Constituent Newsletter Feb. 5, 2012

Positive Fiscal News Kicks-Off 2012 Session! For the first time in nearly three Legislative sessions, we are starting off the year with positive fiscal news! During the Great Recession, the State lost over $1 billion in revenues and faced steeper budget cuts than even encountered during the Great Depression. This year, however, we are entering the annual legislative session with positive revenue growth of nearly $400 million. Hopefully when we receive the final revenue projections during Week 4 of the session, that number will hold solid. The challenge after so many years of belt tightening will be to resist spending our surplus with abandon. The lesson of the recession is renewed fiscal responsibility. Utah has always enjoyed the reputation of a fiscally prudent state, which allowed us to weather the recession with our AAA bond rating intact and a portion of our Rainy Day Fund still unspent. However, we must renew our commitment to investing wisely in economic development opportunities, continuing to fund growth in public education, and to continuing to set aside funds for a rainy day. Our State budget is the same as a family budget, just on a larger scale, and should adhere to all the same principles of sound budgeting. The end of Week 2 of the legislative session marks an important budget milestone, the passage of base budgets. We use a “base budget” process to help streamline the budgeting process in our relatively short 45-day session. We are required by legislative rule to vote on base budgets in the second week. Ideally, the budgets are meant to match the prior year’s funding. This means that if the Legislature did nothing else for the remainder of the session, the State would continue to operate on flat budgets. Base budgets account for 95% of the total State budget, the other 5% will come as new programs or other one-time spending initiatives that will be added over the coming weeks. The 5% of the budget still to be allocated includes the $400 million in revenue growth, much of which is already earmarked to fund student growth in public education, one of our areas of greatest need. Due to the recession, base budget the past few years had included some across the board budget cuts. This year, however, it hasn’t been necessary to trim the base budgets at all. Another sign that the worst of the recession seems to be behind us! At this point, the Legislature has sent 33 bills to the Governor to sign or veto, but we still have 1,073 bills awaiting consideration. Not all of these bills will make it to the Governor’s desk. Some will fail to pass muster in committee, others will stall in floor debate or be held due to a requirement for funding prior to implementation. Obviously we still have a lot of work to do over the next 5 weeks. Some of the issues I’m actively following include computer adaptive testing (HB 15), which could have a dramatic improvement on how we test students to better allocate resources and teaching efforts. The testing allows for real-time feedback for teachers so students are placed in the proper skill level group earlier in the school year. Another important issues is Main Street fairness, the idea that on-line retailers must collect and remit sales tax just as brick & mortar merchants do so as not to provide a competitive advantage to on-line retailers. In future articles and newsletters I will continue to keep you up to date on the budget process and critical bills being considered by the Legislature. Please feel free to contact me with any comments or questions on bills. I always enjoy feedback from constituents and find it very helpful when gauging how to vote on the important issues that come before us. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to represent you on Capitol Hill.