Utah legislators on Tuesday approved a series of safety-net “base budgets,” designed to prevent the sorts of shutdowns that the federal government is constantly flirting with when Congress and the president clash on spending.
The federal government had a three-day shutdown last month, and worried about the possibility again this week. In 2013, a 16-day shutdown led to furloughing hundreds of thousands of workers. Utah, at the time, managed to reopen national parks here by guaranteeing to cover their costs to help local tourism.
The Legislature avoids such shutdowns by requiring passage of bare-bones spending bills — essentially the same budget as the current year — by Day 16 of the 45-day session, which was Tuesday.
That rule was developed after former Gov. Olene Walker and legislators had a confrontation over an extra $15 million she wanted for an early reading program. When it was not included in last-day plans, she threatened to veto the entire budget.
Lawmakers gave her the money, but came up with the new budgeting system to avoid such brinkmanship in the future.
As lawmakers scrubbed and prepared the base budgets, they found and implemented $69 million worth of cuts — $35 million in annual ongoing funding and $34 million in one-time savings.
Rep. Brad Last, R-Hurricane, House chairman of the Executive Appropriations Committee, said the $35 million in ongoing is significant — enough to pay for the growth in public school enrollment, or enough to pay for this year’s Medicaid inflation.
Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, Senate chairman of the budget committee, said the $34 million in one-time savings is enough to “cover fire suppression for last year.” Or, Last said, enough to pay for the state’s share of Operation Rio Grande plus needed repairs to Olympics venues.
Final budgets are still being prepared, and legislators will figure out how to spend a projected $382 million in extra ongoing tax revenue next year beyond levels for the current year. Gov. Gary Herbert has proposed spending 72 percent of it on education.
Also, Utah could receive an additional $80 million because of recent changes to the federal tax system. Lawmakers are still expected to decide whether to keep and spend that windfall, and, if so, what to spend it on.
