Has EVERY educational technology company that made political donations in Utah gotten a state contract? Open question, but I think the answer is yes.

How do you win a statewide contract to provide educational software for schools in Utah?  You could spend time pitching your wares to individual schools and districts--I've sat through a number of demonstrations myself.  "If you use whatever program for a whole bunch of minutes each week, it will drastically improve an important skill x in the students.  We will then print reports showing that they improved."

But why waste your time thinking small?  Only 1 or 2 of our state legislators taught public school, and they hold the purse strings to much larger sums of money than the districts with much wider latitude on how to spend it.  Convince them that your product is a silver bullet--but making sure to repeat "I'm not saying this is a silver bullet"--as you hand them "research-based" reports showing your program drastically improved test scores in that one district in that one state.

Those legislators can then write a bill with a Request For Proposals (RFP's).  Those requests can be for "personalized teacher professional development plans," "special education specific reading software,"  "handheld reading devices to give reading tests,"  "reading software for preschoolers on a laptop with a dashboard," or whatever.  These open Requests for Proposals are supposed to open up a competitive bidding process that ensures the taxpayer-funded school system has the latitude to purchase the best product at the best price.  However, just Imagine the potential power in helping determine the specific wording and feature requests for one of these "open" proposals...  I've taken to calling them Referrals to Friends of stePhenson.

I was put back on this horse when I was contacted by a blogger in Arizona, a retired high school English teacher, who had read my posts on Imagine Learning and Waterford's political spending and custom RFP's.  A state senator there is running a bill opening up a $30 million RFP for reading software with a suspiciously specific list of requirements.  This teacher and his commenters tracked down the company posed to benefit from this custom bill, Utah's Imagine Learning.  He broke down the specific language of this year's bill and a past proposal to show how it was specifically crafted for Imagine Learning.  Then he posted about the fact that Imagine Learning is a paying member of ALEC and then linked to my posts about Imagine Learning's political donations in Utah that of course had nothing to do with their statewide contract.

Statewide funding to Imagine Learning was first authorized in 2008.  I obviously suspect it was in SB 2, the omnibus, but I can't find it.  Here is my post about Imagine Learning's political donations in 2009.  The system has been updated since I first wrote that, and the political donations actually started in 2008, including money given to Becky Lockhart, Carl Wimmer, Aaron Tilton, and a candidate for the Canyons School Board. 

Imagine Learning has kept up the pattern of political donations in 2010, 2011, and 2012, only with a larger net.  They have spent over $57,000 (Is part of the return on that advocacy at the ALEC conferences from the Utah legislators?) over 3 years, donating principally to powerful Republicans (Herbert most of all, Jenkins, Hughes, Urquhart, Bramble, Osmond, many others), but plenty of Democrats too, especially strong education advocates. (Carol Moss, Marie Poulson, Karen Morgan)  None of the legislators were even up for election in 2011 when Imagine Learning cheerfully donated $18,000 to various campaigns.  They also donate money to groups that are code for donations to legislators, but they don't have to put their name on the forms.  Donating to the Utah County Legislative PAC is giving money to Speaker Lockhart's control. Donations to the Utah Taxpayers Association are a donation to Howard Stephenson that he doesn't have to report either.

Imagine Learning has also partnered with the Utah State Office of Education to sponsor teams to a popular road race run in teams, Ragnar, in both 2012 and 2013.  There's nothing inherently bad about helping teachers run in a race, but any connection to learning or K-3 Reading is tenuous at best (healthy teachers is a good goal...except any teachers participating in this long race already run anyway...). I believe the firm is just cultivating influence wherever it can.  Does buttering up the USOE decrease criticism of the political nature of their contract?  I have to say the answer is possibly, "Yes."

The program was reauthorized in 2010 in HB 2.  The language is for reading software, but it apparently just continues the existing Imagine Learning contract.   Imagine Learning received $8,400,000 over 2010, 2011, and 2012, which is really a nice return on investment for their $57,000 in contributions. The amount the legislature gave the company detailed in their "accountability" report which I will discuss more in a moment.

I searched the entire list of corporate donors in Utah, and only one additional education company has donated any money since 2008.  (The big national virtual school company, K-12, had a folder, but appears to have not donated since at least 2008.) 

That one other company out of thousands of educational technology companies, iSchool Campus, spent almost $10,000, all donated to Republicans, in 2012, and...wait for it...they won a state wide contract too!  It was even publicly acknowledged that they got to help write the bill, and several representatives from iSchool accompanied the sponsor to the legislative committee presentation.  No, I am not making this up.  The bill sponsor, Sen. Jerry Stevenson, insisted the process was "fair". Sure they helped write it; sure I had them with me when I advocated for the bill; but they beat out three other vendors for an RFP they wrote, "fair" and square.

So the only two companies listed as making political donations, Imagine Learning and iSchool, got what are essentially no-bid contracts despite proposals from other companies. And Waterford paid an unknown amount of money to a contract lobbying firm headed by an ex-state senate president which in turn spent an unknown amount on gifts, meals, and other methods of lobbying the legislature via various loopholes, leading to Waterford's software being bought for individual preschoolers around the state, via last minute inclusion in an omnibus education bill.


All three companies, Imagine Learning, Waterford, and iSchool arrange for "news" articles that basically serve as free advertising with no investigation of their claims:
Imagine Learning
iSchool
Waterford

However, NO data has been released publicly on the performance of Imagine Learning or Waterford.  (iSchool just started last fall)   There have been some hyperbolic statements made by school choice people and legislators about how great they are, or anecdotal fluff like the articles above, but no proof of the software's quality or worth. There have been reports made to the legislature, but you probably haven't heard anything about them.  Howard Stephenson doesn't insist that letter grades about his expensive pet programs be mailed to every home like he does for those lazy teachers.

Here is Stephenson's Utah Taxpayers Association Newsletter from Sep. 2012.

Stephenson opines on technology in schools on pages 2 and 3.  You can see his disdain for backward teachers who don't realize that iPads are smarter than them.  The 3rd to last paragraph features his specific references to Imagine Learning and Waterford, just not by name, and his claim that they "improved student performance."  But no evidence.  That's just for socialistic reading teachers and the PTA.

The next paragraph details the "best new" iSchool pilot program.  He literally claims ALL students are on task ALL the time as they rotate on and off of the iPads.  It's magic!  And make sure you realize he had to have written this at the end of August/very beginning of September when school had been in for at most a couple of weeks in the first year of this pilot program. 

He has been finding tangentially related reasons to repeat how wonderful these schools are in every committee or floor hearing he can during the entire session. I would love to hear in the comments or via email from any teachers or staff at the three iSchool pilot schools. I listened to Stephenson during one of the first education appropriations committee meetings of the session, and on the radio, wax on about how these students were ALL glued to the screen with no disruptions all the time.  He made it sound like he was a frequent observer, while I bet he went to one of the schools one time in August.

Technology doesn't magically "personalize" and accelerate learning.  It's often handy, and students do like using iPads, but it is not a silver bullet for better reading, writing, and thinking, especially not higher level skills.  The "personalization" consists of ranking the students on a scale according to how many multiple choice questions they answer correctly, and then giving them a different ranking after the next test according to whatever unique and proprietary system of measurement that particular program develops. 

Senator Urquhart, although I frequently disagree with him, is usually someone I find willing to talk and reason with those in opposition to his bills.  But he came down hard on education officials during another educational appropriations officials, saying something to the effect that "All the elementary reading gains in Utah are due to Imagine Learning."  Really?  Based on what evidence?

Yes, Imagine Learning donated  a relatively small amount of money to his campaign.  And yes, Sen. Urquhart is also running a bill, SB 260 First Substitute, giving more money to Imagine Learning based on their claims of results. In fact, the bill allocates just over $5,000,000 to Imagine Learning for 2013-2014, which is $2,000,000 more than they've ever received in a past year.  Please look at the two-page accountability report given to the legislature which is apparently the basis of Senator Urquhart's and Stephenson's claims of increased student achievement. 

The Imagine Learning report is basically useless.  It is not an independent report generated by the users of the product, the schools or Utah State Office of Education.  It is two pages provided by the vendor detailing how they fulfilled their contract and their claims of student achievement.  They report that they fulfilled their contract by having friendly customer service, installing the program, and delivering headphones.  Then they provide a table of student skill mastery data as measured by themselves.  There is no context to understand it.  80% mastery of those concepts as defined by Imagine Learning in an unknown number of exercises would correspond with what CRT, DIBEL, or anything?   The 4th column reports much higher percentages of students with skills mastered than I get from dividing the second column of total students by the first column reporting how many students mastered at least 80% of the skills per area.  What numbers and context are missing?   This is data by the vendor to show that the vendor's program worked.  What was the chance of those numbers showing low achievement?  0%?  The data just seems cherry-picked to appear high with further results available "on request."  Take a guess how many legislators requested any more specific data... Or take a guess how many times Howard Stephenson ranted about "funding inputs" in relation to Imagine Learning's intrepid providing of headphones.

I have only done a cursory read through the extensive Waterford 3-year evaluation data.  This at least gives the appearance of rigorous comparison with the state's scores, but I have not put the necessary time in to dig through this all and see if it's valid.  This was presented by a Waterford Rep. and the first page is another mini-sales pitch. There is a claim that a test given halfway through kindergarten shows that children who used the Waterford software program score higher on a reading test than those students who did not take the test.  There are still many questions about that test, whether the difference is meaningful and will still be there in first grade, and whether the degree of any positive effects justify the cost.

Or put differently, could we accomplish the same and more by spending that money somewhere besides to one well-connected company? And why didn't Stephenson or the legislature talk publicly about this or past reports they assumably received about the Waterford UPSTART program?  There is often no real attempt to negotiate with educators about the best use of funds when Stephenson determines a software vendor can do something better than teachers. 

I was surprised, though maybe I shouldn't have been, that both "accountability" documents were written up by the vendor themselves.  The claims to "increased student achievement," merited or not, were apparently carried through the ALEC network to Arizona as well, where Imagine Learning is trying to repeat the same pattern by winning education contracts from politicians rather than educators. 

Howard Stephenson has a record believing marvelous "21st century" claims of vendors and then shilling for specific companies. (That last link has so many revealing underlined quotes.  Read and see Stephenson's numerous comments.)  A Utah district got suckered by a vendor I have had some experience with, Plato Learning, into spending over $75,000 on worthless learning "games," that last I heard are boxed up and ignored after less than a year of use.  I've attended various sales pitches in our district and a lot of them are solutions looking for problems...and really broad problems like "reading" where they can claim "It's only one piece of the process" if scores do not go up, but claim to be the definitive cause of any improvement.

Software can be an important tool, but programs are receiving state contracts via custom RFP's because they can convince or donate to one or two key legislators, or just based on the ideology that technology can more cheaply accomplish something as complex as educate a child. 

Howard Stephenson and his buddies, along with Parents for Choice in Education, are running vendor specific bills cloaked in language of open RFP's.  We know those who have openly donated in the past; we will find out more in months to come when 2013 political donation reports are due; and we may never learn if some companies are members of ALEC or the Utah Taxpayer's Association, where their payments are merely a "private transaction" rather than a bribe.  It's an open secret that is just as bad as anything John Swallow did.

It should be illegal.  It certainly isn't ethical.  And in contrast to all of their rhetoric, it is certainly not about helping kids learn.  It's all about directing easy chunks of taxpayer money to political cronies. 

Just a few 2013 vendor bills:

SB 133, SB 82, and SB 257 which are a package deal literally meant to enable a private database of individual, identifiable information of every student in Utah so vendors can use the data to sell us stuff. SB 82 and SB 257 have specific vendors already chosen by the bill sponsors.

SB 260 More money for Imagine Learning as detailed above.

SB 175 requires the state contract with an ACT Prep software company with a strangely specific $150,000 cost, leading me to believe Stephenson already knows a company will make that bid. Even though the official ACT site already has as many free test questions and study materials as I think most students need, the official ACT purchasable online prep program may be the target company here.  Its buzz words match the prewritten RFP in the bill very well. (Lines 229-258) But at $19.95 a pop, that would only cover 7500 students, not nearly enough.  This one even makes it law that districts have to "encourage" the use of the program.  No micro-managing here.

SB 79 Makes an RFP for a "consultant" to guide the state and schools in creating "blended learning models." Money can also be granted with no oversight to buy software or online curriculum material.  Who does Stephenson know who consults and has a handy set of online materials ready for purchase?

HB 343 tried to ban schools from purchasing paper books....Well why don't you try our lovely daily online reading program?

SB 284  More money for iSchool? A 1-to-1 device to student ratio pilot?

Senator Morgan's SB 31 is a "runaway bill" that doesn't help with classroom size, but we're fighting about it anyway?

Senator Karen Morgan proposed a bill, SB 31, that mandated certain small class sizes for grades K-3. The bill started out as a mandate to the legislature, to allocate the money necessary to add more teachers or paraeducators as necessary to meet these classroom size caps. The limits started out as 18 for Kindergarten, 20 for 1st grade, 22 for 2nd grade, and 24 for 3rd grade. In a very reasonable compromise, Senator Morgan later amended two of these caps to 20 for kindergarten and 22 for 1st grade.

I heard her interviewed on KSL the day I was in Salt Lake for the Utah Taxpayers Association's pre-legislative sales pitch. She explained at length about the money allocated. It would range from $12 million to $22 million if only para-educators were hired, and up to $40 something million if new teachers were hired. I believe the fiscal note on the bill originally explained this also, though it does not in its current form. Here's one article explaining this initial version of the bill and how the Utah Taxpayer's Association was against the bill.

As the article explains, the expensive bill passed the stacked Senate Education Committee, which was really the first sign that mischief was afoot. Senator Stephenson revealed his strategy in the hearing:

Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said he supports the bill and would like to see it integrated even if funding for it isn't available this year.

"If we're not able to get this fiscal note funded, we ought to push the bill forward anyway and begin to impose a standard for these grades that you have identified," Stephenson said. He suggested that since districts already receive state dollars for class-size reduction, there ought to be a standard in place to ensure they actually do it.

By the time the bill passed the 2nd Senate vote (it has to pass a committee vote, and then two votes in the Senate), it was gutted by Howard Stephenson's amendment. This article about the vote features Sen. Jerry Stevenson commenting that he wanted to make absolutely sure that the mandate didn't apply to the legislature or funding. The article also explains that the money allocated had been reduced to $3.6 million and delves into the legislators' false premises for Stephenson's amendment:

Before lawmakers approved the bill, Morgan amended it to raise the caps slightly, reducing its cost to $3.6 million. Lawmakers also amended the bill to specify that in order to continue to receive state money that’s long been distributed for class size reductions, schools would have to meet the new caps....

...Several said they liked the idea of holding schools accountable for the money they’re already getting to reduce class sizes.

A 2007 legislative audit showed that $460 million meant to make class sizes smaller in Utah over seven years hadn’t led to any change, though some have said class sizes would have been even larger if not for that money.

In an important sidenote, Ms. Schencker got a little lazy with her background info here. Her assertion about the 2007 classroom size reduction audit is apparently her summary of info given her by Senator Stephenson when she interviewed him about this same bill the month before. She just pasted in the exact same paragraph here with no explanation that this spin of the 2007 audit came from Howard Stephenson.

Let's look at what the report actually says. The 2007 audit is available online. (Hat tip to Cameron who first commented on this audit and sent me the link.) It explained that not all districts were accounting specifically for the classroom size reduction money before mixing it with their general funds. This was because the legislature specifically released them from tracking and reporting that to in part reduce the amount of reports to the legislative interim education committee, pg 14. Pgs 7-9 show that the districts specifically tracking the money used 100% on teachers to reduce classroom sizes and supplemented beyond that because the CSR money had not kept up with inflation. The next few pages explain other measures taken that indicate that it is a reasonable conclusion that the districts not tracking the money specifically still used 99%+ of the money on classroom size reduction.

The biggest reason that classroom sizes did not go down is detailed on pg 23. The legislature never once funded enough reduction money to match enrollment growth from 2001 to 2007, contrary to the language in their own statute allocating the money. Pgs 24 and 25 also explain that charter schools, many with charters already committing them to small class sizes, are also diluting the available CSR money for those districts with the largest classes.

So the audit concludes that 99% to 100% of the hundreds of millions allocated were spent appropriately to reduce class sizes, and that money still didn't keep up with student growth. This shows that the faulty Stephenson/Schencker summary of the audit should really be stated as "Of course class sizes would have been even larger if not for that money." Stephenson, Waddoups, and other legislators claiming that the large amount of classroom size reduction money "hadn’t led to any change," implying that the districts are diverting money to administration and other "fat," are purposefully misrepresenting the content of their own audit knowing that most people will never read the audit and find them out. It also shows the absolutely false premise of the current SB 31 as amended, that the districts have to be "held accountable" because they are misusing funds.

Stephenson's amendment made it so the school districts has to achieve these very small class sizes with $3.6 million or lose the $100+ million that had already been proven to be insufficient to keep up with growth. Meet a moving target with insufficient resources, or we'll take way those insufficient resources until you do. I've said it before--the legislature's mandates could make great Dilbert punchlines.

SB 31 was amended again before passing its 3rd Senate vote and moving to the House, taking out all of the money allocated. The only thing left in the bill is a mandate for districts to restrict K-3 class sizes to the prescriptive levels or lose the $100+ million that the audit has already proven to be insufficient to keep up with growth. Sen. Morgan's new comments about the bill are troubling and very different than her initial excitement to increase funding in order to reduce class sizes.

Morgan's bill would add penalties to the existing law, which could mean school districts losing class-size reduction funding if they don't meet state standards.

"I have no problem with that," Morgan said of the change. "I believe in fiscal responsibility."

"We can only do one piece at a time," she said.

"The districts can implement this with the money we're giving them," she said.

"The money we're giving them" refers to the fact that the legislature plans to increase the WPU (general funding for all public ed.) by $3 million rather than specifically allocating additional monies to the classroom size reduction mandates. Putting the money in the WPU is a very different thing. WPU changes almost every single year. WPU has gone down significantly over the last few years, with no new money for even new students. It is completely different than what Senator Morgan originally proposed. It just seems unlike her to put in a penalty as the first piece without the resources to meet the standard. She's parroting Senator Stephenson so much that I jokingly wonder about what incriminating pictures he has of her.

That last link also explains how the State School Board discussed the new state of the bill in one of their meetings and were concerned about the unfunded mandate. They discussed various options, took a vote, and ultimately left their official position as "supporting the bill in concept" just as they had before the changes. Senator Morgan heard of this or read the article, and reacted very strongly to the word "problematic" in a post to the Senate Democrats' Blog, saying that "Their lack of understanding of the state public education budget is what’s problematic." She roundly criticized the State School Board, implying that they don't care about kids if they don't support her bill--another Stephenson move--and herself supporting the false premise that the districts have not been "accountable" for the current classroom size reduction money.

I was flabbergasted when I saw her comments. It seems to me that she's staked so much of her pride on getting something...anything...passed with the words "classroom size" in the title, that she's compromised her principles and reverted to hostile anti-public ed. talking points about the State School Board. What next?

The evidence is clear Senator Morgan and the premise of your borrowed criticisms is demonstrably false. Read the audit again and evaluate the claims. I have a daughter in a 1st grade class of 30 and know how hard that is for her. That doesn't make these draconian mandates right. Your bill has been subverted from an intended aid to K-3 children and public education into a hostile bill with severe penalties for not reaching impossibly high standards. The consequences for not meeting the caps are enormous, and the nice, but not drastic benefits of a paraeducator in a classroom of 30 kids do not equal that risk. Howard Stephenson wants these classroom size caps as a way to spin the removal of existing classroom size reduction funds while also discrediting public education. Why pretend it's the school board's fault when the politicians and PCE spokeswoman quoted in these same articles are very open about their goals for "more dynamic reform?" Is your bill making those negative policies more likely to be enacted?

Please reconsider what you really wanted to accomplish and what SB 31 does now. Would a January 2012 Senator Morgan even recognize the bill? Your original called for $22 million in a dedicated revenue stream just to put a paraeducator in K-3 classrooms. You also openly hoped funding could be found to make the increased personnel actual teachers, which is a much superior option to just paraeducators. Now your bill punishes districts for not adding a paraeducator in every K-3 classroom with $3.6 million lumped into the general operating funds needed to meet other increased mandates from the legislature as well. You have empirical evidence from the audit that the districts will be unable to meet this mandate, despite being 100% responsible with the previous money. SB 31 will likely lead to *larger* classes as schools inevitably start losing the current, but insufficent, classroom size reduction assistance. You are on the verge of pushing through one of the most damaging bills in the session.

I'll end with my comments on the blog of another person I respect, Karen of the Utah Moms Care blog. Sen. Morgan apparently handed her the statement from the Senate Democrats Blog above and asked her to urge her readers to call their legislators about SB 31. She said the WPU funding was enough and implored parents to tell their legislators they value smaller classes. I am frustrated with her framing of this issue as any opponent of this mutated SB 31 must not want smaller classes for their children and said so. My young children will all be affected by large K-3 classes, but I have to bear their whole education in mind when evaluating policy.

My comments on this post are only slightly different from above, but I want to link the Utah Moms Care post as comments and conversation might happen at either spot:

I have to strongly disagree that what this bill has become is beneficial to schools. The WPU is a general resource with many competing needs, especially after the cuts of the last three years. They PR'ed it as "not funding growth," but the same amount of money (no increase 2 yrs, small increase last year) got spread over 30,000+ more students, the equivalent of a cut much larger than 1%. (Math help here anyone?...What would be the equivalent %?)

So we are at a huge low point in funding with class sizes increasing all over the state. The existing "classroom size reduction" money wasn't enough to keep up with growth, even in 2007 when funding and WPU were at a high point.

So increasing this current lower WPU amount by 1% is suddenly enough to achieve what we couldn't in 2007? And if we don't drastically rearrange resources to damage 3-6 grade class sizes (both you and Sen. Morgan know there's not all this budget fat lying around to be used "more effectively" as PCE, etc. claim), we agree to lose the much larger amount of previous classroom size reduction money that was never enough either?

Stephenson is laughing his way to the bank, getting Sen. Morgan to carry his water for him. I seriously don't get this. It seemed to me that Sen. Morgan agreed to the punitive trigger for failing to meet a damaging standard in an unwise attempt to preserve the bill when it had dedicated money, and is now holding on to this shell with no money and only the bad "reform" just to make it look like she's actually getting things done.

Then she flies off the handle with such a strident public statement when it is obvious she had neither listened to the actual discussion online or spoken with a State School Board member. The board members were much more diplomatic than me in their discussion, even those who who were concerned with the bill's provisions. And they deadlocked on their vote, leaving the official "supports concept" designation on the bill as Mrs. Ziegler pointed out above.

So instead of working with people she has worked with so well many times in the past, Sen. Morgan hands a note to you asking parents to email in support of her damaging bill? I constantly realize how little I know of the personal dynamics and relationships up there on the Hill, but this whole thing just seems strange. Framing the bill as the State School Board doesn't support small class sizes is something Howard Stephenson would do. The financial realities mean this bill has become only punitive.

Please help me see what I'm missing here...

Notes from the Utah Taxpayer's Association's pre-legislative conference

I attended the mostly informative and interesting Utah Taxpayer's Association's pre-legislative conference this morning in the Senate Building. We met in the nice Room 210 with 3 large screens for the various powerpoints we saw. It was less than half full. I counted during the private golf presentations, and there were about 82 people in the room, with a couple coming in and out from the hallway. That is counting 4 people from 2 companies looking to manage or buy government golf courses, 2 ALEC people here for a press conference afterwards, a number of legislators who were presenting bills, charter school people - Chris Bleak who presented, Carolyn Sharette, Steve, Sheldon Killpack who presented - and a bunch of guys in suits. People left after presenting and others entered. The crowd may have topped out at 90 people.

I think there were fewer than 10 "regular" members of the public in attendance counting myself, and the rest were lobbyist/insider types there for work and looking out for their respective interests. For example, the nice gentleman I sat next to ended up being a policy director for the UEA, but I Googled his name right at the end and didn't get a chance to really talk to him. Another indicator of who the meeting was really about was the list of "sponsors" on the back of the agenda who apparently paid for the handouts, the muffins and juice at the door, and probably a room fee. (Meetings of affluent lobbying groups apparently have sponsors.) They were: Billy Casper Golf, a management firm who presented for 15 min. about allowing them to run government golf courses while causing other bills to be pushed off of the agenda, Red Leaf Resources, an oil shale firm who wants favorable laws, 2 companies wanting to manage or buy our state parks: American Land and Leisure and Recreation Resource Management, Questar Gas, and Rio Tinto--both of whom have various tax, regulation, and clean air laws frequently before the legislature. But they of course did this out of the goodness of their hearts, wanting nothing in return; and our legislators would never be influenced by this, even if these companies are in fact paying clients of Senator Stephenson and the Utah Taxpayer's Association. (A law firm specializing in business litigation, and environmental and mining laws, Parsons, Behle, and Latimer, "sponsored" the 2012 Fast Tax pamphlet which is actually a very cool summary of government taxes, fees, and revenue generators in Utah. But they don't want any influence. It is just part of their charitable outreach for politicians with printing needs.)

What citizen could be cynical about conflicts of interest in our state legislature? Conflicts of interest are products of the liberal media, unless we are talking about Barney Frank or Newt Gingrich. But the real point is to never let the Utah Taxpayer's Association's euphemistic name and rhetoric mask the fact that the group is really just a lobbying firm with secret clients that makes a handsome living for its few employees, chief among them longtime State Senator Howard Stephenson. The organization and its aims are not about regular citizens; it exists purely to lobby for laws that financially benefit its secret clients. If Senator Stephenson stepped down from his influential position in the legislature tomorrow, the Association's revenues would immediately plummet.

The notes are long and fairly rushed as it was hard to keep up sometimes. Royce Van Tassell, 2nd-in-command at the Taxpayer's Association under Stephenson, was the emcee of the event. He frequently gave short introductions of the speakers and/or bills. I often wrote the presenter's name, and then wrote VT for Van Tassell, followed by his introductory comment. Hopefully, it's not too confusing. [Comments in brackets are my own thoughts about what I am summarizing.] I indicate questions with a ? followed by the question. Assume answers come from the presenter.

A traffic jam on I-15 made me 10 min. late and I only caught the last bit of Speaker Lockhart's remarks.

My notes:
Sitting by Jay Blain. Googled him right at the end and he is a UEA bigwig. I wish I had known and talked to him a little more.

Lockhart and Waddoups - Some issue will pop up. Maybe national popular vote says Waddoups.

9:19 Dougall – New revenue worst of times b/c of many requests.
1-time money: $128 million 49 gen 79 in education fund
Ongoing revenue: $280 million, 91 general, 188 in ed fund

Immediate needs:
Structural deficit 52 mill
Public ed growth 41 mill
Medicaid 68 , 44 one-time
Other Medicaid 28 M, 18 M 1-time
Legal 14 mill 1-time
Bldg myce 53 mill
1%WPU increase $23 mill
Employee bees 37 mill
Pay down debt 85 1-time

These exceed revenue coming in, both types
Reserve funds, Rainy Day gen 122 mill Ed. 110 Disaster 12
Debt level graph, Stay below line slightly below limit. Excessive debt limits flexibility. What if other downturn? 7 yr cycle? Started May 2008, 3 ½ yrs from next downturn?
Increased revenue volatility. Sales, income, corporate tax volatility increasing. Sales huge increase in swing since 1935. Even bigger in income tax. Showing Powerpoint graphs. Jay Blain points out big down swing in income coincides with Flat Tax implementation in 2007.

Lyle Hillyard on phone – US lost bond rating. Utah has never lost. 2 of 5 criteria are worrisome. 1. How much $ from Fed.? Hill Air Force Base, other firms, like the money, can’t control this area. Can control 2. How close to bond limit? We stayed at 40% historically. Now at 85% for I-15 extra length opportunity. Not stay here, but back down to 40-50% like used to be. Pressure for state bldgs to keep bond limit high. We’re pleased w/ Rainy Day Fund. Volatility might need higher than 6% gen 8% ed fund levels. Gov can make budget rec’s alone, not consensus of leg. Only see Gov final product. People see our deliberations. Go to committee, not leaders. Priority list, hearings, public process. People panic. See tough decisions. Mid Feb brings final rev estimates. Concerned w/ challenges. Uintah Basin rev up says Sen Van Tassell. Done at 9:33

Privatization concerns, 3 items.
Sen. David Hinkins – Audit Gen fund $ reduced rec to State Parks. Reward park financial perf. Business plan updated annually, max revenues, minimize expenditures. Analyze capital investment. Use lower cost staffing, seasonal employees, overlap of support staff eliminate. Reduce law enforcement cost. Reduce #, limited status, sep entity for enforcement at dept level, reduce retirement. Audit recs consider closing high cost w/ low visits, transfer to local. Privatize some, which best? 4 golf courses, 42 state parks, some heritage parks, This is the Place—if cut $800,000 they will give park back to us. So better as is. Benefit to state. Benefit to taxpayers—expect recreation in Utah. Why live here. Not looking to close any, but streamline. American Land and Leisure run Strawberry Res. Concessionaires. Most people don’t know diff. Still good. Not actually turning parks to individuals to make profit, just concessionaires. Can do more efficiently in some cases. Test case at Otter Creek St Park right now w/ concessionaire. They say their bus partnership model working. Privatization premature. Audit made parks more accountable. Now show costs of each park. Responded to requests. Costs are down. Look at all alternatives.

Billy Casper Golf Pres: Douglas White and Mike Cutler, VP’s, Dan Parkinson citizen, and Billy Casper himself. About quality. Industry rounds played way down 10%. 4.6 mill lost golfers. How retain golfers? Price quality service in parks. OP model must stop taking tax subsidies. Myths of privatization: Rates increase state approves, Res lose access, conditions worse, loss of jobs (we seek good people), service suffers. We have lower costs, expertise, buying power of nat org, municipality not manage day-to-day. Muni funds all cap improvements. Profits retained by muni. 3010 yr contract + renewals. Increased rev examples across country. Billy Casper is fav son. He comes in to clinch the deal. “I’ve never been in front of such wonderful people dedicated to the service of your fellow man. Hope you can keep up with it. Great to be with you.”
Ques from man—If eliminate Daylight Savings Time, how affect rounds? We can be creative. Manage capacity, peak and low times. [No answer, just we’ll manage.]
? Which type of 3 options do you prefer with muni? I like lease. Give up control, but pay capital. But man agreement, you retain profits. Make most sense here. Of 70 muni course, nearly 50% are leases. Van Tassel cuts off ?’s. Other providers too. Here:

Mark Whetzel local golf course managed firm: I love Billy. Since 1990, golf demand up 5% while supply up 60%. We don’t pillage, take profits for 1 yr or 2, then leave. We like long term manage deals. Prefer 10 yrs. We have 3 in N Utah, 2 S Utah, 1 in Mesquite. We like to lease to own, take all risk.
?Utah has high% of golfers right?” So fertile ground right? Yes.

[40 42. 82 people counting 4 golf company dudes, Billy, Legislators, presenters. Represent Utah?? How many lobbyists in the room?]

Rep. Ryan Wilcox – DABC restructuring. “Misdirection” powerpoint. Chuckle to self. I was an intern, then in leg. I was not happy to find myself selling alcohol as leg. I am religion against drinking. Force all Utahns into bus. Justifications. But we’re not measuring right things. DUI’s down and justification. Compared to other states we’re not doing that well b/c our low #’s mask problems. Where drunk? Why? Where teens getting? Why? Who’s irresponsible? Need to measure more and base policy on right metrics. 12 leg audits in past 2 yrs of DABC. Bad corruption and management. Big rev stream not reason for agency or justification. Always looking to sell more. Not just prob w/ last few directors—culture spans 30 yrs. Plan: Not relinquish control, but not a wholesaler or retailer. Focus on what actually reduces teen drinking, DUI’s family consequences. Use new measurement standards. We want to take baby steps, trying to talk to all parties. [Golf guy orange sweater leaves.]

VT – Water even hotter topic than alcohol. How to pay and change long term usage and needs.
Sen. John Valentine: Water allocation based on prior beneficial use. But no system on how to pay for that water. True cost of projects, delivery, and resource itself is masked b/c paid for by prop taxes. When I started in House in 1988, I saw that costs were intended to be masked. Jurisdictions say can’t do water projects on rates b/c not predictable, but say predictable enough for operations. Disconnect. Drafting bill now – phase out over 5 yr period prop taxes to water projects. Will increase water rates, but not cost of water b/c of prop tax decrease. [Kills renters??] Rural Utah cannot fund just fro rates, esp. w/ fed gov lands. CUP has big influence. Many details to work out. We should pay for water’s true cost and use, not masked in prop taxes. Low on details.
? How affect proj to dam Bear River planned 30 yrs? Should pay w/ water rates so recog cost. We hide allocation and use as if not scarce. If proj will go, has 5 yr window, then must be financed by rates.
? Across board, all users? I want to. But may have to compromise.
? Why should leg tell communities how to price services? Leg has respon for nat resources of state. City owns water right, but state has vital interest in nat resource. Can’t say air above city is only respon of city.
? How will this extend to water districts which already levy taxes? Not transparency in their budgets? These are Water Conservancy and Special districts. Must have trans period to ensure no bond defaults. [People leave after water discussion]

Chris Bleak – Head of State Charter School Assoc. – Ed is critical to state. We need fantastic ed system. Charters have grown at rapid rate since 10-12 yrs. 81 charters currently, 45,000 now, 50,000 students next yr. Lumped as 5th or 4th biggest district. Students chosing b/c so good. Focusing on disadvantaged students. Carolyn Sharette has 2 schools in SL Valley. For new immigrants. PProvide comp. 7.6% of all students. Facilities are biggest charter problem. Critical to way teach. They pay much higher % rate than normal districts. Districts can use full faith and credit state’s AAA credit rating.3 3.5 4 % Charters paying 7, 7.5, 8% despite state schools. Original charter ideas of renovating existing bldgs is not feasible b/c school bldg codes too strict. $ back to east coast bond firms. 1. Working with State Treasurer, Richard Ellis, Valentine, industry folks, to allow “moral obligation” AA rating which would save $100,000 to $150,000 per year for carters. 2. Only to those w/ strong track record of finan success, fgood management. Need Investment Grade Rating—many in state have now. No charter in country has failed in 20 yrs w/ Investment Grade Rating. Even with 2 economic downturns. 3. Create funding, State Charter Reserve Acct. Pay premium from rates to create insurance if there were a problem to protect state. Currently required to have 1-yr reserve anyway, other protections. Save $150-200 k yr per $10 mill in debt. More than 100 k in transaction fees. More buyers b/c more attractive bonds.
? W/ reg schools, district is responsible entity. Charters, the Assoc. is respon entity? Group that gets charter is governing board. Have open meeting, reporting req.s Non-profit. They bond for their school. ? WPU funding follows all students? [Weird question.] This is a state funded public school. Income $ follow. Charters manage operations off WPU.
?What is context of “moral obligation” that gets ;lower rate? State responsible if default? Some Steve guy with Bleak– County provided rate for 9 charters but not respon. Moral oblige for all students. ? Why bank would give 3% less? Not contractually required for state to back loan. But I believe state would. So better rate b/c of State's "almost" promise.

Sen. Howard Stephenson – Anti-voucher Student Opp Scholarship. Universal vouchers rejected. Unions sent out-of-state $ to say rich kids getting voucher, voters heard advertising and voted down. [Pro-voucher out-of-states sent MORE. Documented. He thinks people are brainwashed if disagree with him.] Somewhat legitimate argument that many best and brightest would leave. When I visit teachers, I ask what is biggest challenge? [When and where?] They almost always say 2-3 most diff students whether behavior - I was one of those - or low scores. I could really focus on other 24 in my room w/o the hard ones. This bill is focused soley on those 3-4 kids. If parents want to add $, they should eb able to. Not many priv schools that accept below grade level, but some. Cath schools want ELL and low performers, We can teach effectively. This will create market for new priv schools. Tax credit allowable if you donate to 501 scholarship orgs, you get 100% tax credit w/ “certain limits.” They will then grant schools w/ req’s for parents to pay part, skin in the game. Takes diff kids out of school system. Why not wait 10 yrs b/c voters rejected school choice? Arizona law was found legal by Supreme Court. OK to give public $ to vouchers, even religious schools. That’s why this bill this year. Myself and sev other legislators. Right time. Give lowest what they need b/c falling between cracks. The name has a ring to it, not a voucher. Already have Carson Smith special needs scholarship. This could be Carson Smith 2.0. Straw poll: Anti-voucher or Carson Smith 2.0. Like 1 person vs. 5 people. Most don’t raise hands. Stephenson laughs at own joke.
1 vote guy ? Union opp? Yes, already. ? School boards USOE support? No. How funded? Would take income tax credits that otherwise would have gone to public school student. System will actually have more money for studs that remain, positive fiscal note. [Billy leaving]

Sen. Margaret Dayton – Thanks to Royce and UTA. What to name Howard’s bill. Call it Student Opp Scholarship, SOS. 6-8 yrs ago opened bill to use ACT as eval for grad preparation. To compare to nation. Seemed like good idea b/c of state $ on state test. State Board sais ACT not allow that and couldn’t afford that. Former state sen. Dave Thomas, current State School Board member, now asked me to run bill to use ACT in place of UBSCT. Has multiple pos effects. 10th graders realize what need to work on or realize they are capable. Bill passed ed. interim committee. Stephenson amended bill to include another test, a military test for students who anticipate post-high school ASVAP? Ed, but not college, free to states. Still State Board rules. Concern is maybe military cuts will cut free tests. But state of Utah will provide readiness testing. Can save money through some sort of applying money toward test costs. [Didn’t understand.] Anticipated will pass quickly.

Sen. Wayne Harper – [Didn’t understand all of this.] Online retailer and phone comp must notify buyer of obligation to pay use tax. Nexus tax says if physical presence in Utah, must pay some taxes here. Like Cabela’s kiosks for online orders. Help people comply with law and make it easier for them to know. Mark Griffin – Internet industry guy – Hard for online companies b/c of diff state rates, agri taxes, school supply exemptions, etc. One state location cost us $350,000 and 2 months of programmer time to meet tax req’s. We oppose state piecemeal proposals b/c of implementation costs. Prob w/ those proposal. Putting another hurdle, info, on web transaction hurts “conversion” of want to sale. If do it on invoice, (other states want to do too) also has cost which may be more than tax collected. We get customer service calls. Cust serv calls from Utah cost us $5. [Really??] Internet not same as cash register. We need fed standard which we are working on. Nexus bill problems – This makes us collect tax to hire service guy in Utah. We stop employing Utah subcontractors to save $. State systems not good.

VT and Rep. Hughes introduce and praise Dr. Nick Trombetta. Hughes – Revolves around turf wars. We spend $3 bill yr. on ed. in Utah including all jurisdictions’ taxes. Adults fight over adult systems. This guy came to reform diff way. He was principal and Wrestling Coach in Midland, Penn, outside Pittsburgh. When steel mill disappeared, killed taxes and school. One school district. No other dist wanted cost of bussing and teaching. Students were shipped to Ohio. Trombetta would send wrestlers running down street to show public they exist. Sent from dist to dist. Midland kids would be sports, valedictorians, parents complain. Tom Ridge allowed charter schools. He is a Democrat. Dist sued over 70% costs paid to charter school. System worked. 40,000 students in 20 states getting online school from Trombetta. 11,000 in Penn on online curric. He came up against great opp b/c of turf, who controls. I want you to meet someone than for any other reason for those kids in that town. I want to see that model expanded in Utah.

Nick Trombetta – I am the son of Italian immigrants who came after WWII. My dad worked at steel mill. He taught me that good ed. is great equalizer, the American ticket to the American promise. Where you live matters in what quality of ed. you receive. We lost $ for ed programs in my town. Neighbors wouldn’t help. We had to buy services from another state. 25 person grant attracted national attention. Many wanted. In 4th yr, Rick Santorum enrolled his kids and enrollment grew to 4,000. We dedicate lives to help kids get ed. whether online or brick and mortar. In New Mexico yesterday, reservation kids online best students in area. I am a proponent of school choice and should receive bipartisan support. When inject free market, parents’ choice, good things happen to public schools too. In Penn 10 yrs ago, under Dem Gov Rendell, charters increased a lot. Opponents said 3 things would happen: 1. Will hurt pub ed and test scores down. 2. Teachers will lose jobs. 3. Dry up cash, take money away. But 3 things happened during Rendell– 1. Test scores went up statewide. 2. More teachers in Penn with less students. (Must look at that.) 3. Record surpluses. [B/C of charters or economy??]

VT – Should we be paying districts for students who left?
Sheldon Killpack – Work w/ Academica West, Charter school management – In Utah, income tax goes to operations of pub schools. Prop tax goes toward facilities. When charters created, WPU was easy. Send to charters. How make up for prop tax issue when students leave? Easiest solution rather than battle of districts taking money to follow child. What otherwise would have followed child, leg made in lieu money. This money comes off top, fund in lieu taxes, unfair to districts w/o lots of charters. Leg decided to take at least 25% of prop taxes for students. Worked. State still over $70 mill for charters. 13 yr phase in Rep. Menlove’s bill. New students’ will get prop taxes from districts into charter pot. Districts will get off top income tax money back. Local prop. $ will follow child. There is flexibility w/ funds from WPU, not from districts, Give districts flex to use prop tax money. Why don’t districts want more? Why not plan diff, fewer bldgs, more for operations. Allows parity of opportunity for districts and charters. HB 313. Money follows child.

Rep. Jim Neilson – Severance tax biggest thing of leg. Const amendment. When we sever nat resources from ground, one-time sev tax. Was put into permanent trust fund. Takes ¾ vote and Gov sig. to spend money. Only for more serious emergencies. More diff to use than Rainy Day funds. Only done once slightly after Olympics—not paid back. Some 2008 const amendment allowed leg to divert $ BEFORE going to trust fund by only majority fund. One-time monies. If we spend sev tax fund today, not there for urgent need tomorrow. New Const. Amendment to fix.

Sen. Wayne Niederhauser – Procurement code. [No idea what this is.] No major changes since 1979 American Bar Assoc. code changes. Will adopt much of modern lang. in 2000 Bar standards. Lots of clean-up. [Didn’t listen well here.] Bad code makes bad media stories. Teeth for intentional violation of procurement code.

Sen. Stuart Adams – Energy incentives.

Sen. Ben McAdams – VT says get districts out of business of helping local developers. Muni’s can charge up to 1% extra state sales tax. 50% to location of sale and 50% to location of population. $100 spent at Gateway. Local option 1%. $1 collected. .50 to SLC and .50 to statewide fund distributed based on population. SLC gets 8% of that other .50. Rough formula, not scientific, realizing population has costs. Fairly reflective of where needs fall. Mostly fair. SLC #2 in nation in daytime pop increase. 180,000 to 350,000 each day. Costs w/ that. 600 S. use 90% by non-res, police, fire, etc. Ran formula that SLC spends $280 on non-residents. [Seems fishy to me] Bro would have to spend $56,000 to make that in retail tax. Retail doesn’t do all. Tax incentives and population coming sometimes cancel out increased retail. Cities chase too much sometimes. Working w/ Rep. Nielson and Hughes, Sen. Stephenson. Add a component along w/ point of purchase and population. Add job wage $ to calculation, so not reject good jobs with costing facilities. Figure out dist. of wages and distribute some sales tax on that. Cities worried, don’t want civil war between cities. Only accept if new revenue on table. There is a federal movement to require online retailers to collect online sales tax. IF that happens, we should change dist. formula. We would see 5-10% increase. Law triggers IF fed. Law passes.

VT Sen Madsen is neighbor of mine. SB 27 film bill got wrapped up this morning.
Madsen – I’ve been working for 3 yrs on film issue. Text at 5:30 this morning that is resolved. I’ve been trying to help largest independent movie studio in world, Raleigh Studios, lots of cities, for 3 yrs. Wanted to come to Utah. Came to state about draconian local land use authority, could use only 1/6 of space. Tried to help over years. People are sovereigns. Delegate little auth to state, which then delegates further to local level. Some say leave “local tyrants.” Leg not accountable for that. I disagree. State has responsibility to ensure no gov in state turns into tyrants. How many movies could have been made in 3 yrs? How many jobs in that time? [Only money matters] If only gov understood, value of time. Gov not understand. [Lots of irony here about leg tyranny??]

Rep. Patrick Painter – HB 41 Simplify Taxes on Personal Property. Will help small business owners. Reduce audits.
? Prevent muni’s from raising other taxes to offset losses from bill? May very slightly affect prop taxes on all businesses and home owners. Makes it easier to do business.

David Crapo – SB 27 Taxpayers Right to Refund Some court ruled that individual had no right to ask for erroneously collected taxes if a vendor charged wrongly, gave to state. State not responsible if state didn’t make mistake. This amends code. State can give back even if vendor makes mistake. Puts burden on state to justify keeping $. Retroactive to help past claims.

VT Casey Anderson is w/ Speaker Lockhart, so not talking. Jonathan Williams and Megan Archer will do Utah Taxpayer’s Assoc. news conference in 15 min at cap bldg.

Stephenson and Utah Taxpayer Association's pre-legislative conference agenda: A voucher by any other name...

Long time, no blog. I'm Twittering now and again for shorter examples of the hammer coming down on Utah Public Education from powerful legislators. @UtahTeacher

Saw the Utah Taxpayers Association's agenda for their pre-legislative conference today. Lots of coded voucher varieties and increase of state control over education. Reduce local district funding and control to give the legislature more power with less opposition.

http://www.utahtaxpayers.org/?p=4153
http://www.utahtaxpayers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Tentative-PreLeg-Agenda-Agenda.pdf

Some items from the pdf agenda:
10:00 Ed. Savings Accounts = Super "Backpack funding" = vouchers that students could just keep the money if they graduated early, also they virtually eliminate districts as entities and totally gut district programs, busing, Special Ed., ELL, magnet programs, closes schools in poor areas
Further info...
Further spin...
(Talking points = It's for the children vs. greedy teachers/districts, reward high achievers, family controls education, strategically ignore effects of destroying district programs = money directly to kids will solve all problems and provide all needed)

10:05 Anti-voucher Student Opportunity Scholarship = Tuition Tax Credits = vouchers from front end of funding rather than back
10:20 HB 15 Statewide Adaptive Testing = test multiple times per year with low statistical "validity" (tied to performance pay/value-added measures) -- there is good to these as instruments, but rhetoric behind implementation and reality of multiple administrations and use as an objective data comparison = problems
10:25 Charter School Bonding - Charters get permission to use public bonds? Screw districts?
10:30 SB 10 College & Career Readiness Assessments = New UBSCT = ACT?, eventual financial penalties for schools
10:35 Eliminating Funding for Phantom Students (presented by Sheldon Killpack??)-- Their dishonest way of saying local district bonding authority will be eliminated and sales tax increased to provide more $ for charter schools. Local control is only sacred when opposing Obama.
11:05 SB 27 Taxpayers Right to Refund -- No idea, but most likely more income tax taken from schools, right?

Two reasons to sign the ethics initiative on the last day, April 15th

Two reasons:

1. In current Utah law and practice, lobbyists can be legislators.

This really shocks 90% of people I talk to along with the fact that a senator representing Utah Valley is currently both a lobbyist and a state senator. As they ask for more info, I tell them that Howard Stephenson is one of the most influential policy makers in our state, and his "taxpayers association" is really a 4-employee lobbying firm with a secret list of business clients. Stephenson's sole basis for employment is his effectiveness in achieving legislation favorable to his clients. If he votes the "wrong" way or does not push bills his clients favor, he will be fired. This is not the normal and inherent bias of a citizen legislature, but basically a man paid for his votes. Worse, since the Utah Taxpayers Association's clients are secret, you never know on a given bill whether Stephenson is being employed to vote a certain way. He cannot be objective or risk his livelihood. How can it be interpreted any differently? Recent reform bills did nothing about this practice.

2. The latest ethics reform bills passed by the legislature will not only fail to stop the vast majority of the lobbyist money coming in, but new loopholes would allow half of it to go unreported if spending spending patterns remain similar.

Bernick's analysis in the Deseret News of lobbyist gifts and meals this year reveals the distinct lack of reform.

"Despite Utah legislators' claim that they took large steps in lobbyist gift-giving reforms this year, a Deseret News analysis of new lobbyist disclosure reports finds that a new reform bill they passed would ban just $1,100 of the $71,700 spent on lawmakers so far this year...

However, the newspaper also found if the lobbyist gift-ban restrictions found in a citizen initiative petition were in effect, 99 percent of the gifts given to legislators in January, February and March of this year would not have been allowed."

The purposeful loopholes in the law just passed are even worse:

Meals costing more than $10 must come with the accepting lawmaker's name attached, unless large groups of legislators are invited. If the whole Legislature, the House or Senate, a legislative committee or a party caucus are all invited to the meal, then that expense is exempted, no matter how many actually attend. In fact, the all-invited expense will no longer even be reported by the giving lobbyist, as is the case under the old lobbyist law. Gone from the public record will be how much was spent by this or that special interest group hosting a meal for an identifiable number of legislators, no matter what that expense may be.

In the first three months of this year, $35,168 — nearly half of all gift-giving that was reported, the newspaper found — went for meals where all members or some caucuses were invited, an amount that won't be seen in future lobbyist reports.

In addition, in the 29-member Senate, the president can authorize lobbyist-paid-for trips and expenses for a senator of either political party, and that lobbyist expense won't be reported, either, under the new law. The speaker of the House also may give such a trip exemption for any representative, but by internal House rule (which was not adopted by the Senate), the speaker must disclose that expenditure and the representative who took it in a timely manner.

Bernick explains that gift giving is down 20% from last year's 1st quarter, but I have difficulty praising the legislature for accepting "only" $71,000 of gifts in a three month period rather than $89,000.

The legislators can take offense and (falsely) call the proposed restrictions and independent commission a "power grab" all they want, but that doesn't change these numbers. The state legislature wants us to believe that the vaunted free market they value so much is spending tens of thousands of dollars in just a 3 month period to accomplish nothing; these firms and special interests are so blind to their own interest that they just throw this money away without making a profit on the expenditure; and Howard Stephenson has been employed for the last few decades to not influence the incorruptible legislature. Think about that premise and either find a last minute petition to sign, or go online and sign electronically as that battle rev's up. Here are the links to the Utahns for Ethical Government initiative and also the Fair Boundaries initiative.

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Last day of the session: Howard Stephenson pushes a 75% reduction of corporate income tax late fees at the cost of 3 million education dollars a year

Take a look at the legislative calendar for the last day of the session. If you click on the box labeled Senate Bills under the House menu, you will see the queue of Senate bills waiting to be considered by the Utah House of Representatives today. There are two consecutive bills by Senator and registered lobbyist for the Utah Taxpayers Association (A euphemism for Utah Big Business Tax Reduction At All Costs Advocacy Association), Howard Stephenson, SB 186 and SB 64.

Senate Bill 64

SB 64 had already been on my "to blog" list, but Rolly beat me to it the other day. When I had first checked out the bill after seeing it pop up, I read the first few lines of the text through the "Highlighted Provisions" and just started laughing. To anyone following Gehrke's and Rolly's coverage last December of Stephenson unethically advocating for state contracts for ProCert , the intent is obvious. (Those 2 links lead to just the comments from the articles because of the Trib's lame archival policy. I'll post the text to the articles and an editorial in the next few weeks when I review the controversy and explain why "professional textbook review" is a total crap corporate giveaway.) The legislature would form an Administrative Rules Review Committee composed of 10 permanent legislators, plus 4 leaders of specific committees for each bill review, to check if state employees are acting legally (line 55), to ensure that they "comply with legislative intent" and that the legislature is allowed to slowly usurp the executive branch's functions(line 56), to certify that business taxes go down (lines 57-58), and to badger the State Office of Education to hire ProCert. The bill curiously has no fiscal note even though it requires this new committee of up to 14 legislators to meet once a month (lines 35-37), and I highly doubt they'll be meeting without receiving their per diem. Finally, the bill gives this mini-inquisition of intent power to spend their time examining basically anything they want:

60 (c) (i) To carry out these duties, the committee may examine any other issues that it
61 considers necessary.

Senate Bill 186

And as bad as that is, SB 186 could be worse. I'm trying to be fair and not claim dishonest intent without sound evidence, but the bill was certainly not presented accurately by its sponsor nor vetted completely by the Senate committee or body. Help me here. Listen to the audio (Click on "Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee 2/18" under the Audio Recordings of Debates heading. When 17:49 of audio pops up, just know that only the first 8 minutes concern SB 186). Does Senator Stephenson mislead the Senate Revenue and Taxation Standing Committee about the larger impact of a nice little bill to encourage individuals to pay their late taxes promptly?

0:00 Sen. Stephenson starts out, speaking from the committee dais of a committee he sits on rather than taking the floor, and says that "the bill in large part was brought by the tax commission," but then mentions that "tax practitioners" (What or who does that mean? Those members of the UTA who pay taxes?) asked for a reduction from 2% to .5% in late fees "for failing to pay certain income taxes." Senator Business Lobbyist doesn't mention that these are largely corporate franchise and income taxes and avoids the topic for the rest of the bill's hearing.

From about :30 to 2:30 in the recording: He invites a tax official, Bruce Johnson, to explain the innoucous, common sense part of the bill . They are giving individuals submitting their taxes late a break for the first 15 late days, allowing them to pay less than the normal 10% late fee in order to encourage rapid submission. Plus, they are coordinating with a new computerized tax system, GenTax. Lines 67-313 of the bill deal with this graduated partial grace period. That sounds fine, but I was looking at the enormous fiscal note and wondering how cutting the late fees on people for a few days was going to cost the education fund over 3 million dollars a year.

2:34 Sen. Neiderhauser asks Stephenson if the bill has a fiscal note.

2:37-3:13 Sen. Stephenson says he doesn't know, gets handed an incorrect fiscal note for a couple hundred thousand dollars total cost in 2010 and 2011 (which from things said later in the recording, I believe shows the cost of just the 15 days reduction in penalties for individuals proposed and discussed by the Utah Tax Commission), and is unable to decide if the lost revenue is from the General Fund as he first claims or the Education Fund (income tax), which I also believe also shows his change from the original intent since Bruce Johnson firmly thought it was a General Fund reduction.

He then takes awhile to explain that passing this before the GenTax system comes on line is important.

4:47-6:23 THE INFURIATING PART Senator Valentine both illustrates the potential for a committee to thoroughly examine proposed legislation and weigh its ramifications...AND the "You scratch my back..." mentality of "I don't want to hold up the bill" even though I have no idea how much it costs and it is obvious the sponsor has no idea either.

. - 4:47 Sen. Valentine asks about lines 322 and 326-330 and explains that those heretofore undiscussed corporate franchise and income tax late fee cuts, as well as penalty reductions for late individual income taxes, come out of the Education Fund. I start to see where the $3 million cost was coming from.

. - 5:25-5:56 Sen. Stephenson is confused by the dates in that updated portion of the bill. Sen. Valentine reads the bill quickly and accurately and explains that the penalty rate reduction from 2% a month to .5% a month in income tax is the source of the reduction in revenue for the bill from the Education Fund.

. - 5:57-6:09 More evidence that Stephenson subverted the bill. Bruce Johnson of the tax commission pipes up and says "That was the reduction in rate that you added Senator and I didn't look at that...but it would appear to me that it should be education funds." He had no idea about the intent or effects of Stephenson's business-friendly "additions" which clearly DID NOT apply to his explanation of the original intent of the bill. I am very, very suspicious as to why Sen. Stephenson would not understand that cutting the penalty on large, corporate income taxes by 75% per month would have a huge net effect on state income. In fact, from his testimony, it appears that Stephenson is largely unfamiliar with that part of the bill and I suspect the corporate franchise and income tax penalty reduction was a late business lobby addition after the original bill went to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst and came back with the smaller general fund reductions mentioned around the 2:45 mark.

. - 6:09-6:25 Sen. Stephenson will request a new fiscal note, Valentine doesn't "want to hold up the bill because I understand exactly its need..." but he wants to be accurate about which budget they're dealing with in the "tight budget year." If Valentine really cares about fiscal responsibility and understands the need to encourage prompt payment of late taxes (the first 313 lines of the bill), why doesn't he demand real information about a hastily added section of the bill that encourages late payment by reducing the penalties associated with large corporations paying their franchise and income taxes on extensions by 75%? (Lines 314-330)

6:25-6:51 Sen. Valentine begins follow-up question possibly addressing my concern about the intent of the bill to encourage prompt filing, and...Sen. Stephenson interrupts because he has finally figured out that he has the wrong fiscal note.

6:55-7:08 Jokes about perjury and whether it was intentional or merely negligent oversight...Possibly both in my opinion...

7:09-7:37 Sen. Niederhauser declares they won't ask questions because they don't have a fiscal note and opens it up to the public who surely had no idea what was going on.

7:37-8:08 Senator Valentine moves they pass the bill anyway and the committee unanimously votes in favor of the bill with "encouragement" to get the fiscal note. My opinion of committees as largely being political softballers which only scrutinize certain bills for political or ideological reasons is confirmed.

Now the floor debate:

Click on the Day 35 debate. It's 6:03, including liberal amounts of downtime and a role call vote. (The bill name links to audio, or you can click on the day and scroll down the list to SB 186 for video.) A couple weeks have passed since the committee hearing, and Sen. Stephenson now rises and says absolutely nothing about the story that got him through committee, encouraging the prompt payment of late taxes. He says nothing about those 15 grace days of reduced penalty. Instead he jokes they are going to make Utah as friendly as the IRS, gets a laugh, and now sorrowfully announces that the tax decrease will cause a fiscal note, explaining nothing specific or even what was requested at the end of the committee hearing. The lame highlight comes from 1:30 to 3:00 on the recording. Sen. Okerlund asks Sen. Stephenson to explain the fiscal note--remember, this $3-million-a-year ongoing hit to the Education Fund from 2010 onward was presented as as a two-year $125,000 cut in the General Fund during committee. Sen. Stephenson asks Okerlund questions back, hems and haws, followed by an awkward pause, and explains nothing. Sen. Okerlund, however, appears a bit reluctant to admit he has no idea what the bill is doing and especially why. No one understands what the one-time money that is shown as income means, including Sen. Stephenson. It makes me so mad when legislators have no idea what they are sponsoring because they are just acting for some lobbyist!! The next day, Sen. Stephenson gives an explanation from the Fiscal Analyst...how many do you think really understood it? I didn't.

Click on the Day 36 debate. It's a whopping 2:52 long. Stephenson gives the canned explanation and the bill passes with a unanimous vote. Whenever the legislators brag about how much careful, unbiased, non-lobbyist-influenced deliberation they give policy, I just think of crap like this. You could have taken a roll call for justification of SB 186 right after the vote, and I bet not one senator, with the possible exception of the sponsor, could have done more than repeated Stephenson's sorry excuse for an explanation that "It makes us not as mean as the IRS." I wonder how many even looked at the fiscal note which Stephenson purposely avoided announcing out loud.

Recap

1. Sen. Stephenson presented the bill as one thing during committee, and emphasized the opposite on the floor. His lobbyist interests seemed to conflict with the goals of his Tax Commission partners who helped draft the bill. (This seems familiar...)

2. NO ONE ELSE EVEN CARED!! Sen. Stephenson could not satisfactorily answer one question in committee or on the floor. If a PTA lady speaks in support of a bill in committee, Bramble, Stephenson, and Dayton grill her. If the powerful Senator Stephenson is completely unprepared, cannot answer basic questions about the reasoning behind his bill, omits that his bill costs 3 million dollars a year, and disingenuously changes his story from place to place, while other legislators vote for a bill they obviously know nothing about....that's fine. And once again, they will tell us it's the media's fault the public distrusts the legislature.

3. Sen. Stephenson is mucking around with HB 2, trying to shift charter school costs to districts, which regardless of substitute version cuts all training days and Career/Technical budgets and portions of everything else, while sneakily cutting over 3 million education dollars a year through a fee decrease that almost exclusively helps corporations. (I'm not sure what happened to the laptops for preschoolers Upstart program. Does anyone really know if that money was spent this year or has been cut?)

4. Weber County Forum and Ogden County Forum have been featuring well-reasoned pleas for the state or county to collect late property taxes...so Senator Stephenson goes and makes it easier for corporations to delay payment of corporate franchise and income taxes. The regular Joe Taxpayer's burden gets a little heavier.

Any legislative interns reading this, please ask your legislator to ask one question of Rep. Harper, the House sponsor, when SB 186 comes up for debate this morning. Why does the majority of the bill encourage prompt payment of late taxes, but the small expensive part encourages LATE payment of owed taxes? Seriously. And for a difficult bonus question, ask: Why are you stealthily cutting $1 1/2 million from education next year and $3 million every year after that?