Things are tough. You have to at least go back to the mid 80’s to find a similar situation. Utah is being swept along with a bigger national and international movement. Speaker of the House Dave Clark did something unique by handing out notebooks in which everyone was supposed to submit their ideas in what to do to solve Utah’s economic problems. Doug has his own and today and is going to be taking calls for suggestions to submit in his notebook to Speaker Clark.
Speaker Clark joined the show. You can email your suggestions at utahmatters@utah.gov. Speaker Clark assured that there is a group of economists and other academic leaders that compose a panel that analyzes the budget and spending. We have some tools but our big challenge is the spending of funds that don’t exist. Doug asked if the bond idea was feasible. The state is planning on using bonding to try and ease the impact of spending our rainy day funds.
Doug really appreciated the headline that legislative was going to scale back. Cutbacks are definitely necessary but where is the question. And God bless those on capital hill that have to make those decisions. We should absolutely be tapping into the rainy day fund but again, how much is the question.
The Utah state constitution does not say that we cannot go into debt, it just needs to be reasonable. The argument on capital hill is whether to put public projects on hold or to continue investing. All this assumes that things are going to work out and there isn’t an economic turn around. This is kind of like one of those Solomon splitting up the baby decision, it is tough. However, let’s not make things worse by over reacting. We have been smart enough to put things away and use those bonds that we have put away.
Doug liked the idea of the government spending being “throttled back”. However, if you throttle back too much, then the engines stall and things become worse. There is nothing wrong with bonding, and with using the rainy day fund. We don’t have to start laying off teachers and shutting down projects in our schools. You have to believe, some of these things are a leap of faith.
Never bet on the end of the world because it only happens once and you won’t be around to collect.
What suggestions do you have for Capital Hill?
1) The state should organize on the internet how civic groups can organize efforts to clean up the highway. If people were to see how trashy the highways have become they will never litter again.
2) Lottery in the State of Utah
3) Eliminate middle management government jobs
4) Wine coolers back in the store
5) Rotating medical savings account that don’t go stale, otherwise referred to as the Cafeteria Plans.
6) Crack down on welfare and Medicare programs.
7) Why not allow the Utah supervisors the ability to spend their own funds and let the funds carry over.
8) Once a quarter have a payoff without pay. It is better to have a quarter without pay than to lose your job altogether. People will make sacrifice.
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