A large majority of Utahns, 68 percent, favor removing the sales tax from food, the latest Deseret News/KSL-TV poll shows.
Pollster Dan Jones & Associates found that only 26 percent strongly or somewhat oppose and 5 percent didn't know.While that pleases Merrill Cook and his Independent Party of Utah, which successfully gathered the 69,000 petition signatures needed to place the tax removal on the November ballot, Gov. Norm Bangerter believes Utahns will come to realize that the state can't afford the $90 million loss in revenue such a tax cut means.
Thursday, Lt. Gov. Val Oveson officially certified the petitions. That means the tax removal will be on the ballot. It will be a simple `yes' or `no' choice. The ballot question won't deal at all with how revenues could be offset with other taxes or where budget cuts could come. If voters approve the tax reduction, the sales tax law will be changed as the petition reads unless the Legislature, in its 1991 session, further amends the law.
"The governor opposes the tax reduction. He'll vote against it and ask others to vote against it as well," said Bud Scruggs, Bangerter's chief of staff.
"We want to make it very, very clear. If the citizens of Utah want to remove the sales tax from food - and the governor dislikes the sales tax on food as much as anyone - it will be a tax reduction. He will not support, never support, raising some other tax to compensate. This will not end in a tax shift, only a tax reduction," Scruggs said.
Cook, who ran as an Independent for governor in 1988, placing third behind Bangerter and Democrat Ted Wilson, started the petition drive almost a year ago. He formed the new Independent Party from the ashes of the failed tax-protest movement. The party immediately endorsed the sales-tax removal issue.
Cook says there'll be no need for a tax shift for several reasons:
-He believes there will be large surplus revenues this year.
-If those surpluses don't materialize, the Legislature can eliminate "14 or 15 " of the current sales tax exemptions "for the sake of helping all the people."
-"Prudent, reasonable" reductions can be made non-education budgets in the state.
Scruggs scoffs at those suggestions. "There won't be anywhere near $90 million in surpluses, and even if they were, they're one-time money that can't go to funding ongoing programs and salaries, as the sales tax does. Eliminating the sales-tax exemptions means we'd have people happy about the food tax and out of work, because those exemptions are specifically designed for economic development. Finally, there's no way we could cut $90 million from non-education programs without severely harming those programs."
Education makes up more than 60 percent of the budget, so the $90 million would have to come out of the other 40 percent - much of it from the Department of Human Services (formally called Social Services).
"I know that social services argument," says Cook. "But what sense does it make to give poor people state (welfare) aid with one hand and then take it away from them through the most regressive tax a poor per the sales tax on food? The poor pay that sales tax just like everyone else."
Two years ago at this time, Jones found that 62 percent of Utahns favored rolling back the record $165 million tax increase imposed in 1987. But that initiative, supported by Cook and the tax protesters, ultimately failed at the polls. Now Cook and his supporters head toward another election with a large majority in the polls.
"We will be much better organized to fight those who oppose this tax cut," says Cook. "This is a humanitarian question more than a tax question. How unfair is it to tax our most basic needs?" Cook said his party has a $20,000 budget to promote taking the sales tax off food.
"We'll have some newspaper ads, some limited TV ads right before the election." Cook, who has contributed heavily to his own campaigns in the past, said he'll give "a limited amount" to the sales tax promotion, "less than half the amount raised."
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(Poll)
Do you favor or oppose removing the sales tax from food?
Strongly favor 46%
Somewhat favor 22%
Somewhat oppose 12%
Strongly favor 14%
Don't know 5%
Have you signed a petition to have the issue placed on the ballot?
Yes 14%
No 86%
Sample size: 603; margin of error plus or minus 4%