Back for more about Amendment B! As a reminder, this is a measure referred by the legislature that all Utah voters will see on their 2026 ballot. Amendment B reads:
“Shall the Utah Constitution be amended to require that citizen-proposed laws that increase taxes compared to existing law be approved by at least 60% of voters, instead of a simple majority?”
A few weeks back we dove into history and context around Utah’s ballot initiative, how legislation is made, and how difficult it would be for ballot amendments to pass if voters support it this election. In a nutshell:
Prop B will undermine citizens’ power to reform their government using direct ballot initiatives.
If Prop B passes, its 60% threshold is likely to undermine future citizen-led legislation.
Prop B will broadly affect citizen initiatives, even ones that are not explicitly about taxes.
Since then, there has been significant noise for and against the amendment. Our position is that Amendment B is intended to undermine Utah citizens’ rights to reform their government. Many local elected officials (and fiscal conservatives and civic teachers) feel the same.
Context is important. State representative Ray Ward, a Republican, recently outlined the ways Utah’s state legislature has recently made ballot initiatives more difficult, including expanding the number of jurisdictions where signatures must be gathered, creating onerous rules about signature gathering, and adding significant time for signature removal. His email ends this way: “Amendment B looks to me like one more step towards the functional elimination of the citizen’s ballot initiative process, so I am not for it.”
We agree.
What initiatives would Amendment B impact?
One of the biggest questions voters should ask is simply “what initiatives would be impacted?” Getting any citizen-led initiative on the ballot requires serious effort and cost; anything worth the effort will likely require the state legislature to allocate or reallocate resources to make it happen. So in our (non-lawyer) opinion: potentially all of the initiatives worth pursuing.
Consider some potential future initiatives that would likely be impacted by Amendment B. This new constitutional amendment could be used to block any initiative intended to:
Fully fund disability services for Utahns in need instead of continuing to have a significant backlog. Utah’s legislative body has routinely opted to cut income taxes rather than fund these services; the wait time for services currently averages 5.4 years.
Expand Medicaid or other healthcare services to cover more low-income Utah citizens, like Prop 3, a 2018 ballot initiative which did exactly this. This initiative passed by 53.3% and has served over 70,000 low-income Utahns since.
Increase public school funding from the current last-in-the-nation per pupil spending level, including by forcing lawmakers to spend the money already raised for education (Utah’s full income tax revenue). This is an ongoing fight. Back in 2018, public education proponents negotiated with legislators for increased education funding rather than running an initiative—the negotiating power was sufficient to create change. That would change if Amendment B passes.
Support domestic and sexual violence victims with programs run from taxpayer funding. This is a real need: funding for Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault (UCASA), which operates rape crisis centers and the state’s only sexual assault hotline, was cut from Utah’s 2025 budget. UCASA’s requested full funding for the year was only around $250,000, a tiny fraction of state spending.
Block restrictions on developers or data centers, if those initiatives were somehow shown to have a fiscal impact that “increases taxes compared to existing law.”
Probably not the types of measures you thought would “raise taxes.” We worry that Amendment B would thwart most priorities Utah citizens might want to tackle—potentially also including initiatives relating to homelessness, electoral reform, or other important issues where Utah voters and leaders differ.
Such measures may not require increasing Utahn’s overall tax rates (i.e., they could be funded by moving around or cutting other funding). But even when an initiative doesn’t explicitly raise taxes, we imagine that state leaders opposed to the initiative are likely to argue that it does “increase taxes compared to existing law.” Perhaps more importantly, Amendment B increases the likelihood that initiatives will get tied up in courts, requiring time-consuming and costly litigation to enact voters’ will. Legal fights occurred after every recent citizen-led ballot initiative, and we expect more of the same in the future.
We’re already concerned that Utah legislators are not listening to its citizens. As it turns out, we are also worried about burdensome taxes—specifically, shifting Utah’s tax burdens in recent years and what that means for our state’s future.
Does Amendment B actually mean lower taxes?
Proponents of the measure argue that raising taxes should require a bigger majority. Utah’s top GOP leader recently argued that Amendment B will keep “Utah’s economy strong and our state financially responsible” as well as stand “up to special interests that want to use Utah’s ballot to raise taxes.”1
It’s worth analyzing those claims—because we believe increasing taxes should be done cautiously. What proponents of Prop B fail to say is that while certain state-controlled taxes may stay low (or continue to be cut), other tax rates will possibly go up as a result. At least, that’s what has recently happened in Utah.
Which taxes are likely to increase based on this bill?
The state legislature largely controls income and sales tax rates, the two largest funding sources for the state (after federal funds). Income tax is the largest single revenue-generator for the state, and is unique in that it is constitutionally earmarked solely for public education.2 Amendment B would have the effect of blocking initiatives that impact income or sales tax and receive less than 60% of the vote, thus keeping those tax rates low.
However, if recent history is any indication, lowering state income or sales taxes may have the opposite effect on your property taxes. Unlike the others, property tax is assessed at local levels and used by city, county, utility districts, and local school boards. (Property tax is not collected or distributed by the state, although certain lawmakers would like that to change).
What does property tax fund? First responders, local roads, parks, libraries, and public education—to name a few. For most Utah residents, public education is the largest portion of your property tax bill. And public education is primarily3 funded in two ways: through income tax and local property taxes. To balance the budget, when one source goes down, the other goes up.
Utah legislators have chosen to cut $1.4 billion from education via income tax cuts during the past 6 years. During the same timeframe lawmakers have also passed hundreds of bills—that’s not an exaggeration—regarding public education, including many that do not provide additional ongoing funds to meet these new requirements (some call these “unfunded mandates”). Read this excellent op-ed on how cutting income taxes hurts education.
Where is the money?
When Utah’s public schools lose funding from income taxes, they must turn to other sources. That largely means what local school boards can control: increasing local property taxes. Increases in property taxes are already happening around the state.
The result is a tax shift: a larger tax bill for working families and average Utahns, and a smaller one for corporations and high-income individuals.4
This is already happening. Take one real-world example: in 2023, Utah’s legislature passed a $208 million state income tax cut. For the state’s largest district, Alpine School District, that money would have equated to an additional $26 million in student funding had these resources been distributed to public education.5 A few short months after the state income tax cut passed, Alpine School District passed a $21 million property tax increase, exposing the financial needs of a school district weighed down by new mandates, inflation, and population growth. The money has to come from somewhere.
Ultimately, the state income tax cut amounted to a tax shift from income tax to property tax—resulting in some low- and fixed-income families saddled with higher taxes overall during the past few years. Tax shifts from income to property tax tend to hurt the elderly, those on a fixed income, and low-income families the most. We are not happy that Utah’s neediest families are paying more.
What can you do?
Let your neighbors know what B will really impact, from future initiatives you might support to your own bottom line. If this measure passes, Utah citizens lose a meaningful way to enact legislation their leaders are reluctant to approach—with real implications for the most vulnerable Utahns.
Protect your constitutional rights: vote against Amendment B. And as always, make sure to return your ballot well before 8pm on Election Day, November 3!
Let’s address the “outside special interest” argument: do voters really believe that 700,000+ Utahns are more prone to special interests than a few dozen legislators who want their re-election campaigns funded? What about the $4.3 million the Utah GOP took from a single out-of-state donor to fund the referendum to overturn Prop 4—does that count? The Capitol is full of lobbyists. Special interests are alive and well in Utah. We are confident that Utah voters are less swayed than some of their representatives, and that no ballot initiative can pass without genuine grassroots Utah support.
A recent amendment expanded approved uses of income tax to include child-related and disability-related services, along with public education. Notably, the state legislature tried to remove the constitutional earmark for education just two years ago with 2024’s Amendment A, which was struck from the ballot for misleading language.
Of course, public education also takes federal funds, grants, and private donations—education funding is not particularly simple. School closures, land sales, and program cuts are another (often painful) way local school boards make up gaps when funding comes up short for what public education is mandated to do.
Corporations contribute far less to property taxes than income tax due to their smaller physical footprint compared to their sizable income.
Doing the math: Alpine has with 12.6% of the state’s K-12 student population and would have received $26 million, or $310/student, for its 85,000 students.