SALT LAKE CITY — There's a constitutional amendment on every ballot sent out to Utah voters that you may not know a lot about.
Constitutional Amendment A deals with the Utah State Legislature's ability to spend money in an emergency.
"Currently, the legislature has the ability to call itself into special session in the event of an emergency or some other big event to deal with urgent matters," House Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, said in an interview with FOX 13 News. "Constitutional Amendment A raises the cap in the amount of money the legislature can deal with in a special session they call."
Right now, Utah's constitution sets the cap at 1% of the state's budget. The proposed amendment would raise it to 5%. An impartial analysis of the amendment prepared for voters said the most recent state budget is $27.7 billion. Under Amendment A, the legislature could spend up to $1.3 billion. Without Amendment A? It's $277 million.
Speaker Wilson said the amendment came about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We found out during COVID that the current level of that ceiling is too low for us to deal with some of the urgent issues of the day. We felt we needed to fix it because we felt the legislature was hamstrung by that ceiling," he said.
In the official state voter guide, Constitutional Amendment A has neither a pro or a con argument. The Utah Taxpayers Association, a watchdog group on tax policy, said it supported the amendment because it also allows the legislature to make cuts in an emergency.
"This would be a taxpayer friendly amendment in that they would give them more flexibility in a dire emergency to cut the budget more than allowed," said Rusty Cannon, the group's president.
But the Alliance for a Better Utah, a left-leaning public policy group, said it opposed the amendment.
"It’s unnecessary. They already have the ability to get into special session for this. They just have to work with the governor to do it. It’s that checks and balances in the constitution that we want to preserve and we don’t want to keep deteriorating," said Chase Thomas, ABU's executive director.
Speaker Wilson said Amendment A is just in case of another emergency.
"I hope we never have to use it there’s a chance we will," he said.
