Blog

Colorado Education Report Gets Attention from Media, Legislature

Written by: Dan Bammes

Utah Foundation’s report Lessons from Our Neighbor: Learning from Colorado’s Educational Success drew substantial coverage in Utah news media after its release July 7th. It was featured on the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune and on the KSL-TV broadcast PrimeTime along with several other news outlets. Utah Foundation Research Director Shawn Teigen discusses the Colorado education report with KSL-TV news anchor Deanie Wimmer   In the report, Research Director Shawn Teigen and Research … Continued

How do you Define a Generation?

Written by: Christopher Collard

This month Utah Foundation will release the fourth part of its report looking at generational differences among Utahns and their national counterparts. The first problem encountered when writing this report is defining the generations themselves. Each organization has a different generational definitions, but the table below outlines some of the more common generations as well as a few alternatives.   Most Common Generations Generation Alternate Names General Birth Cohort Greatest Generation GI Generation, Traditionalists 1910-1928 … Continued

Legislature Looks at Property Taxes for Water Systems

Written by: Dan Bammes

Utah Foundation President Steve Kroes speaking to the Utah Legislature’s Revenue and Taxation Interim Committee June 17, 2015   The Utah Foundation research report Flowing Toward 2050: Utah’s Water Outlook recommended that Utah policymakers “re-examine the role of property tax funding for water agencies, with a goal of reducing tax support and increasing water rates,” as well as creating “more significant price gradations in block-rate water plans.” The Utah Legislature’s Revenue and Taxation Interim Committee … Continued

Turning Education Funding Around

Written by: Dan Bammes

Governor Gary R. Herbert was asked about the recent Utah Foundation report on growth in Utah’s public school population during his monthly news conference at KUED on Thursday, May 14th. The report Reaching Toward 2050: Education in the Midst of Population Growth urges the creation of a long-term, statewide plan for Utah’s public schools and includes an explanation of how past policy changes have limited the funding base for the expected growth of Utah’s K-12 … Continued

Hay! One Crop is Utah’s Biggest Water Consumer

Written by: Dan Bammes

A center-pivot sprinkler system irrigates alfalfa near Snowville, Utah   A pdf version of this post including end notes is available here.   Once again this summer, all of us in Utah will be urged to “Slow the Flow” and use less water for washing, brushing and flushing. Not a bad idea – but the water we use in and around our homes represents only a small share of the total water use in our … Continued

Utah’s Health Care Conversation Moves Ahead

Written by: Dan Bammes

Those who attended Utah Foundation’s Across the Spectrum event on April 2nd got a different kind of legislative wrapup, including a discussion of the most important thing the legislature didn’t do – act on Governor Gary Herbert’s proposal to provide health care to Utahns who don’t qualify for Medicaid or for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Healthy Utah was passed in the Utah Senate, but had so little support among Republicans in the House … Continued

Tax Burden as a result of HB362 and SB97

Written by: Shawn Teigen

How will the 2015 Utah Legislature’s increases on gas and property taxes affect Utahns? It may bump our respective state and local tax burdens ranking up just a bit. While in 2012 Utah saw the lowest tax burden that we have in at least 20 years, a new analysis by Utah Foundation’s Christopher Collard shows that downward trend may stabilize or reverse by 2016 and 2017. This table is simply an estimate. The 2016 data … Continued

The most common question? What’s UF?

Written by: Dan Bammes

What’s the Utah Foundation? I hope you won’t mind a personal observation on the question I’ve been asked most frequently since I joined Utah Foundation a few weeks ago. It is, quite simply, “What’s that?” I’ve had to come up with short and long answers about what Utah Foundation is and what we do. The short answer: Utah Foundation is a public policy research group. We study and publish reports on a wide range of … Continued

Public schools shoulder the burden of tax cuts

Written by: Stephen Hershey Kroes

For many years, Utah Foundation has written about the decline in Utah’s investment in K-12 education. In the 1990s, it was common to hear about Utah’s “education paradox” – a term Utah Foundation coined to describe how a very high funding effort could yield a small amount per pupil. In 1995, for example, the proportion of income that Utahns paid for public schools ranked seventh highest in the nation, yet per-pupil funding was last in … Continued

Waiting for Tier 3: How Soon Will Cleaner Gasoline Come to Utah?

Written by: Dan Bammes

Salt Lake City disappears in a haze of particulate air pollution – January 17, 2015 Utah Governor Gary Herbert has been asking the oil refineries that serve the Utah market to make gasoline that meets the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Tier 3 standard available as soon as possible. Gasoline refined to the cleaner Tier 3 standard could have a dramatic effect on Utah’s air quality, since the majority of the pollution that gets trapped in … Continued