SB37 would take the portion of revenue that schools earn through local tax levies and deposit it into Utah’s general fund.
By Carmen Nesbitt, The Salt Lake Tribune
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.
The Utah state school board passed a resolution Thursday urging Gov. Spencer Cox to veto a bill that would divert Utahns’ property taxes away from local public schools and instead drop them into the state’s general fund.
“It feels, quite frankly, really fishy,” Utah State Board of Education member Sarah Reale said Thursday. “It’s money laundering.”
Under SB37, the state would still be responsible for allocating the minimum amount of money that each local school district requires, based on the “Weighted Pupil Unit” (WPU) that the state calculates each year — currently set at $4,494 per student for fiscal 2025.
But the bill allows lawmakers to solely use income tax revenue to do that, freeing up local property tax dollars for other state purposes.
School districts and education organizations across Utah have opposed the measure. But the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, has argued it “isn’t a clever way” for the state to “steal money from public education.”
“The bill requires that whatever money is collected, the same amount of money in the exact same time frame, and with the exact same funding flexibility, is distributed to school districts as soon as it’s collected,” Fillmore said.
To read more about what would change under SB37 visit The Salt Lake Tribune here.