Jay Evensen - Opinions

Can Salt Lake keep from becoming San Francisco

12/11/2019

The irony was hard to miss.
A group from the Utah League of Cities and Towns met with the combined Deseret News and KSL editorial boards this week to tout, among other things, last year’s passage of SB34 by the state Legislature, a bill designed to encourage construction of more affordable housing.
But almost simultaneous with the meeting came a report from the Salt Lake Board of Realtors showing the median home price in Salt Lake County had reached $389,000, a new record high.
I’ve written before that the Wasatch Front is on a fast-moving trend to become the San Francisco of the Mountain West in terms of house prices. This report adds fuel to that concern, as well as to the need for solutions.

Should Utah's income tax earmark be taken away?

12/10/2019

As Utah lawmakers race to pass part of a mammoth tax reform effort, an almost forgotten conservative principle is becoming an underlying theme: Earmarked spending is bad.
Utah’s constitution currently requires that all income tax collections go exclusively to public and higher education. And while that may give educators a sense of security, it also ties lawmakers’ hands in ways that keep them from truly doing what they were elected to do, which is to study all the state’s needs and set funding priorities.

Can the First Amendment survive the internet age?

12/4/2019

Years ago, when I was in charge of publishing letters to the editor, I posted a quote from John Milton, a 17th century poet, author and inspiration for the Constitution’s First Amendment, on the side of my computer. It said:
“And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter?"

Utah tax reform: Here are four things to consider

12/3/2019

Utah lawmakers seem intent on holding a special session a week from Thursday to begin passing a tax overhaul package that has more moving parts than anything you will assemble Christmas morning.
In government, parts tend to move in unintended ways. In that sense, haste may not always make waste, but it may make things people can’t foresee.
But if legislators insist on being hasty, here are four things they at least ought to keep in mind.
First, don’t tell Utahns you are “restoring” the full state portion of the sales tax on groceries. That language assumes the money rightfully belongs to the government, not the people being taxed. Republicans understood this concept well a decade ago when they fought efforts to “restore” the Bush tax cuts.

Is Black Friday compatible with the spirit of Christmas?

11/27/2019

Sixteen years have passed since I got up early on the day after Thanksgiving and did some power shopping on Black Friday — a one-time experience for the sake of writing a column.
I quickly learned that the real power shoppers had been camping out in front of stores since moments after their last turkey slice the afternoon before. Some of them may have been eating turkey on the sidewalk.
I also noticed the lack of a child-like gleam in the eyes of the young woman who kept ramming me with her cart, and I didn’t see any Christian charity in the salesman who stared at me with sarcasm when I asked about the cheap laptops in the company circular.

Tax reform in Utah: What's the rush?

11/26/2019

What’s your definition of rushing it?
If you’re like me, it might mean not thinking through consequences — like buying a car without considering how much it will cost in insurance or how much interest you might pay on a loan.
If you’re a politician, it might mean getting a tax cut in front of the public as quickly as possible, figuring that the consequences won’t be as noticeable as all the good vibes.
You decide whether that’s what is happening.

Do we suffer from too much democracy?

11/20/2019

Does the nation suffer from too much democracy?

If that sounds like an odd question, consider the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nominee. Seventeen people still are in the running, and one, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, may yet jump in.

Much the same happened in the Republican Party four years ago, when Donald Trump emerged despite never getting 50% support within the party.

What would it take to get you to buy an electric car?

11/19/2019

Nothing changes people’s focus like a crisis.

Mark Sanford tried to challenge Donald Trump within the Republican Party on a platform of fiscal responsibility. He had to drop out because people who peddle gloom in a roaring economy are pushed aside by the rest of us who are trying to buy things online.

But if the economy were to go south, you might get poked in the eye from all the fingers that would shoot out, trying to cast blame. An annual budget deficit of more than $1 trillion and a national debt of more than $23 trillion might even supplant impeachment as the most important topic in Washington.

Would the U.S. be better served by a dictator?

11/13/2019

Do you think the United States would be better off with a dictator in charge?
K, that’s a harsh way of putting it. How about this: Would the U.S. be better off with “a strong
leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections?”

That’s a different way of asking the same thing, and in a 2017 survey by The Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, 24% said this would be either a fairly good or very good way to run the country.

Tax reform: Why is Utah picking winners and losers?

11/12/2019

Conservatives like to warn against government tax policies that pick winners and losers, so it seems a bit curious that the Utah Legislature’s Tax Restructuring and Equalization Task Force, controlled by Republicans, has spent the past several weeks doing just that.

What began as an effort to extend sales taxes to services has now become an effort in picking who gets hit and who doesn’t.

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