West Jordan may need to start reporting federal receipts

Rep. Ken Ivory is hoping to require cities, counties and school districts to report federal receipts, as they now do on a state level, thanks to his HB 138.

“When I first got up [to Capitol Hill], my first question was, how much of our government is federally sourced, and no one could answer my question,” Ivory told the city council at a special city council meeting held on Nov. 17 to discuss the upcoming legislative session with legislators.

Ivory was amazed.

“We really ought to know that number, given some of the federal balance sheet issues. We ought to know how dependent we are on that,” Ivory said.

So he wrote HB 138, which requires all state agencies to disclose their total federal receipts, the percentages of their budget that are federally-sourced and then what their contingency plan is if the federal funds are diminished by 25 percent.

He got a report from the state auditor, Auston Johnson, which showed that $5.2 billion of Utah’s $12 billion budget is federally-sourced.

“Are you aware of how much angst this is creating amongst state agencies?” Rep. Wayne Harper asked.

Ivory responded that Dr. David Patton, the executive director for the Utah Department of Health, said they are already preparing for their funds to be cut by 20 percent in the next year. And the Department of Environmental Quality is expecting an up to 80 percent cut in funds, Ivory said.

“So the fact that there is angst, I’m thrilled, because at least we are having the discussion,” Ivory said. “In the bill, we purposely didn’t put any rigid type of reporting requirement, because we wanted them to just be thinking the thought, going through the exercise. Because it was pretty apparent, obviously, that we hadn’t really given that serious thought.”

Legislators are also concerned with the cities, counties and school districts, “and we want to make sure the same analysis is happening,” Ivory said.

“We’ve got places like Jefferson County, Ala., that’s just filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Detroit is probably going to be filing within days or weeks. Harrison, Pa., filed bankruptcy,” Ivory said. “So in a bill last year, we did a study to continue that process down to mucipalities and school districts. So that’s something I’d like to put into a bill this year, to carry that down.”