Archive

Fireproof Funding: Recent Changes in Utah’s Wildfire Budget

In Utah—and the rest of the western United States—footing the bill for wildfire prevention, suppression, and mitigation is a persistently hot topic. The challenge of addressing wildfire on state, private, and federal lands, layered with the complexities of increasingly arid conditions, multiplied by population growth, and seasoned with competing budgetary priorities results in a natural […]

July 11, 2025

Liberating the Ledger: Increasing Transparency in Higher Education Budgets

In the world of higher education budgets, funding takes one of three forms: Historically, the Legislature has only tracked the first two buckets, and even those were appropriated primarily in lump sums to institutions with little to no programmatic guidance. To provide greater insight into the budgets of Utah’s colleges and universities, the Higher Education […]

July 4, 2025

Win-Win: An Overview of Districts Centered on Sports

Recently, the Legislature has been active in the expansion or creation of designated areas which utilize funding mechanisms such as taxing authority, redirected revenue, and bonding capacity to achieve public purposes for a broad audience of Utah taxpayers. In exchange for these financial benefits, the local districts are tasked with furthering goals such as urban […]

June 20, 2025

Don’t Just Settle: Leveraging Opioid Funds for Lasting Impact

The 2025 General Session continued the Legislature’s work in thoughtfully utilizing the Opioid Settlement payments to help Utah’s citizens impacted by the opioid epidemic, including the growth of fentanyl use. As a reminder, in 2021, nationwide settlements were reached to resolve all opioid litigation brought by states and political subdivisions against the three largest pharmaceutical […]

May 30, 2025

Never Gonna Give BOTSU Up

The Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s (LFA) annual budget report for the State of Utah dates all the way back to the 1960s. That means that for the last 60 years we’ve provided a breakdown of the state’s budgetary acts to help you find the answers to what you’re looking for. Do you want to know how […]

May 23, 2025

Lost in the Sauce: the Messy Business of Tariffs

As discussions surrounding tariffs circulate through the news, it is important to understand what they are and how they work. Tariffs are taxes that are imposed by governments on goods and services imported from other countries. The primary intent of tariffs is to raise the price of imported goods relative to domestically produced goods, so […]

May 16, 2025

From the Ground Up: Affordable Housing Investments and Initiatives

According to the Federal Reserve, in 2015 the average home value in Utah was just over $230,000. Ten years later, the average home value has more than doubled to an average price of $530,000. While 2015 to 2020 provided steady, moderate growth, the last five years were marked by the profound impacts of the pandemic […]

May 2, 2025

On the Move: Updates to Sales Tax Designated for Transportation

During the 2025 General Session, the Legislature passed three major bills that impacted the state’s budget for transportation and infrastructure: The impact of these bills is an increase from Sales Tax for transportation and a simplified calculation for specific set asides. The following post summarizes the budgetary impact of these bills and explains how they […]

April 25, 2025

Calibrating Collections: Why Small Changes Make a Big Impact in Revenue Reports

To provide a useful estimate of the year-to-date revenue for any state fund, collections must account for tax earmarks that are set aside for specific purposes and in some cases generated from specific subsets of a tax. The Tax Commission’s Revenue Summary (which informs the Revenue Snapshot’s contrast between collections and revenue estimates) provides a […]

April 18, 2025

How Does Eliminating the Federal Department of Education Impact Utah?

In late March, the President issued an executive order to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). What impact will this action have on education in the states is one of many questions raised by lawmakers, school professionals, and parents nationwide. Potential closure of the DOE is in the early stages, and little information is […]

April 15, 2025

Power Surge: Recent Investments in Utah’s Energy

To accommodate an expected half a million new residents in the next decade, policymakers have undertaken a ‘power surge’ of policy and investment, aimed at securing the ample, affordable energy resources that support Utah’s quality of life. The 2025 General Session underscored this urgency, with lawmakers considering nearly 30 energy-related bills and allocating a $10.0 […]

April 4, 2025

On the Road Again: Evaluation Seeks to Optimize Travel Time for Inspectors

We’ve all been there: the second trip to the home improvement store for a part we forgot earlier; stopping at the grocery store every day during the work week; taking a student back home because they forgot their project that’s due today. These extra trips not only come with direct costs (like fuel), but also […]

March 28, 2025

The Fiscal Final Four: Latest Report Shows Upsets and Top Seeds

With only four more periods in the fiscal year (excluding close out), Legislative economists watch with anticipation to see how close their brackets revenue projections are to the yearend tally. In the latest Tax Commission Revenue Summary, a picture of mixed performance is seen across the state’s revenue streams, with some surprising upsets and strong […]

March 21, 2025

Here’s Your Sine: Summary of the 2025 General Session Budget Actions

The Utah Legislature concluded its 2025 General Session with a budget of $30.8 billion for fiscal year 2026. The budget includes $12.7 billion from state funds (General Fund, Income Tax Fund, and Uniform School Fund). Top legislative budget priorities included state fund investments in:                                 As required by the Utah Constitution, legislators balanced the budget to projections […]

March 8, 2025

The Great Budget Bake-Off

Ingredients: Instructions: Yield: one balanced budget. Recipe Notes: The reports referenced in this post are available at the following links:February Revenue Snapshot (FY 25)Tax Commission Revenue Summary (Period 7, FY 2025)Revenue Publications Archive

February 21, 2025

Why’d You Have to Go and Make Things So Comp-licated? Demystifying the Compensation Bill 

Every year, the Legislature passes a bill that adjusts the ongoing base funding for state employees’ compensation, sometimes referred to as the “compensation bill” or just the “comp bill.” This bill has a lot of moving parts, making its nickname very appropriate—it’s not just “comp-ensation,” it’s also “comp-licated!” Many factors (such as cost-of-living changes, adjustments […]

February 14, 2025

The Quest for Accountability: Why One Measure Can’t Rule them All

Passed on the 10th day of session, the base budget bills for state agencies provide important direction for state agencies in the upcoming budget year. Included for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 is intent language establishing line item performance measures for most line items of every agency. This post will serve as a refresher on what […]

February 7, 2025

The Budgeting Balance: Revenues, Requests, and Reality

In December, Legislative economists provided updated revenue estimates to the Executive Appropriations Committee, along with a summary of how current spending and statutorily required and recommended revenue set asides paints a narrow margin for new spending during the General Session. As discussed last week, recent trends in collections are likely attributable to timing, and February’s […]

January 27, 2025

Now You See Me: The Illusion of Revenue Timing

A quick glance at the December Revenue Snapshot shows a relatively bleak picture of year-to-date (YTD) state revenue collections, particularly for Income Tax Fund (ITF) collections which indicated a -4.3% year over year (YoY) growth rate as of the date of the report. With what may appear to be a sleight of hand, a second […]

January 21, 2025

Fiscal Notes 101

Loyal readers of budget.utah.gov may recall this post from last month, summarizing the latest technology upgrades for the Fiscal Note system (FiNS). As a reminder, FiNS is the vehicle for drafting the very popular financial impact analyses that are attached to every piece of proposed legislation. In preparation for for the upcoming General Session, the […]

January 3, 2025

Resolution for Results: LFA Operations and Performance Team Annual Recap

2024 marked the third year for the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Operations and Performance Team (Ops. Team). In addition to completing three efficiency evaluations for the Departments of Corrections, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture and Food, the team also worked to further improve budgetary performance measurement and idea sharing through cross-pollination with other states. Improving […]

December 27, 2024

On Solid Ground: How the Public Education Budget Framework Provides Stability

During the 2020 General Session, the Legislature passed H.B. 357, “Public Education Funding Stabilization.” The bill, which was contingent on the passage of Constitutional Amendment G, laid the foundation for the annual adjustments of the Public Education budget framework. The framework includes mechanisms to address three areas of volatility in the public education budget: enrollment […]

December 20, 2024

Drowning in Fiscal Notes? Try FiNs!

During the 2024 interim, the Legislative staff have been hard at work designing and testing a new fiscal note system, intended to improve the user experience for policymakers, staff, and state agencies. The updated system, dubbed “FiNS” (Fiscal Note System), is in the final stages of deployment in preparation for the 2025 General Session. The […]

December 6, 2024

LFA Publishes Summary of Governor’s Budget Recommendations for the 2025 General Session

On Thursday, December 5th, Governor Spencer Cox released his Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Recommendations, and in doing so formally kicked off the budget season. In the state government rendition of letters sent to Santa, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget submits the statutorily required list of recommended investments to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst (LFA) […]

December 5, 2024

Late Autumn Revenues Fall Short of Projections

On Wednesday, November 20th, legislative and executive branch economists released the revenue update for November, detailing collections for the first four months of Fiscal Year (FY) 2025. The Revenue Summary (TC-23) published by the Tax Commission tallies funds collected by the state, while the impact of those collections is interpreted in the Revenue Snapshot co-produced […]

November 20, 2024

The Severance Reference: Mapping Oil, Gas, and Mining Taxes in the Budget

The tax generated by the sale of oil and natural gas, and the mining of various compounds is a complicated, and widely discussed piece of the state budget. Severance tax applies to the “upstream” activity within the extractive industries, where the resource is severed from the land. Any oil, gas, or mining production in the […]

November 15, 2024

At Your Service: Statewide Internal Service Funds

You may recall last August when we discussed Internal Service Funds (ISFs) as they relate to the Attorney General’s Office.  Today, we take a step back and review how Internal Service Funds play a role in the state’s budget. Function and Purpose of ISFs The purpose of an ISF is for an agency to provide […]

November 8, 2024

TIF Talk: Understanding the Lingo of Transportation Funding

The Transportation Investment Fund of 2005 (or TIF for short) is one of the largest accounts in the state budget, with revenues of over $3.2 billion in FY 2025. While appropriations for transportation projects represent a significant part of the state’s budget, the funding sources for these projects can be a bit confusing. In committees, […]

November 1, 2024

Trust the Process: Prepping Budgets for the General Session

During the Legislative “off season,” appropriations subcommittees are hard at work diving into the nitty-gritty, budgetary details that no General Session allows enough time to explore. These deep dives are organized under the Accountable Budget Process, a statutory requirement set in motion by H.J.R. 18 from the 2019 General Session. This process allows subcommittees to […]

October 18, 2024

The Story on Scholarships: Utah’s Tuition Assistance for Higher Education

Within the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE), the Legislature actively funds 13 scholarship programs centrally located and overseen by the Utah Board of Higher Education (UBHE) and the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education. Each of these programs was created statutorily, and are budgeted under the USBE Student Assistance line item. Each of […]

October 11, 2024

Q&A with LFA: the Top 5 Questions Answered by the Fiscal Health Dashboard

The Fiscal Health Dashboard is a one-stop shop for legislators and constituents to answer questions about Utah’s current and long-term financial position. The Legislative Fiscal Analyst developed the dashboard in compliance with both UCA 36-12-13(2)(h) and J.R. 3-2-402. Though the statutory and rule requirements are to prepare the legislature for an upcoming General Session, the […]

October 4, 2024

Au Courant on Appropriations: Changes to Subcommittees and State Grant Processes

This fall, the leaves won’t be the only thing changing around the Capitol. During the 2024 General Session, the Legislature passed both a resolution and a bill that impact the appropriations process. This post summarizes how H.J.R. 23 and H.B. 335 will impact the budget even before the 2025 General Session gets underway. H.J.R. 23 […]

September 27, 2024