This survey also shows that both Republican delegates and voters now have more moderate views on several issues, such as global warming, abortion and public education.  Additionally, this survey reveals that support for the Tea Party in Utah has declined significantly since 2010. Finally, this survey provides insight into the delegates’ candidate preferences for this week’s state party conventions, as well as voter preferences for those candidates.

About the Utah Priorities Project
During this important election year, Utah Foundation is working to focus political dialogue on the issues that matter most to Utah voters. This is a project Utah Foundation undertakes during each gubernatorial election year. It begins with a survey of voters to rank the major issues and set the agenda for Utah Foundation’s research and other activities this year. Through outreach to many media outlets and a partnership with the Hinckley Institute of Politics, this project will also feature issue forums, candidate debates, candidate profiles, and other coverage of these issues.

Read this Research Report

The candidates were asked to complete two main sections from the 2012 Utah Priorities Survey.  The first gauged their feelings on quality of life in Utah, and the second asked them to prioritize 19 policy issues that were previously identified by voters as important in the upcoming election.  This allowed Utah Foundation to not only compare the views of voters to candidates, but the priorities of each as well.  This report is not an endorsement of any party or candidate, but is merely provided to educate and inform voters and the delegates to each party’s state nominating convention.

About the Utah Priorities Project
During this important election year, Utah Foundation is working to focus political dialogue on the issues that matter most to Utah voters. This is a project Utah Foundation undertakes during each gubernatorial election year. It begins with a survey of voters to rank the major issues and set the agenda for Utah Foundation’s research and other activities this year. Through outreach to many media outlets and a partnership with the Hinckley Institute of Politics, this project will also feature issue forums, candidate debates, candidate profiles, and other coverage of these issues.

Read this Research Report

As the introduction to the 2012 Utah Priorities Project, this report provides a summary of the findings of a statewide Dan Jones & Associates survey assessing which issues are most important this year and how voters feel about Utah’s economy, society, and politics. The goal of this survey is to determine the most important public policy issues for voters, their level of concern about each issue, and to provide details about why voters care about each issue. The survey was not designed to gather voters’ prescriptions for solving these problems, but rather to provide a solid list of priority issues for candidates and voters to focus on through this election cycle. Throughout this election year, Utah Foundation will invite candidates to offer their prescriptions on these issues so that voters can determine who has the best plan for solving these problems.

About the Utah Priorities Project
During this important election year, Utah Foundation is working to focus political dialogue on the issues that matter most to Utah voters. This is a project Utah Foundation undertakes during each gubernatorial election year. It begins with a survey of voters to rank the major issues and set the agenda for Utah Foundation’s research and other activities this year. Through outreach to many media outlets and a partnership with the Hinckley Institute of Politics, this project will also feature issue forums, candidate debates, candidate profiles, and other coverage of these issues.

Read this Research Report (our summary of the survey)

Other components:

• Read the full survey report from Dan Jones & Associates
• Read a longitudinal analysis of survey results since 2004
• See the detailed crosstabs (for serious political junkies!)

Once constructed, many renewable energy plants do not require “fuel” to run at all in the traditional sense, only maintenance.  However, the benefits of alternative energy come with alternative cost considerations. In addition, the field of renewable energy is currently undergoing rapid change in terms of both technological advances and falling prices. This leads to two questions:

1. What are the comprehensive, or “true,” costs of the various types of renewable energy?
2. How do these costs compare with the costs of traditional energy resources?

Renewable energy is in a dynamic phase in its development, with new technologies being introduced, old ones refined, prices in flux, policies in motion, and investors and utilities trying to make the best investments in the future of energy resources.  If efforts to develop energy storage technologies mature, they could greatly affect the ability of resources such as solar and wind to provide energy to society on demand.  Until then, each energy resource has a set of costs and benefits that dictate the role it can play in the energy portfolios of power companies, states and the country. Intermittent renewables such as wind and sun serve best as a complement to existing peak demand and base load generation resources, such as coal and gas. Geothermal, biomass and hydro, on the other hand, can supplement the base load capacity of coal- and gas-fired plants. So the question of which resources are best to use in a given place is not so much one of “either renewables or fossil fuels” as it is “what combination of resources is best, given local and regional circumstances.”

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Utah is one of only a handful of states that still uses a convention, and the only one that allows political parties to preclude a primary election for statewide or congressional offices if candidates receive a high enough proportion of delegate votes. In most of the states that also use conventions, candidates must garner a certain amount of delegate votes to proceed to the primary election. However, they can also bypass this process and gain access to the primary ballot via petition. This system makes Utah unique among states and has been controversial in recent years, especially when delegates rejected Governor Olene Walker in 2004 and then-Senator Bob Bennett in 2010.

Utah’s historically high voter turnout rates have consistently declined in recent decades. In 1960, 78.3% of the voting age population voted in the general election. This declined along with national voter turnout rates in the 1970s due to the passage of the 26th Amendment which lowered the voting age to 18. Since that time, national voter turnout rates have remained stable. However, in Utah, they have continued to decrease, and by 2008, had fallen to about 50% of the voting age population, just below the national average.

Recently, questions have been raised about whether Utah’s system of conventions and primaries should be reformed, and how these changes would occur. Those calling for reform argue that Utah’s caucus-convention system disenfranchises the majority of voters, and that convention delegates do not represent the average voter. Supporters of the current system argue that a party’s right to association is protected by the First Amendment, and that they have the right to govern themselves and control how their candidates are selected.

Reform would most likely come from the Legislature, the parties, or from a citizen initiative. However, any reform would possibly face litigation by others who view the reform as unconstitutional.

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To better understand the quality of life in Utah, Utah Foundation collaborated with Intermountain Healthcare to create the Utah Foundation Quality of Life Index, a measure that will be updated every two years to track how quality of life changes and the reasons for those changes.  The Quality of Life Index was created by surveying Utahns about 20 factors that influence community quality of life. Quality scores were calculated for each factor and an overall index, with a possible 100 points.  Using this methodology, the first biennial Utah Foundation Quality of Life Index stands at 77.2 for 2011.

The 20 factors were organized into five sub-groups, and a quality of life score was calculated for each as well: Infrastructure and Vital Services, Social Characteristics, Economic Vitality, Cultural/Recreational Opportunities, and Physical Surroundings.  In addition to rating the quality of each factor, survey respondents were also asked about the importance of each factor in influencing their quality of life.

Quality healthcare, higher education, and safety and security all rated high in importance and quality, along with other factors related to Utah’s social characteristics and physical surroundings. These are among Utah’s successes, and care should be taken not to interfere with that success with public policy changes.

Several factors were given higher importance but lower quality ratings compared to other factors. These should be considered higher-priority action items for public policy change or other efforts to improve. These include public schools, affordable housing and other living costs, the availability of good jobs, and the social factor of people being accepting of differences.

Read this Research Report
Read the Appendix (survey details and results for each question)
 
 
Download the PowerPoint presentations from our 10/12/2011 breakfast event on this report:

• Morgan Lyon Cotti’s presentation on the research findings
• Greg Poulsen’s presentation on healthcare
• David Doty’s presentation on K-12 and higher education
• Alan Matheson’s presentation on Wasatch Choice for 2040

Because of these schedules, average teacher salaries are partly a function of the relative age, experience and education level of the teaching corps. States with a relatively young, less educated, and less experienced teaching corps will appear to have relatively lower teacher salaries. Comparing salaries for teachers with similar levels of education and experience reduces variations in salary levels that are simply a result of demographic differences. Utah teachers place near the middle of the mountain states for most categories of education and experience except for the highest salary range.

Like most states, Utah has increased beginning teacher salaries in the last decade more significantly than salaries for veteran teachers with advanced education, perhaps demonstrating a greater concern with recruitment than retention.  However, for both beginning and well-educated veteran teachers, salary increases in Utah have lagged behind five of the other mountain states as well as national trends.

Compared to both the U.S. and the other mountain states, Utah districts are more likely to offer pay incentives aimed at increasing teacher effectiveness or filling teacher shortages.  Over half of all districts in Utah offer incentive pay for teaching in a field with a shortage, the highest of any of the mountain states. Utah and New Mexico teachers are the least likely in the mountain states to earn supplemental pay for extracurricular activities.  On the other hand, Utah ranks 2nd of the mountain states for the percentage of teachers who earn supplemental pay through school sources besides extracurricular activities, such as through the types of incentive pay mentioned above.  Utah teachers are the most likely of the mountain state teachers to earn supplemental pay through another job outside of the school system.

To give a sense of Utah teacher benefits compared to mountain states, Utah Foundation collected retirement benefit information from large districts in Utah and four other mountain states.  These data suggest that Utah districts are similar to districts in other mountain states with respect to district contributions to teacher retirement funds, although Utah is unique in having moved away from a defined benefit plan.

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From 1971 to 1997, the U.S. consistently operated under a deficit, fluctuating from $22 billion to $221 billion, however, this never made up more than 6% of gross domestic product (GDP).  Between 1998 and 2001, the federal government ran surpluses, even reaching $236 billion in 2000. According to a report published by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2001, if the federal government continued to operate in a surplus, the U.S. government would have been able to pay off all redeemable federal debt by 2006.  However, the trends in spending and taxation changed, and since 2001, a deficit has been incurred each year, reaching as high as $1.4 trillion in 2009, or 10% of the nation’s GDP.

The Pew Charitable Trusts recently published a report analyzing the causes of today’s debt situation compared to 10 years ago. Pew estimates that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts made up about 13% of the change in CBO debt estimates, while the 2010 tax legislation made up 3%, and other tax cuts made up an addition 5% of the change. Altogether, these tax changes are responsible for 21% of the increased debt in the past decade. Another 29% of the increased debt is from economic slowdowns reducing revenue receipts.

Increased spending has been a significant factor in today’s deficit and debt situation as well, including increases in interest caused by a larger federal debt (11% of the change in debt), the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (10%), other non-defense spending (10%), the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (6%), other defense spending (5%), and Medicare drug benefits enacted in 2003 (2%). These spending changes are responsible for 44% of the decade’s debt increase.

According to CBO, projected deficits will increase the national debt by an additional $8 trillion from 2011 to 2021. Current negotiations between the President and Congress to reduce deficits are focused on cumulative reductions of $2 to $4 trillion over 10 years, which would eliminate one-quarter to one-half of the coming decade’s deficits.

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The U.S. Census Bureau recently released data on education spending and revenue in each state for fiscal year 2009. Utah ranked last in the nation in per-pupil spending, a position it has held since 1988.  This low ranking in per-pupil spending is in part the result of the high proportion of children to the general population in Utah.  However, Utah Foundation has also noted that there has been a significant decline in the public education funding effort since 1995, a trend that, despite additional funds from the economic stimulus package and the recent state budget surplus, still continues.

In this report, as in previous reports published by Utah Foundation regarding education funding, funding effort is defined as public education revenues per $1,000 of personal income.  This measure shows how willing Utahns and their elected officials are to collectively commit tax dollars to education.  It also shows whether education funds are growing in line with the overall growth of Utah’s economy.  The new data from the Census Bureau show that in 2009, Utah’s education funding effort was just under $48 per $1,000 of personal income, meaning that taxes paid for public education equaled about 4.8% of all income earned in the state.  Utah’s national ranking for this effort is 26th, or right about the national average.

This ranking is a marked shift from the mid-1990s and previous decades, when Utah placed within the top 10 states for K-12 education funding effort. Many observers, thinking of past performance, still argue that Utah is exerting a heavy effort to fund education, that the state is doing as much as it can, and that per-pupil ratios are only low because Utah has so many children to educate. In reality, Utah is not exerting a heavy effort and has not since the 1990s.  Previous Utah Foundation research shows that since the mid-1990s, rather than emphasizing funding for public education, state policymakers have placed a higher priority on growth in budgets for other programs or on reducing taxes.

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This report examines Utah’s tax burden using the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest comprehensive figures on state and local government finances. Utah Foundation includes both taxes and mandatory government fees in its calculation of the tax burden. The data show Utah’s tax burden remained fairly stable between 1993 and 2008, although the burden per $1,000 of personal income fell by about six dollars from 2007 to 2008. Utah’s mandatory fee burden increased over this period; rising from $10.30 per $1,000 of personal income in 1993 to $17.54 in 2007.

This report also estimates Utah’s demand for the state’s six-largest government-funded services, revealing that Utah’s demand for elementary, secondary, and higher education services is well above the national average. The state’s demand for public welfare services and hospitals and health-related services is below the national average. The demand for highway-related services and police protection/corrections is slightly below or roughly equal to the national average.

The fact that the largest portion of Utah’s state and local direct government expenditures is for education-related services—services Utah has the highest demand for in the country—puts Utah’s comparatively high tax burden in perspective. Utah’s burden for taxes and mandatory fees is 1.7% higher than the national average, while the state’s demand for education services is 20% higher than the national average. Because Utah’s demand for government-funded services, such as education, is higher than the national average, it is important to not only consider how the burden compares to other states, but how it compares to the need for government services within the state.

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