes in late January.

Here are some of the impacts the new report shows:

$465 million in one-time monies would be pulled out of state budgets in fiscal 2011 over current spending.

Nearly 2,000 state jobs have already been eliminated, but with few layoffs, as state agency bosses reorganized and/or didn't hire new employees when people left. Another 1,000 jobs could be lost in the next fiscal year.