By Danny
It looks like times will be getting a lot harder in Utah:
• Government budgets worse than anticipatedFrom the article:
Sales and use taxes, which fund general government and higher education, slumped 23 percent, nearly $100 million.
Income taxes, which pay for public schools, slid downward $40 million.
Taxes on corporations, the franchise tax, were in free fall, plummeting 73 percent.
Bob Springmeyer, President of Bonneville Research said, "That's one that I think is probably the most scary. That means that businesses are way down, that means employment is going to be down."
More from Springmeyer: "I think we're going to have a budget bloodbath this next legislative session."
7 comments:
It's particularly sad news because this situation means there will be increasing numbers of people who need social services and less money to help them.
We need to be saving our discretionary city funds for emergencies and not squandering it on excessive salaries for the Economic Development department, for example, which doesn't seem to be performing. How many homeless could be housed in a velodrome anyway?
We have an economic development department? It's not listed on the OGden City Website ...
js,
BB
I see data like these for Utah(and it's similar for almost all states) and then read the continually upbeat national news like today's GDP report, and I think, "What the . . . "
If you look at the GDP data in context like this:
GDP Year over Year
It shows today's "great" GDP news for what it is, just bumping along the bottom.
I fear the news media is sucking a lot of people into the market who will get killed when the market takes its next leg down, just as happened during the first Great Depression
America, the slothful, indolent, undeserving and proud, will get its comeuppance for decades of raping the worlds people and resources while claiming some sort of privilege due to birthright or due to some fantasy-superiority of the greed infested system of capitalism.
And, good riddance to history. People deserve what they get, every time.
What do you mean, This is the best managed state according to the republicans, just ask them they will tell you this. Then when it gets that bad they then say it was those tax and spend democrats. Well when the republicans took over in 1978, the state budget was not even at 1 billion bucks, now it is at 11 billion bucks, so much for the tax and spend democrats. I time for a change here in Utah, do ya think.
Utah..where synthetic nuclear blondes weighing a buck 25 use lifted turbo diesels (designed to haul 15,000 pounds) as their daily drivers to get to their nail, tanning and hair appointments C'mon Stephen, even you've gotta love the absurdity of that...
Before the gloating gets out of hand, I want to point out that this is very bad news for Weber State University.
Right now we are experiencing unprecedented demand, with an increase in headcount to 23,331, up 27% since 2007.
That is in the face of last year's budget cuts (about 9%) and anticipated revenue shortfalls for FY2010-2011 (according to the KSL story) of 23%.
I can assure you, that in defiance of the stereotype of lazy professors/students eating lotuses and picking ripe figlets from the campus trees, that we are all indeed working at the maximum. I fear that either a significant percentage of my colleagues will be out the door, or our students will be paying a much higher tuition rate, or both.
There is not, historically, the same support in the Utah Legislature for higher education as there is for (e.g.) locking people up and building roads. I don't anticipate this changing next year.
This is very sad news indeed.
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