Utah legislators generally are careful and prudent when it comes to money, partly because the state constitution requires a balanced budget and all spending is carefully scrutinized. The kind of pork-barrel projects that routinely occur in Congress are infrequent.
But this reputation for frugality and item-by-item examination tends to come unraveled in the last two days of most legislative sessions, when a final revenue estimate is made.In recent years, a booming state economy has often dealt lawmakers a last-minute surplus for the coming fiscal season - usually touching off a frantic scramble to fund pet projects.
Millions of dollars are suddenly appropriated with little review and sometimes outside the normal budget committee process.
Such spending tends to go to special projects that couldn't win support in the regular budget process. The money is rarely used to underwrite hard-pressed social or education programs, some of them teetering on the edge of extinction.
Several of the most harshly criticized expenditures in recent years have come out of that last-minute fiscal frenzy.
That's why new rules adopted this week by legislative leaders to reduce the final-hours squabbling are important. If they work as intended - meaning, if lawmakers don't ignore the rules - the result will be better budgeting and less catering to special interests.
The rules would do two things in case of any surplus estimate: Set aside the equivalent of 1 percent (currently about $20 million) of the state's general and uniform school funds, and Require that other surplus could go only to one-time expenditures that reduce state bonding or to transportation and water-development needs.
Those two rules should eliminate most of the last-minute jockeying over any surplus revenue estimates. In addition, because they would be one-time expenditures, they seem to make the best use of surplus revenues. Using one year's surplus to expand programs that continue year after year is risky.
The rules will not eliminate all pressures on lawmakers to spend any surplus in inappropriate ways. The rules are not laws and can be overridden by a two-thirds vote. Or legislators faced with a major surplus windfall might simply forget to enforce the new rules rigorously.
The fact that any such rules are needed is a good sign in one way. There would be no last-minute spending rush if the state were not producing surpluses. Let's hope the surpluses continue and the new restraints work as intended.