Utah governor completes action on bond-related bills
5 min readStadium financing, a cap on local lease revenue bonds, and an effort to preserve the state’s largest coal-fired power plant were some of the measures signed last week by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.
The Republican-controlled legislature ended its session March 1,
IPA General Manager Cameron Cowan said Friday the agency’s March 8 letter to the governor requesting a veto “clearly spelled out” issues presented by the bill.
“The governor indicated that he would like to resolve these issues before July 1,” Cowan said in an email. “IPA will not be commenting on those discussions.”
IPA’s letter said the legislation puts at risk bonds the agency sold in 2022 and 2023 to finance the replacement of coal-fueled generation with a new facility run on natural gas or hydrogen.
Analysts at Moody’s Ratings, which rates the $1.6 billion of power supply revenue bonds Aa3 and Fitch Ratings, which rates them AA-minus, declined to comment on the law, which takes effect May 1.
Cowan said the last tranche of bonds for the project will be issued in the fall or next winter.
The state is putting a chunk of bonding authority behind
Cox last week signed
The state is currently home to the National Basketball Association’s Utah Jazz and Major League Soccer’s Real Salt Lake.
Starting May 1,
Ahead of the bill’s enactment, Alpine School District, the state’s largest public school system, scheduled and subsequently canceled a March 19 public hearing on $175 million of lease revenue bonds to be issued through its local building authority.
“After reviewing multiple options and possible funding sources required to build a new high school, the Alpine School District Board of Education has determined that taking action on a lease revenue bond is not necessary at this time,” the district said in a statement. “The district’s capital needs remain, and the school board will continue to study available funding options to meet those needs, including a possible lease revenue bond in the future.”
The law would limit that issuance to $86 million this year, according to Alpine, which sold nearly $165.2 million of lease revenue bonds between March 2018 and March 2023. At the end of fiscal 2023, it had
Another
Alpine, which serves several communities in the Salt Lake City area with 92 schools, is examining the
Utah lawmakers continued a
The flat personal income tax rate, which was 4.95% in 2021, was lowered to 4.85% for 2022 and to 4.65% for 2023.
A change in
“Taking that income tax fund and using it exclusively for public education does create budgeting issues when there are large surpluses and other needs where we have deficiencies,” Republican State Sen. Daniel McCay, the measure’s sponsor, said on the Senate floor when it received final passage in March 2023.
He added the amendment continues constitutional protections for education funding, but allows the revenue to be used for other state purposes “once we’ve fulfilled our responsibilities for growth and for student enrollment and for long-term inflation.”
In fiscal 2023, nearly $8.95 billion in revenue
The constitutional amendment’s passage by voters would trigger the elimination of the state sales tax on food, which passed the legislature last year in House Bill 54.
Cox urged voters to adopt the amendment, saying it would not make a difference as to how schools are funded.
“We will continue to fund education,” he told reporters last week. “(State lawmakers) found a way around the earmark every single year I’ve been involved in the legislative process. This is a great opportunity to get some things in the constitution that will help us better manage our state.”
The ballot measure faces
Cox made housing the
House Bill 572, which he signed Thursday, creates a Utah Homes Investment Program with up to $300 million transferred from the state’s Transportation Investment Fund to
“We’ll have new tools to help first-time home buyers buy a home and incentives for municipalities and developers to build more starter homes, which is part of our goal to build 35,000 starter homes over the next five years in our state,” Cox said.