Child care certainly received its fair share of discussion this legislative session, but did anything really happen? The short answer is kinda. Here’s what happened.

During the session, Voices for Utah Children teamed up with parents, child care professionals, and early childhood advocates to lobby the state legislature for more than $260 million to stabilize Utah’s child care system. This was, admittedly, a big ask. But the requests highlighted the reality of the child care sector’s needs. Many of the state funding requests aimed to replace expiring federal pandemic money that has been propping up the sector. This emergency federal funding will begin to end in June 2023 and will fully expire by June 2024. 

Child Care Stabilization Grants, Rep. Andrew Stoddard
Federal Child Care Stabilization Grants have been a lifeline for Utah's child care sector. Child care providers have indicated the lack of ongoing stabilization funding will result in one or more of the following three outcomes: child care programs will close, tuition will be raised for families, and/or employees will have lower wages. This funding would have allowed for a one-year extension of the stabilization grants currently received by hundreds of child care providers in Utah. 
Requested: $216 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Retention Incentives for Early Childhood Professionals, Sen. Luz Escamilla
In 2022, federal funding allowed Utah's Office of Child Care issued $2,000 bonuses to eligible workers serving in child care positions to provide recognition for their critical work throughout the COVID pandemic and to improve retention within the field. 9,368 child care professionals received retention incentives through this program. This funding request would have continued this incentive program for an additional two years while structural reforms were pursued. 
Requested: $38 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Regional Child Care Development Grants, Rep. Ashlee Matthews 
Through federal funding, Utah's six Regional Care about Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies supported new programs for rural outreach, small business training, start-up grants, and professional development. This funding would have continued these grants for another three years to continue programming that works to expand child care access and improve care in both rural and urban areas.
Requested: $2.1 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Child Care Licensing-Related Fees, Rep. Ashlee Matthews
With COVID-relief funding, the Office of Child Care Licensing has waived the fees associated with licensing in order to lessen the barriers to expanding, maintaining, and opening new child care programs. This funding would have extended this fee coverage for another three years as the state tackles the child care crisis. 
Requested: $3 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Child Care Solutions and Workforce Productivity Plan, Sen. Luz Escamilla
A priority of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity’s Women in the Economy  Subcommittee, these funds will support strategic planning for child care solutions.
Requested: $250,000
Outcome: $150,000

Legislation

HB 167: State Child Care, Rep. Ashlee Matthews & Sen. Luz Escamilla
This bill provides the framework for State agencies to convert empty state buildings to on-site child care. It will allow private providers to rent the space and operate from the facility, creating greater access to child care for employees and the greater community.
Outcome: PASSED

HB 170: Child Tax Credit Revisions, Rep. Susan Pulsipher & Sen. Daniel McCay
This bill provides a non-refundable yearly tax credit of $1,000 per child between the ages of 1-3 for families making between $43,000–$54,000 per year. Because the bill’s original intent was to help with the cost of child care, we’d like to see this expanded to help children ages 0-6, as it did in the original bill. This legislation makes Utah the 13th state with its very own state child tax credit.
Outcome: AMENDED VERSION PASSED 

HB 282: Child Care Sales Tax Exemption, Rep. Christine Watkins
This bill would have allowed for a sales and use tax exemption for construction materials used to construct or expand a child care program.
Outcome: BILL NEVER HEARD IN COMMITTEE

Advocacy

While our policy wins feel small, it was a stellar year for child care advocacy. We hosted our first Child Care Advocacy Day, where we welcomed over 100 parents, kiddos, providers, and supporters of child care in Utah’s Capitol Rotunda! The turnout far surpassed expectations and we hosted many new faces. We look forward to continuing to grow our network of child care advocates and working on solutions to child care during the interim. 

To learn more about child care advocacy in Utah, visit UtahCareforKids.org.

Congratulations, Utah parents and educators! Together, we did it. Funding for optional full-day kindergarten is now a reality for schools statewide. 

The Utah Legislature passed HB477, "Full Day Kindergarten Amendments," sponsored by Rep. Robert Spendlove (R-Sandy). This bill establishes the same flexible, stable funding stream for full-day kindergarten as currently exists for all other grades of public school, first through twelfth. Last week, Governor Spencer Cox signed this historic bill into law! 

(Click here to jump to our four-minute explainer video, which is also included at the bottom of this page)

Does this mean that next school year, every family in Utah will have the opportunity to enroll their kindergartner in a full-day program in their neighborhood school? Unfortunately, no. It DOES mean that the number of families who will have access to full-day kindergarten will increase dramatically - we estimate between 60% and 65% of kindergarteners will be able to enroll in an optional full-day program during the 2023-24 school year. This is is a huge leap from fewer than 25% just five years ago!

The passage of HB477 means that next school year (2023-24), every district and charter elementary school will have the opportunity to offer optional full-day kindergarten, using this new state funding stream. 

In order to offer more full-day kindergarten, schools must have more classroom space, more teachers, and more equipment like tables and chairs. Some school districts and charter schools have spent the last several years making plans to overcome these challenges, and will be ready to offer optional full-day kindergarten to most, if not all, of their local families in the coming school year. 

Some elementary schools are not quite ready to take advantage of this opportunity. These schools will need some time to overcome the challenges of: 1) limited classroom space; 2) recruiting new teachers; 3) purchasing new materials and equipment; 4) busing adjustments; and other practical issues. This is true particularly in some of our large, suburban school districts, such as Jordan, Davis and Alpine. Other small- and mid-size districts face some of these issues, as well. 

We estimate that it will take between three and five years before all Utah families have the opportunity to enroll their child in a full-day kindergarten program. Based on the popularity of newly expanded full-day programs in different parts of the state, we expect to see more than 90% of parents opt for full-day kindergarten for their children when it becomes available to them. 

The best way to find out whether your local elementary will be offering optional full-day kindergarten during the 2023-24 school year is to contact the current principal of that school (or the director, in case of charter schools) and ask them directly! Not only will this help you to plan for your family's schooling schedules, but it will help our local education leaders assess how much community interest exists for more optional full-day kindergarten. 

In case you were worried, the new law preserves parents' right to enroll their child in a half-day program, and does not make kindergarten mandatory. There is nothing in the law that tells districts and charters how much optional full-day kindergarten they must offer to their communities, or how soon they have to do so. HB477 was created to be as flexible as possible, allowing local communities to decide the right mix of half- and full-day programming for them. 

Thanks to all the hard work of education leaders, insistent parents and committed community advocates, we have finally accomplished state funding for optional full-day kindergarten in Utah! We especially appreciate the commitment of the United Way of Salt Lake and the Utah PTA, our core partners in the Utah Full-Day Kindergarten Now Coalition.

Of course, this would not have happened without the support and leadership of State Superintendent Sydnee Dickson, Sara Wiebke, Christine Elegante and other superhero staff at the Utah State Board of Education. We owe a lot to our bill sponsor, Rep. Spendlove, and the other legislative champions like Senator Ann Millner who have been key to this effort in the past (former Reps. Lowry Snow and Steve Waldrip, we are looking at you!). 

The Legislature finished its 2023 General Session last Friday evening, March 3rd. In the area of tax policy, we've prepared the chart above to summarize the tax cuts passed this year. 

The tax cuts that will go into effect in the next year add up to $408 million. Three-fifth of that amount goes to the highest-earning one-fifth of Utahns, and four-fifths goes to the top two-fifths. That leaves just one-fifth for the 60% of Utahns earning under $92,000. Unfortunately, these changes do nothing to improve the overall regressivity of Utah's current tax structure. 

The picture improves slightly if we count the $200 million elimination of the state sales tax on unprepared food. Because the food tax is the most regressive element of our most regressive tax, removing it does reduce (but not eliminate) the regressivity in Utah's tax structure. (This part of HB 54 will only go into effect in 2025 if voters approve a Constitutional amendment ending the earmarking of income tax for education in November 2024. That earmark was broadened in 1996 to add higher education and again in 2020 via Amendment G to add all programs for children and for disabled Utahns to the permitted uses of income tax revenues.)

To clarify, we consider Utah's overall tax structure to be regressive because the highest income Utahns pay the lowest share of their incomes in state and local taxes, based on the analysis at www.ITEP.org/WhoPays/Utah. 

We welcome the proposed elimination of the grocery tax and the reduced regressivity it would bring, especially since it benefits all low-income Utahns, including the considerable number who never file a tax return. We also welcome the much smaller but still beneficial impacts of the new non-refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) and slightly expanded non-refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Here are some specifics on those: 

• Elimination of the $200 million state grocery tax reduces taxes on the lowest-income fifth of Utahns (those earning under $31,000) by $18 million, and it reduces taxes on the lowest-income two-fifths (those earning under $59,000) by a total of $48 million.
• The new Child Tax Credit (CTC) reduces taxes for those same two-fifths of Utahns by $9 million. It also makes Utah the 13th state with our own CTC, though NCSL's website indicates that ours will be one of just four that are non-refundable. 
• The slightly expanded Utah EITC adds a reduction of $1 million for the low- and moderate-income 40% of Utahns. Sadly, it still excludes the lowest-income 80-90% of Utah's federal EITC recipients because it remains non-refundable.

Those three tax reductions add up to $58 million for low- and moderate-income Utahns, which means that less than 10% of the overall tax cut reaches the 40% of the population that needs it most. (For more about why refundability is critical for the effectiveness of family tax credits like the ETC and CTC, please visit https://www.utahfamilytaxcredits.org/learnmore/.)

Unfortunately, the majority of the $608 million in tax cuts goes to Utahns earning six-figure incomes, who neither need nor are asking for tax cuts. In fact, the survey conducted during the legislative session by the Deseret News and Hinckley Institute found that just 18% of Utahns wanted a tax cut. The overwhelming majority supported investing more in education, infrastructure, saving the Great Salt Lake, and other building blocks of Utah's future prosperity and success: 

 This result is consistent with previous polling on the question of whether Utah should be cutting taxes. Previous polls include....

• Deseret News/Hinckley Institute 2022
• Deseret News/Hinckley Institute 2021
• Deseret News/Hinckley Institute 2020
• Utah Foundation 2020
• Envision Utah 2020

Clearly the public is more concerned than Utah's political leaders about the billions of dollars in unmet needs identified by the Invest In Utah's Future coalition. The public is probably also aware of the two biggest problems with cutting the income tax: 

1. Cutting the income tax leads to higher property taxes as the local districts struggle to make up the lost education revenues. And in fact, the last 14 years have seen inflation-adjusted per-student local education revenue (from property taxes) rise 12% while inflation-adjusted per-student state funding (from the income tax) fell 2.5%. Given the spike in local property taxes in the last year or two, it was disappointing to see that the Legislature failed to pass even very modest measures like HB 260 that would have devoted $5 million to expand eligibility for the state's property tax relief programs to more low- and moderate-income households. 
2.  Cutting $400 million from the income tax breaks down to well over $500 per student diverted from the main source of education funding. For the median income family of four, they gain about $200 in tax cuts -- but lose over $1,000 that now will not be invested every year in their own kids' education. 

Unfortunately, the Utah Legislature has proven once again that it is all too ready to give in to the tax cut temptation, even though Utah already has the 7th lowest taxes in the nation according to WalletHub, and despite the fact that we are already a top 10 state nationally for our business-friendly taxes, according to the Tax Foundation. 

           *****           *****         *****          ******

WE'VE POSTED A VIDEO WALK-THROUGH OF THE CHART ABOVE AT https://fb.watch/jcAUe4-Rqr/ 

To date, the state legislature’s minimal efforts to address Utah’s complex child care crisis are completely out of proportion to the scope of the problem. 

None of those efforts have offered much relief for Utah families with young children who are struggling with the rising cost of child care. They certainly don’t contemplate the urgency of the impending “federal funding cliff” that is about to push child care costs even further through the roof. 

Policy proposals that require a meaningful investment of state dollars - and pretty much all the effective ones will - have been ignored by elected officials. 

Before the session ends on March 3rd, however, the legislature has a chance to pass legislation that would actually provide financial relief for some families with young children. 

Yes, it will require state investment - but the one kind of investment that legislators seem most enthusiastic about: a tax cut!

Well, a tax CREDIT, which is sort of like a tax cut for the Utahns who qualify. 

Representative Susan Pulsipher (R-South Jordan) has introduced a narrowly-tailored Child Tax Credit, which would allow families to claim up to an extra $1,000 per child each year, to help cover a small portion of the staggering costs of caring for a child. Families that make more money can claim a smaller amount, on a sliding scale. 

The bill is House Bill 170: Child Tax Credit Amendments (originally named "Child Care Tax Credit Amendments). It has only recently moved forward in the legislative process, after its initial introduction in mid-January. With just a couple of weeks left in the session, there is still a chance that this tax credit - with a price tag of less than $41 million - could be included in whatever tax package the legislature inevitably passes. 

Rep. Pulsipher’s goal is to help families who still struggle to afford the costs of raising young children. 

The money they save with this tax credit can be used by families in any way that works for them. If a parent stays home, it can help cushion the financial burden of having a one-income household. If both parents work, it can be used to cover the costs of child care while they are working. 

There are a few catches, though:

• This $1,000 tax credit can only be claimed for children who are under the age of six at the time you file your taxes. Child care costs go way down for a family once a child is enrolled in school. 
• In order to be eligible, your household must meet certain household income requirements (for example, a household with a joint filing status must be less than $56,000 to quality for the full amount of the credit).
• If your family makes more than a certain amount of money, you can still claim this tax credit, but it is phased out based on your household income. 
• If you don’t end up owing any income taxes when all the math is said and done, you won’t get a check in the mail from the state for each child. This tax credit would be “non-refundable.” That means the tax credit can only be used to put a dent in the income taxes you owe; it can’t put extra money in your pocket if your income taxes calculate down to zero. 
• You won’t be able to claim the tax credit THIS YEAR. Or even next year. It would go into effect when you file your 2024 taxes in 2025. 

Even with these strict parameters, we think having a Child Tax Credit available for some Utah families is a great step toward grappling with our state’s child care problems in a meaningful way. 

HB170 offers legislators an opportunity to show they are willing to invest in families with young children in the face of a crisis that is about to get a lot worse. We hope they take it!

Write to your legislators about HB170 “Child Tax Credit Amendments!”

During the pandemic, the child care sector was decimated. Nationally, 16,000 childcare programs permanently closed and 100,000 workers left the industry entirely. But even before the pandemic began, Utah only had enough licensed child care to meet about 35% of our state child care needs.

Nationally, more than 3 million child care spots were saved by American Rescue Plan Funding. And Utah actually bucked the trend of closing child care programs. Thanks to federal intervention, Utah has more licensed child care slots available to families than before the pandemic began in 2020. This was thanks to federal funding that infused desperately needed investment into the long-ignored sector. Utah received close to $600 million in extra federal funding, starting in 2020, during the COVID pandemic to help keep child care businesses open so parents could continue to work.

This money will soon be completely spent. By June 2024, Utah will run out of money for almost all of the COVID-era support for our child care system. The following chart details the costs lost per county.

The majority of these funds went to Child Care Stabilization Grants, dispersed by the Utah Office of Child Care. These have been one of the most important factors in allowing Utah’s child care sector to survive, and even expand. Since last January, the Office of Child Care has distributed $189 million of ARPA and CRRSA funds directly to child care programs statewide to ensure that they can continue to operate despite workforce shortages and rising costs of food and materials. The size of the grants are based on the licensed capacity of the eligible program.

More than 1,000 licensed and exempt programs are currently receiving monthly stability grants. Since the beginning of this program, around 1,500 programs have benefitted, serving more than 80,000 Utah children.

With these grants, child care programs have been able to do several critical things:

• Hire enough staff to ensure that their full program capacity can be utilized;
• Raise the wages of at least half of their workers to $15/hr, so they have even a slim chance of competing with fast food establishments and retail chains;
• Keep tuition costs down for families that are also struggling with inflation;
• Pay for critical facility maintenance needs that have been unmet previously due to cost.

The other major program that sustained Utah’s child care sector was the Youth and Early Care Workforce Bonus, dispersed by the Utah Office of Child Care. Utah joined dozens of other states in using federal child care stabilization funding to pay child care workers a bonus of $2,000 per individual. This was meant to acknowledge the work and sacrifices of child care workers - most of whom remained working throughout the pandemic - as well as incentivize their continued participation in the field.

Before the pandemic, Utah’s median hourly wage for child care educators was $10.47, on average less than a dog walker. $2,000 represents as much as 10% of the average child care worker’s annual income, making the bonus incredibly impactful for providers and their families. 9,368 early care and education professionals received this bonus.

The funding above shows the combined amounts lost per county due to emergency funding expiration. But it is a floor, not a maximum. The totals do not take into account funding used for:

• Co-pay Coverage: Cover co-pays for families that use child care subsidies (ranges between $19-$807 per family): $18,181,881
• Licensing-related Fees Coverage: Cover the costs to eliminate barriers to licensure: $1,200,000
• Regional Child Care Development Grants: Grants for regional Care about Child Care agencies to expand child care access and improve care: $2,003,244
• Training and Education: Numerous professional development, continuing education, and training scholarships: $5,734,424

This over $572,000,000 of federal funding will soon end, destabilizing the child care sector. To read about the impacts, see our blog post: Utah's Child Care Crisis is About to Hit a Whole New Level.

To see the breakdown of child care funds per county, see the full excel file here. To request a city or town breakdown, please contact .

To learn more about our campaign to invest in child care, go to UtahCareforKids.org.

At two large pre-legislative events in the second week of January, hundreds of attendees heard Utah's Senate President proudly assert that Utah was the only state that increased education funding during the pandemic. 

Every year, especially around the end of every legislative session, Utah's political leaders proclaim that they are putting record amounts of funding into education. 

Unfortunately, these claims are contradicted by the data published by the Utah State Board of Education in its Superintendent's Annual Report. 

Real FY21 and FY22 State + Local Education Funding Did Not Rise -- It Fell

These data are from the USBE Superintendent's Annual Reports, adjusted for inflation using the standard CPI-U inflation index from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. They show that Utah's real (inflation-adjusted) state + local education funding fell in both FY21 and FY22, both in total and on a per-student basis. (During those two fiscal years, the Utah Legislature passed over $300 million in income tax cuts.) 

State Education Funding Has Fallen While Local Education Funding Has Risen

We have heard legislative leaders assert every year that they have appropriated record amounts for education. We have also sometimes heard them say that local education funding (from property taxes) has not kept up, and that is the reason that overall education funding is inadequate to reduce Utah's largest-in-the-nation class sizes or address our high rates of new teacher turnover. Yet the data from USBE show two trends that contradict these claims, as illustrated in the chart above: 

1. 1. Real per-student state education funding was 2.5% lower in 2022 than in 2008 (the peak year for education funding before the Great Recession). 
   2. Real per-student local education funding was 12% higher in 2022 than in 2008. 

It is also worth noting, in this context, that permanently cutting the state income tax rate, as the Legislature has done in recent years and is considering doing once again this year, tends to put additional pressure on local property taxes to make up the difference for schools. The income tax and the property tax are the two main sources of funding for education. If policymakers intentionally and repeatedly undermine one of them, that inevitably creates pressure to increase the other (or allow it to increase naturally, as has happened the last two years with property taxes as home values have shot up).  

Can We Have Record Education Funding and Record Tax Cuts?

Legislative leaders have used their incorrect claims that Utah increased education funding during the pandemic to bolster their case that Utah can have it all -- record high levels of education funding and record tax cuts. But USBE data reveal that, in fact, we cannot have it all, that tradeoffs exist, and that hard choices must be made. If we have record tax cuts, we likely will not have record levels of education funding. If we want to strengthen education finance for the long-term betterment of our children and our state, we ought to consider what we are giving up when we give in to the tax cut temptation.  

One Final Comment: Inputs vs Outcomes

Needless to say, this entire discussion concerns only inputs to, not outcomes of, our K-12 public education system. But, as one superintendent wisely observed over a decade ago, "We cannot have the best school system in the country and be the lowest in the country in funding. We can't be first if we're always last." 

While there is little doubt that Utah does more with less in our public schools better than probably any other state, there are several key educational outcome measures that most concern Voices for Utah Children: 

• Our high school graduation rates are no higher than or below national averages for nearly every racial and ethnic category. 
• Our high school graduation rate gaps between haves and have-nots and between majority and minority groups are larger than nationally.
• Our rate of college degrees, an area where Utah's older generations outpaced the nation, has fallen behind the nation's among our younger generation, the Millennial generation, based on Census data for Utahns age 25-34. 

Closing these gaps and regaining our once enviable lead will require substantial new investments at every step in the pipeline, from expanding pre-K and full-day kindergarten options to reducing class sizes and new teacher turnover in our elementary, middle, and high schools, to ensuring that more of our sons and daughters finish what they start at our public colleges and universities. 

 Note: The charts in this blog post are from Voices for Utah Children's forthcoming "Children's Budget Report 2023" that will be published in February 2023.

Both graphs are available for download here. 

Methodology and Location of Data  

Utah’s education funding rises each year, but so does the student population. And prices rise due to inflation, which has been worse the last year than in 40 years. So how can we judge whether education funding is really going up, as our political leaders always claim? There is one metric considered to be the gold standard for this purpose: inflation-adjusted per-student spending. To calculate this metric, you need three pieces of data. The locations of these items are detailed below:

1. State, Local, and Federal Education Spending

Source: Utah State Board of Education Superintendent’s Annual Report at www.schools.utah.gov/superintendentannualreport

Direct Document Link: Statewide Total: Revenue and Expenditures by Fund, June 30, 2022 https://www.schools.utah.gov/file/674392fc-3946-4ba2-ba19-da7f024f3fe5 

Comments: In the charts above, we used the state and local education spending data

2. K-12 Student Population

Source: Utah State Board of Education Superintendent’s Annual Report at www.schools.utah.gov/superintendentannualreport

Direct Document Link:  Fall Enrollment by Grade Level and Demographics, October 1, School Year 2022-2023  https://www.schools.utah.gov/file/5c8e2fac-55dc-4f0a-bf6a-6889133e4ffe 

Comments: Be sure to use the fall enrollment data from the fall of the year you are analyzing. For example, for FY/SY22, use October 2021 enrollment data.   

3. Inflation Index CPI-U

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statisticshttps://www.bls.gov/data/home.htm 

Direct Document Link:  All Urban Consumers (Current Series) (Consumer Price Index - CPI) https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?cu  U.S. city average, All items - CUUR0000SA0....then use “Annual Averages”  

Google Sheet with all collected data, sources & formulas

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fTy8wKHY6Di33eRLTcM7Ce1B5Caw10sb/edit#gid=534909710

BROAD COALITION CALLS FOR INVESTMENT IN UTAH’S FUTURE RATHER THAN TAX CUTS, DOCUMENTS $5.6 BILLION IN URGENT UNMET NEEDS

Salt Lake City – On Monday, January 23, 2023 at the Utah State Capitol, a broad and diverse coalition of advocates for the poor, for disabled Utahns, for education, health care, clean air, the Great Salt Lake, transportation investment, and a variety of other popular Utah priorities held a press conference calling on the Utah Legislature to prioritize addressing Utah’s long and growing list of unmet needs over permanent tax cuts that undermine our long-term capacity to invest in Utah’s future.

Utah’s strong economy and rapid recovery from the pandemic, combined with the ongoing impact of federal spending, have generated unexpected state revenues amounting to a reported $3.3 billion available for FY2024. These revenues put Utah in a position to address chronic revenue shortages that have plagued numerous areas of state responsibility. Instead, state leaders have proposed roughly half a billion dollars in permanent tax cuts, tilted unfairly toward the high end of the income scale, as well as additional hundreds of billions in one-time tax breaks.   

These new proposed permanent tax cuts would be over and above the roughly $4 billion that the Legislature has already cut from annual revenues in recent decades, leaving Utah’s taxes at their lowest level in half a century, relative to incomes.

In response, today the Invest in Utah’s Future coalition presented a list of urgent unmet needs amounting to $5.6 billion, over $2 billion more than the amount of the “surplus” revenues.

The advocates also pointed out that, according to data from the Utah State Tax Commission and the Utah Foundation, taxes in Utah are the lowest that they have been in decades, following repeated rounds of tax cutting. “Of course we all like paying lower taxes, but at a certain point we have to ask ourselves: Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Are we, as the current generation of Utahns, meeting our responsibility, as earlier generations did, to set aside sufficient resources every year to invest in our children, in our future, in the foundations of the next generation’s prosperity and quality of life?” said Matthew Weinstein of Voices for Utah Children.

Speakers also referenced public opinion surveys by the Deseret News and Hinckley Institute that found that only 25% of Utahns support tax cutting over investing in Utah’s future, consistent with other polls done in recent years by the same organizations as well as by Envision Utah and the Utah Foundation.

Here is the list of urgent unmet needs that Utah has not been able to address due to the state’s chronic revenue shortages:

 The press conference was broadcast live on Facebook: https://fb.watch/ieyT_0Zi14/?mibextid=RUbZ1f 

Media coverage: 

• KJZZ: Local organizations oppose statewide tax cuts, call for investments in Utah's future instead 
• Deseret News: Time to invest more in education, housing, water and other areas, group says 
• KUTV-2: Local organizers oppose tax cuts, call for investments in Utah's future instead
• KSL: Don't cut taxes, advocacy groups urge Utah lawmakers. Here's why. 
• UtahPolicy.com  

 Additional one-pagers distributed by some of the coalition members: 

• Circles Salt Lake: Background about Circles and one-pager about benefits cliffs
• Transit: Utah Transit Riders Union info and one-pager about free-fare transit
• Community Action Partnership of Utah one-pager about rural Utah's needs 
• Child care one-pager from UtahCareforKids.org 
• Housing affordability one-pager from Utah Housing Coalition

* * SEE COMPLETE ANALYSIS OF THE LEGISLATURE'S $400 MILLION TAX CUT PROPOSAL AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE * *

The 2023 Legislature's annual seven-week General Session has begun! At the top of the agenda for the Governor and Legislative leadership: tax cuts. 

While Voices for Utah Children and many other advocates for Utah's most vulnerable populations are deeply concerned about the long-term detrimental effect of tax cuts on state and local governments' abilities to meet their obligations to Utahns (see www.InvestInUtahsFuture.org for more about that), we are also cognizant of the political reality that tax cuts are popular with Utah's political leadership (in contrast to public opinion).

If there's one thing Voices for Utah Children has learned following tax policy in recent years, it's that not all tax cuts are created equal. Hence this guide to the tax cuts being proposed this year. Note, the legislature has since changed the proposed income tax cut from $200m to $400m further resulting in even greater tax cuts mostly for Utah's top income earners. 

Ranking the Tax Cut Proposals

We rank the tax cuts by regressivity -- do they make our overall tax system more or less regressive than it currently is? Regressivity is about fairness. Utah's current overall state + local tax system is regressive/unfair in the sense that the highest income households pay a lower overall share of their incomes in state and local taxes than low- and middle-income households.

The chart above illustrates whether each individual proposed tax cut would make Utah's taxes even more unfair, or would it reduce the inequities in the current tax structure. We illustrate the impact of the proposals in the chart below two different ways:

1) By share of the tax cut: How does it slice the pie? Who gets the big pieces and who's stuck with the crumbs (or nothing at all)? 

2) By dollar amounts: How much does an average family benefit each year at each income level? (we provided this information for each tax cut that is available to all taxpayers but not for the more targeted ones that only go to a smaller subset like the Social Security and child tax credits)

Important Background Information

What are the major taxes in Utah and who pays them?

• The sales tax: Our most regressive tax -- meaning it takes a bigger bite percentage-wise out of the incomes of low- and middle-income families than their high-income neighbors. (And same goes for the gas tax.)
• The property tax: Not as regressive as the sales or gas taxes but still costs lower-income families a greater share of their incomes than higher-income families, including non-homeowners who pay it indirectly through their rent.
• The income tax: Utah's only non-regressive tax. The only one that lines up with Utah's income distribution, following the 3/5--1/5 Rule: Three-fifths of all Utah income is earned by the top one-fifth of taxpayers, and three-fifths of the income tax is paid by that same high-income group. KEEP IN MIND: When the Legislature cuts the income tax rate, not only do they make our tax system more regressive overall, they also put more pressure on local property taxes, which tend to rise to make up for the lost education funding when the income tax rate is cut. As a result, cutting the income tax means a tax shift from state to local and from the highest-income Utahns to middle-class and low-income households. 

See more details about who pays which taxes in Utah and how our overall tax structure is regressive at www.ITEP.org/WhoPays/Utah. 

How Do These Proposed Tax Cuts Compare to Last Year?

Last year, the 2022 Utah Legislature passed SB 59 -- about $200 million of permanent tax cuts.

• The majority of the breaks went to the highest income fifth of Utahns, those earning above about $130,000.
• Just 6% of last year's tax cuts went to the bottom two-fifths of Utahns, those earning under about $60,000 a year.

2022 SB 59 Tax Cuts Summary

ANALYSIS OF THE 2023 LEGISLATURE'S $400 MILLION TAX CUT PROPOSAL

By Sariah Villalon (Voices Policy Intern)

We live in a digital world where social media has become integral to our society. It has broadened our communication, allowing us to connect and share information with anyone around the world. It has helped bring awareness to many issues and achievements within our society. But let's face it, unintended risks and consequences come with every innovation. One of them is its effect on our mental health, especially our young people's mental health.

Over the years, there has been an increase in depression, anxiety, and suicide among the youth, especially among girls. Social media may influence these mental health problems through social comparison, cyberbullying, and exposure to other toxic content (Nesi, 2020). 

Governor Spencer Cox recently addressed the relationship between social media on the mental health of our youth and how we could improve the mental health of our youth in Utah. Some of his recommendations are the following:

• Hold social media companies accountable by providing tools for parents to safeguard their children,
• Implement a cell phone-free environment in schools to reduce distraction for students.
• Encourage parents to set an example for their children by spending quality social time with one another without social media use.
• Educate their children on what is appropriate to say on these platforms.
• Monitor their children's social media use by using different tools.
• Have an honest conversation about social media

There are multiple good points that the governor pointed out. We agree that social media companies need to be held accountable for the algorithm and design of their apps that provide a toxic environment for their users. A couple of legislative efforts have been created to hold social media responsible. But is it enough?

We do not see so much urgency from these big techs. Even if they get fined, they could pay everything off quickly. It also puts too much burden on the parents to monitor and safeguard their children. We also have to be honest that we cannot blame everything on these companies. So, what can we do?

We need to hold these social media companies responsible by making them contribute to funding social media education for the youth. Organizations such as Digital Respons-Ability train parents, students, and educators on digital citizenship.

We cannot escape the digital world, and it will only progress from here on. We need to teach our youth how to use the technology and social media they have properly. Removing phones during school time will not solve our problems. By educating the youth, they can be better equipped to make informed decisions for their lives and improve their learning.

Another is research on the effect of social media on youth mental health. As we know, mental health is multi-faceted. We cannot just say that one factor causes mental health problems. We need more longitudinal studies on its effects to counter better or mitigate its adverse effects.

More importantly, let's talk more openly about our mental health. Let us educate ourselves and share our experiences with our children so they can also be aware of their well-being. Give them the resources to improve or manage their mental health. When children are more knowledgeable, it can increase their chances of knowing when and where to get the help they might need. 

Learn more on how we can help through this video. You can also download this infographic on Youth Mental Health & Digital Media for more information. 

Since the start of the pandemic, Utah has received nearly $600 million in emergency federal funding to ensure that our child care sector can continue to serve families despite nearly overwhelming COVID-era challenges. 

In one year, at the end of September 2023, most of that funding will be exhausted. The potential impacts of this “funding cliff” are: 

• • More child care program closures, 
  • Much higher child care costs for families, and 
  • More dramatic workforce turnover due to lowered wages. 

By this time next year, Utah’s working families with young children will be in even more serious trouble when it comes to child care. That is, if we don’t start talking about how to use state dollars to fund the programs that have kept child care programs stable and open over the past two years. 

Utah’s child care industry struggled long before the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic exacerbated persistent issues in the sector such as:  

• • Tuition costs that are as high or higher than rent or mortgage payments, and 
  • Wages for providers so low that more than one-half (53%) of child care educators across the nation use public benefits to make ends meet.

Utah’s child care industry would not have been able to weather the COVID pandemic if not for $572 million in federal dollars, $325 million of that through the American Rescue Plan. This infusion of desperately-needed financial support: 

• • Kept hundreds of center- and home-based child care programs open even in the darkest moments of the pandemic;
  • Allowed more families to access child care subsidies with fewer out-of-pocket expenses; 
  • Funded higher wages and even a workforce bonus for early care and education professionals; and
  • Supported regional efforts to recruit new child care providers into the field, while paying startup and licensing costs for these new business owners.

Perhaps the greatest impact was felt through child care stabilization grants offered through the state Office of Child Care. These grants helped child care providers defray the unexpected costs associated with the pandemic, and stabilize their business operations so they could continue to provide care. The grants also helped many providers pay their staff members $15/hour or more. Thanks to these grants, Utah has experienced much fewer child care program closures than many other states.

While very grateful for this support, early care and education providers across Utah tell us that the impending funding cliff has them feeling worried and even hopeless about the future of their work. What they will do when the stabilization grants end in September 2023, and this long-needed government support vanishes?

 A report based on surveys of child care providers in Kentucky reported that when federal American Rescue Plan COVID relief dollars run out in that state: 

• • More than 70% will be forced to raise tuition for working parents
  • Close to 40% indicated they would cut staff wages, and 
  • More than 20% said they would permanently close their child care center. 

Even before the pandemic, Utah had a 65% gap between the need for child care and the capacity of programs to provide it. When relief dollars end, this gap could widen, forcing parents to leave their jobs in an already desperate job market. The lack of accessible child care already accounts for a loss of $512 million in lost earnings, business productivity, and revenue each year in Utah. 

The end of ARPA funds could also mean wage losses in a profession already vastly underpaid at $10.47/hour (or $20,940/year) in Utah. 

State leaders can and need to find ways to continue these business-saving policies. With Utah lawmakers talking about overflowing state coffers and potential tax cuts, we know the money exists. These dollars can be redirected to make a real investment in the child care sector. Even small efforts like covering the costs associated with licensing or removing the bureaucratic burdens of city parking requirements can make an impact.  

This month, newly released Census Bureau data showed an incredible national decline in childhood poverty. Poverty fell to the lowest level on record in 2021 and it was the largest year-to-year decline in history. The decline is largely attributed to a combination of emergency pandemic aid and the child tax credit expansion. We know that access to quality, affordable, safe child care is a good investment in children and families. Let’s learn from the lessons of the last two years and make the investment in children and families that Utah needs.