Let’s start with the gas tax. Historically, the idea behind the gas tax has been that it should fund construction and maintenance of roads. And for decades, that worked. But as demands increased, legislators resisted increasing the gas tax to keep up with inflation.
By 2013, Utahns were paying a lower percentage of their income toward the gas tax than they had at any time since its inception in 1929, when Studebakers and Ford Model A’s ruled the road, according to a report by the nonpartisan Utah Foundation.
Instead of raising the gas tax, lawmakers would siphon money from other programs, and that got a lot easier in 1996. Until then, K-12 education was paid for exclusively by income tax revenue, and higher education was paid for by sales tax. But voters approved an amendment to the constitution that allowed income tax money to pay for both public and higher education.
The 1996 amendment meant that all that sales tax money that had been paying for colleges and universities could suddenly be spent on other things — things like, you probably guessed it, roads.
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