B Is Bad, But A Is Awful

Don't fall for the gaslighting trap.

Utah has the heaviest state and local tax burden of any red state in the country. That's not my number; it's the Tax Foundation's. And the people who built that burden want you to believe the real threat to your wallet is your neighbor with a clipboard and a petition.

That's the pitch for Amendment B. It would require 60% of voters, instead of a simple majority, to pass any citizen initiative that touches taxes. The way it's written, that likely includes property tax reform.

B is bad. A is the one I'd lose sleep over, because it looks like housekeeping. It deletes a 130-year-old rule about how the Legislature has to warn you before it changes the constitution, and that rule is the exact thing that stopped lawmakers the last time they came after your initiatives.

So: no on A, no on B. If that's all the time you've got, thank you. If you've got ten minutes, stick with me. I'm going to show my work, because you deserve more than a slogan from either side, including mine.

What B actually says

Under B, an initiative needs 60% if it includes "the imposition of a new tax," stretches an existing tax to cover new things, or raises an existing rate. Those three I expected. The fourth one I had to read three times:

"for a property tax, a change to the tax rate that causes the tax rate to decrease less than it would under current law."

Notice what it measures. Not your tax bill. The rate, and whether it falls as far as the current formula would have pushed it. Keep that in your back pocket. It's the sentence this whole fight is about.

Why this one's personal

In 2018 I was on the core team that passed Proposition 2, medical cannabis. It got 52.7% of the vote. Medicaid expansion got 53.3% the same night, paid for with a small sales tax increase. Under Amendment B, it loses. No citizen initiative that year cleared 60%.

Here's the part the YES side skips. The Legislature didn't need B to overrule us. About four weeks after Prop 2 passed, lawmakers called a special session and replaced it with a bill hashed out in a room most of us who passed it never got into. I spent the next several years with TRUCE, the patient coalition, trying to win back through the regulatory process what that bill took out. Medicaid expansion got rewritten within months, too. A simple majority did all of that, and nothing in B touches that power.

Same play, new packaging

Here's what you need to understand about Amendment B: it isn't a new idea. It's the latest move in a campaign this Legislature has been running since November 2018, when voters did something lawmakers still haven't forgiven. We passed three laws they wouldn't: medical cannabis, Medicaid expansion and an independent redistricting commission. In one night, citizens proved they could go around the Capitol. The Capitol has spent every year since making sure that doesn't happen again.

Don't take my word for it. Here's the record.

Nov. 2018: Voters pass Prop 2, Prop 3 and Prop 4.

Dec. 2018: Four weeks later, a special session replaces Prop 2 with HB 3001.

Feb. 2019: SB 96 repeals and replaces Prop 3 with enrollment caps and a work requirement. Full Medicaid expansion only arrived after the federal government rejected the partial plan.

March 2019: HB 133 makes voter-approved initiatives wait until after the next legislative session to take effect, giving lawmakers a full session to change them first. Its sponsor said the delay would give lawmakers time to fix them. HB 145 posts petition signers' names online and tightens the deadlines for signing on.

Dec. 2019: In a special session, the Legislature raises the sales tax on groceries from 1.75% to 4.85%, paired with an income tax cut. In about five weeks, Utahns gather roughly 152,000 signatures for a referendum.

Jan. 2020: The day the referendum qualifies, lawmakers repeal their own tax bill, 70-1 in the House and 27-0 in the Senate.

Nov. 2021: The Legislature sets aside the redistricting commission's maps and splits Salt Lake County four ways.

Feb. 2024: A 60% bar on tax initiatives, HJR 14, passes the House and dies in the Senate.

July 2024: The Utah Supreme Court rules that initiatives reforming government can't be gutted at will. Legislative leaders call it "one of the worst outcomes we've ever seen from the Utah Supreme Court."

Aug. 2024: Lawmakers call themselves into special session and pass Amendment D, giving themselves the power to amend or repeal anything you pass. The courts void it for misleading ballot language and a skipped newspaper notice.

Nov. 2024: Senate President Stuart Adams, on Amendment D: "We're not going to give up on that one."

2025: They didn't. The 60% bar comes back as Amendment B. SB 73 ties your initiatives to the newspaper rule, and Amendment A puts that rule up for grabs.

Dec. 2025: After 251,590 Utahns sign a referendum on the public employee union ban, HB 267, the Legislature repeals its own law in a special session rather than face the vote.

2026: Adams promises a new constitutional amendment on initiative power. In July, leadership says it won't make this year's ballot. The next shot is 2028.

Line those up and the motive isn't hard to read. Look at what Utahns actually did with their power. We legalized medicine, expanded health care, fought gerrymandering, and twice made the Legislature take back laws it had already passed. And when citizens did touch taxes, it was to pay for health care for working families and to stop a tax hike on groceries.

So where's the runaway citizen tax initiative B is supposed to protect you from? Nobody pushing B has named one, not in committee and not in the voter pamphlet. What they have is a story. The 60% bar first showed up in 2024 and died in the Senate. After the courts threw out Amendment D, it came back with a softer face and a backstory about your neighbors raising your taxes. Same goal, better marketing.

That's the soft sell. Amendment D asked you to hand over your initiatives outright, and the courts said no. Amendment B asks for a piece of them, wrapped in a promise to protect your wallet. Amendment A clears the tripwire for whatever comes next. This Legislature has been telling you since 2018 who it thinks should get the last word in Utah. Believe them.

Taking the case for B seriously

I've listened to the arguments for B. A couple of them sound reasonable until you check them.

Start with out-of-state money. I get the worry. But B doesn't cap a single dollar. My friend Jeffrey Pierce, a Republican who ran in this year's primary for Utah House District 59 (Wasatch County and Park City), nailed it in six words: "Amendment B limits votes, not money." Utah has no contribution limits at all. And one of the loudest groups pushing B is Americans for Prosperity, whose Utah chapter is part of a national network. They're paying for statewide mail and digital ads right now. If outside money is the problem, B is a strange way to fix it.

Then there's the line about how you can't vote out your neighbors. True. You also don't need to. The Legislature amends and repeals what voters pass; see Prop 2. The 2024 Utah Supreme Court ruling that reined that in only protects initiatives that reform government. A tax initiative probably isn't covered, so a simple majority of legislators could still gut one. Pierce put it plainly: "the supermajority legislature will retain full control of the repeal of any new taxes passed with an initiative."

And the big one: B "protects taxpayers." From who, exactly? The Legislature raises taxes on a simple majority with no public vote. In 2018 it froze the statewide school levy instead of letting the rate fall as home values climbed. That meant $36 million more in property tax the first year, climbing to about $125 million a year by year five. Nobody asked you. When Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost suggested in committee in 2024 that lawmakers hold themselves to 60% first, it went nowhere. Sixty percent for you and fifty for them isn't taxpayer protection. It's a hall pass.

Where clause D bites

Quick primer, because this is where B gets clever. Utah property taxes float. Say your city collected $10 million last year. If home values in town jump 10%, the city's certified rate drops so it still collects about $10 million, plus whatever new construction adds. Want more than that? Officials have to hold a truth-in-taxation hearing and take the heat in public.

Now reread clause D. An initiative that makes the rate fall less than it would under that formula needs 60%.

The most popular property tax reform in the country is an assessment cap, which limits how fast your home's taxable value can grow. Florida, Michigan, Oregon, Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Georgia all have some version. Here's the problem. Say your home's market value jumps 12% but a cap holds its taxable value to 3%. The formula now has less value to spread the levy across, so the rate doesn't fall as far as it would have. As I read it, that's clause D. A reform built to protect longtime homeowners would need 60% to pass.

I'll be honest about where my reading runs out. Nobody, not legislative attorneys, not a think tank, not a court, has published an analysis of clause D either way. A straight cap on revenue growth, which pushes rates down harder, probably wouldn't trigger it. But here's what I keep coming back to: if B were only about new taxes, the first three clauses would cover it. Clause D is in there for a reason. I'd like someone pushing B to tell me what it is.

At least 19 states have passed property tax limits at the ballot box since 1978, red and blue. In California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Colorado, Florida and Washington, regular people did it by initiative, usually with the folks who liked the old system fighting them. That's the door B narrows.

The record

This is what turned me. For five years, Republican legislators, not Democrats, have filed bill after bill to rein in property taxes. Almost every one died, most without even getting a hearing. Pierce pulled the full list together, and I checked it against the legislative record. Here's a taste:

2023, HB 260 (Rep. Joel Briscoe): expand the circuit breaker credit for low-income seniors. Passed the House 68-0. Died in the Senate after the Senate tax chair said his committee preferred deferral and called the circuit breaker "a wealth transfer."

2024, HB 354 (Rep. Tyler Clancy): require voter approval before a taxing entity goes above its certified rate. Never heard.

2025, SB 224 (Sen. Wayne Harper): raise the circuit breaker's top credit to $2,000. Never sent to a committee.

2026, HB 484 (Rep. Kay Christofferson): cap property tax revenue growth at 5% unless voters approve more. Held in committee 7-3.

2026, HB 449 and HB 485 (Rep. Tiara Auxier): a taxpayer bill of rights modeled on Colorado's, and a cap on new-growth revenue. Neither was ever sent to a committee.

2026, SB 97 (Sen. Dan McCay): as filed, a 5% cap on truth-in-taxation increases. Died on the Senate floor 14-15.

2026, HB 365 (Rep. Thomas Peterson): taxing entities must announce the amount and purpose of an increase before they budget it. Passed the House 67-2. Died in the Senate.

2026, HB 170 (Rep. Rex Shipp): let voters refer school board tax increases to the ballot. Passed the House 50-21, failed in the Senate 9-15. Third straight year a version of it died.

Pierce, writing as a Republican to Republicans, didn't mince words: "This is not a state legislature that is your friend when it comes to taxpayer protections." His advice is the same as mine: "Don't trust me, don't trust anyone, just look at the track records of those pushing it, and look at your own property tax bills."

So who's carrying B? The Utah Taxpayers Association. Its president testified for it at both committee hearings. The same Association opposed a 2023 proposal to let lawmakers raise the homeowner exemption, and this year its president wrote that Rep. Jill Koford shelved her homeowner exemption bill over its effect on Utah's business climate.

I get the tradeoff, I really do. Bump the homeowner exemption and more of the load lands on business property, and business groups will fight that. Reasonable people can argue about where that line goes. What I can't get past is a group that lobbies against homeowner relief inside the Capitol now asking homeowners to give up the one tool that works around it.

Where my opponent stands

Ken Ivory voted to put B on your ballot. He voted for Amendment D in 2024, the one the courts tossed. He voted for SB 73, the bill that ties your initiatives to the newspaper rule (I'll get there). And he voted twice to take apart the circuit breaker, the property tax credit that keeps low-income seniors in their homes.

First came SB 197 in 2025. It phased the circuit breaker out for new applicants and steered them toward deferral. Gov. Cox, a Republican, vetoed it, warning it "risks cutting off the most vulnerable." Then came SB 78 this year, which would have repealed the circuit breaker outright and replaced it with deferral: a lien on your home that grows with interest. It failed in the House 28-41. Ivory voted yes both times.

This month I spoke at the Midvale and West Jordan senior centers. You get three minutes at the mic, and I spent mine on the circuit breaker, because deferral sounds fine until you walk it forward. Picture a senior in a $550,000 West Jordan home who starts deferring at 66. At 80 she needs assisted living, so she sells, which is what a lot of seniors end up doing in their last year or two. Fourteen years of property taxes plus interest come due at the closing table, out of the equity she was counting on to pay for her care. Nobody saved anything. The bill just waited for her.

Now, to be fair to Ivory, and I mean that: when the relief bills on that list hit the House floor, he voted for nearly all of them, and he cosponsored the taxpayer bill of rights. Those bills died in the Senate. But voting for relief you know is headed for the graveyard is cheap. On the votes that actually moved power, over your ballot and over your parents' house, he voted against you every time.

The Taxpayers Association noticed. Its 2025 scorecard double-counted his votes for B and SB 73 and named him a Friend of the Taxpayer. When the Salt Lake Tribune asked both of us where we stand on A and B, I said against both. He didn't answer. Not on A, not on B, not on anything else they asked.

A is awful

I'll give A's supporters their due. Newspaper notices cost real money, plenty of people get their news online now, and every legislator in both parties voted to put A on the ballot. Those are fair points. Here's why they don't move me.

For 130 years, Utah's constitution has required the Legislature to print any proposed amendment in newspapers across the state for two months before you vote. A deletes that and lets the Legislature decide, by ordinary statute, how it tells you. The 60-day window stays. Everything about how you're told becomes the Legislature's call.

Go back to Amendment D on that timeline. One reason the courts threw it out: the Legislature didn't get it into newspapers for the full two months. That newspaper rule was the tripwire. A pulls it out, right before the amendment leadership has already promised to bring back.

Now the gaslighting trap, because you're going to hear it. In 2025, Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, the same senator who sponsored B, passed SB 73. Starting in 2027, it makes citizen initiatives meet that same newspaper rule. Ken Ivory voted for it. So A's supporters will tell you a no vote makes initiatives more expensive. They're right about the cost. That's the trick. They built the cost, chained your initiatives to it, then put the rule on the ballot so they could warn you about a bill they wrote themselves. That isn't modernization. It's a ransom note dressed up as good government. Don't fall for it.

The fix is repealing SB 73, not handing the Legislature control of its own notice rules. I'll vote to repeal it. And yes, I know every Democrat voted for A too. I think they got it wrong, and I'd tell them so.

This isn't left versus right, whatever the mailers say. Pierce wrote his whole analysis for his conservative friends, and his bottom line is that B "effectively kills such efforts, placing us at the mercy of the legislature to solve problems they themselves created." He's got company. Six Republican legislators voted against B. Rep. Ray Ward called a 60% bar "impossible" when the idea came up in 2024. Scott Cuthbertson, a fiscal conservative and the 2024 Republican nominee for state Senate, wrote in the Deseret News that "Passing Amendment B would effectively shut down the ballot-initiative process entirely."

And most people voting yes on B aren't in on anything. Pierce is careful to say that, and so am I. They want lower taxes and a say in how they get there. Same here. They've just been sold a story where the threat is their neighbors, when the record says it's the Capitol. Pierce is asking them to "say no to concentrating more power into the hands of the legislature." I'm asking the same thing.

What I'll do

If you send me to the Capitol, I'll vote to repeal SB 73. I'll fight every attempt to swap the circuit breaker for a lien. I'll push for the property tax bills on that list to get the hearings they were denied, no matter whose name is on them. And if 60% really is the right bar for raising Utahns' taxes, I'll ask my colleagues to meet it first. I'm curious how that vote goes.

The only public poll has B up 50% to 21%, with 23% undecided. Nearly a quarter of voters haven't made up their minds. That's enough to win this, if people read past the letters on the ballot.

I still believe government can be worthy of the people it serves. It earns that by trusting them, not by raising the bar every time they win.

No on A. No on B. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Then send this to one person who hasn't decided yet.