(KCPW News) In a special session next Friday, lawmakers will be back at the State Capitol to override Governor Gary Herbert’s veto of a bill allocating an estimated $60 million in sales tax revenue for road construction. Senate President Michael Waddoups says he has personally met with the Governor for many, many hours trying to come up with a compromise, but to no avail.
“It will cost $30,000, and we could have solved this on an interim day when we are already meeting with the help of the Governor, which we did not get, thus we are having to do it within the 60 days required by the constitution,” said Waddoups on Tuesday. “I met with him this morning, I was in the Governor’s mansion last night until 10:30, so I’ll be surprised if there hasn’t been at least 100 hours devoted to this trying to work it out.”
Waddoups says legislative leaders would like to have seen the governor sign SB 229, which would earmark 30 percent of the growth in sales tax revenue for roads.
However, Herbert said in a statement that the bill risks the state’s ability to address critical needs like education.
“As I have listened to him, it sounds like he thinks that he has more flexibility if it’s just out there and we can appropriate it all from the very beginning, whereas the legislature, the contrary point of view, is we have more flexibility if we have it in a large sum all put together so we can use it for a bigger project,” Waddoups told KCPW.
There are three other bills Governor Herbert vetoed that the legislature could bring back during the special session, but Waddoups says compromises on those bills have already been reached, and he doesn’t think that will happen.
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