Comments about ‘Utah Legislature: Lawmakers say education cut may be smaller’

Given the current economy, and the burdens placed on Utahns who pay taxes, this is a good move.

Taxpayers do not have endless piles of money to give to the government. They are cutting back to live within their means, and expect elected officials to do the same. Or, they will replace them with ones who will!

The teachers unions and bloated education bureaucracy have been given so much money for so long, but NEVER enough to meet their demands. Well, it is time for some belt tightening, like everyone else.

Thank you legislators!

If you can't afford to educate them, stop having them. Remove deductions for kids. We need parents to help pay for educating their kids.

Unfortunate but Prudent it would be wise to educate yourself, Utah spends less per student than any state in the country so how is that a bloated system? You advocate belt tightening, what would you cut, probably the twelve grade like Mr. Buttars, while we are at it, why don't we cut the 11th grade, heck lets just home school all of them and cut the whole education budget, and give the poor taxpayers back all their money. To bad we talk a good game about how important our kids are, but when the rubber hits the road, we are all talk in this state. And don't forget when in doubt blame UEA.

By definition in the State of Utah constitution, it says that taxpayers by taxation are responsible for public education which includes K1-K12 schooling. It does not include colleges and universities as public education, they are for profit schools and should receive no tax funds at all.

Then there is the rampant and fraudulent use of the illegal tax funds that higher eduction receives from the tax payers. All the colleges and university's, and our board of education, are diverting collected taxes for commercial development and use. These diverted tax funds are also used to make loans to developers and land speculators. Lending is a function of banks and financial business so why is education funds being used in this fraudulent manner? These diverted education tax funds amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, much more than education short falls.

This per pupil spending rhetoric is an inaccurate and illogical method to rate education. Whether you have one student or a hundred students in a class, it cost the same in overhead. Utah has one of the country's highest tax funded education systems but where is the money? Who is getting the education taxes?

Why can't people in this state think for themselves? There may exist in some areas a bureaucracy in education, but that is most certainly not the case in Utah. There are fewer administrators in the district offices and schools per student here than in any other state in the country. We also have far fewer districts than most states. Quit spewing everything you hear from the conservative anti-everything democratic B.L.a. H. pundits (Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity) and start thinking/speaking for yourselves. Stop and think about how whatever they are saying actually affects us and stop assuming that every blanket accusation applies to everyone equally. With what happens in Utah's schools for the price tag, everyone in this state should be praising everything that is going on here. It's actually quite a bargain.

Nice straw man, but that wasn't what the poster was saying. Belt tightening does not equal elimination of grades, and only Buttars and you don't seem to understand that (unless you do and you were just engaging in hyperbole...)

At any rate, though it has been said numerous times, I'll say it again, since it apparently hasn't gotten through to everyone: Utah spends the lowest per student, but spends the most as a percentage of the total budget. What's more, every single penny of state income tax goes to education. The per-child number is useless in a discussion of budget woes, except as a talking point.

Education took a 17% cut last year. To cut an additional 12% this year would be crippling. Please cut from higher education and not from K-12.

The income tax needs revision because it's not funding education as it should. 5% flat should be sufficient, but it must be flat. Deductions should have been eliminated with the change to the flatter tax rate.

First, the spending percentage is higher in Utah because the state budget is one of the lowest in the nation. Thus if more money is allocated to education as a percentage of budget, it can appear that the percentage is higher in Utah but why the actual expenditure is so much lower, especially since Utah has more kids than other states in terms of kid to population. Thus Utah does spend less on education per kid. Bottom line, the politicians in this state won't do this, but it is time to tax those who have kids in the system at a higher rate. Time for fees starting in K and going through grade 12 which requires a change to the state constitution. Let the fee/tax be sufficient to ensure that public education is paid for. Oliver Wendall Holmes famous statement holds true: "More precisely, he rebuked a secretary’s query of “Don’t you hate to pay taxes?” with “No, young fellow, I like paying taxes, with them I buy civilization.” Let the parents buy civilization.

This is all a smoke screen. They do it EVERY year,

They threaten to cut 12% but the really only want to cut 6%.

They will come back and say, "See how good we are?! We only cut 6%!"

End the end our kids suffer.

Don't fund Public Ed by cutting higher ed. Thats not the answer. We need to revamp public education and meet the EDUCATIONAL NEEDS of students, not their DESIRES. Desires such as sports, activities and other exracurricular activities. The majority of students don't participate in these activities and yet tax dollars are funding them. By funding these low-participatory activities, we are taking away from the whole student body. Put the burden of these activities and opportunities on the Parents. That would save a lot of dollars for the good of ALL! I recently heard of full size bus hauling 6 cheerleaders to a meet. To me that is not cost savings at all! But rather poor management.

Yes, the Huntsman single rate helped drive revenue shortfalls. With the 2006-7 zeal to eliminate the top tax rate of 7% which should have only applied to the top 5% of taxpayers, the Legislature reduced the wealthiest effective tax rate from 5.7% to an estimated 4.4% (The Utah tax commission is stonewalling the release of actual taxyear 2008 upper effective tax rate.)

This huge tax cut on the top 2% of the population would easily plug the higher education gap of $35 million and the public education yearly growth cost of $28 million.

Last year Goldman Sachs in Utah got $20+ million in tax cuts. Why hasn't the promises of lowering the top rate to 5% brought in addition revenues?

The problem of education is many fold, higher birthrate, low wages, and poor income tax system that doesnt tax the wealthiest at a fair rate. Please stop the taxpayer vs school teacher battle. If we start taxing parents with children then let's start taxing the wealthiest.(How about taxing big cars that add to air problems?)

Support Rep. Brian King's HB090 that would reestablish upper tax rates on incomes above $250,000.

Smoke screen is right on. They will now come back and say we found other things to cut so now education will only be cut 6-8%
We are heroes and should be awarded and pat ourselves on the back for our fiscal conservatism.
Meanwhile our kids suffer.

Meanwhile the legislators are sitting in their new Multimillion dollar offices, playing solitaire on their new computers and iphones, while enjoying their plush new chairs.

All while patting themselves on the back and claiming we are best managed state in the union.

The reason we are here is the "Something for nothing" idea that liberals carry around in their common-senseless brains. Let's give a home to everyone that doesn't qualify for various reasons. Banks and wall streets employees then get greedy and the whole economy collapses once those that received a home don't pay.

Despite the efforts of a handful of Rebulicans to regulate the banks starting in 2001, fannie and freddie specifically, democrates blocked the effort. Leading liberals Chris Dodd and Barrack Obama led the filibuster to stop the reguation. NO coincidence that Dodd and Obama received the most kickbacks from Fannie/Freddie.

How about this country gets back to what it was founded on. Reap what you sow and by the sweat of your brow, that type of common sense stuff. Liberals have sent this economy down the crapper and now the idiots want to spend their way out of it. Can one of you liberal nutcases please explain how exactly that can possibly work. You CAN'T tax job creators more and expect to create jobs and increase tax revenue.

MORE JOBS = MORE TAX REVENUE. Common Sense.

Utah businesses pay their employees lower wages than their counterparts in other states. When that happens, we pull in a smaller amount of income taxes. Those lower income taxes amounts mean we spend less on education. The lower amount spent on education means that the companies that pay higher wages choose to go somewhere else where education is valued more. So, we stay with lower wages and a lower budget. It's a vicious cycle.

Utah does spend less per student than any other state. That won't change during most of our lifetimes...At one point our tax effort for education was also the highest. Legislators used to use that as a reason for not increasing funding. That has changed as now there are 15-20 states that pay a higher percentage (effort) to education.
Oh...and we also spend a lot less on administration (bureaucracy)than any other state. Blaming high administrator costs seems to make all feel better, even if they don't know what they're talking about.

What deductions for kids? Utah now has a "flatter" tax.

Ridiculous.

I will not vote for anyone that cuts education AGAIN.

I wouldn't expect anything more from our legislature.

How do these guys sleep at night?