Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, talks to reporters during a press conference with Senate leadership at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on the first day of the legislative session, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
To Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, the question he wants to ask Utah voters is simple: “How easy do you want it to be to raise your taxes?”
With SJR2, Fillmore wants to put a question on Utah’s 2026 ballot, the next opportunity to ask Utah voters to weigh in on a proposed constitutional amendment. If SJR2 gets legislative approval and if voters pass it, it would require in the Utah Constitution that certain ballot initiatives must pass not just by a simple majority, but get at least 60% voter support.
That requirement would apply if the new law enacted by ballot initiative would entail the imposition of a new tax, the expansion or increase of an existing tax or, “for a property tax, a change to the tax rate that causes the tax rate to decrease less than it would under current law.”
To critics, SJR2 is just another effort during the 2025 Utah Legislature to make ballot initiatives more difficult to achieve. It also follows a Utah Supreme Court ruling that Republican lawmakers are still reeling over, fearing it cripples their ability to repeal or change voter-approved initiatives.
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Kael Weston, a Democrat who ran for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District in 2020, took issue with framing the issue as one that Utahns should “be afraid of your neighbors raising your taxes on you.”
“What’s really happening,” Weston argued, “is the bar is being raised higher for us but not for you. You get to spend our money when we elect you, and when we’re happy, we keep you in office. But our constitution very much is clear that all political power rests with us. … The dilution of our voice, the dilution of our power, wraps around this issue (of) ‘be afraid of this tax bogeyman.’”
But to Fillmore and other Republicans on the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee — which endorsed the bill on a 4-1 vote Wednesday — it’s simply a matter of letting voters decide whether to write the higher threshold into the Utah Constitution or not. The question has also already been floated, including last year and the year before.
Now — ahead of the 2026 election — Fillmore argues it’s time to pose the question to voters.
“The question here is very simple. Do the people of Utah want 50.1% of the people in the state to be able to raise taxes on the other 49.9%? Or, when it comes to this type of a question, should there be a broader consensus?” Fillmore said. “I don’t know what the people will decide … But I’m certainly not afraid to ask.”
He argued that the threshold should be 60% for ballot initiatives that require additional tax revenue — even though the Utah Legislature can implement taxes on a simple majority vote — because lawmakers answer to voters through elections, but voters themselves answer to no one.
“I think there really is a difference with the ability for you to hold electorally accountable the people who vote to raise your taxes, and the people that you will never be able to hold electorally accountable for raising your taxes,” Fillmore said.
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Billy Hesterman, president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, which advocates for low tax rates, urged lawmakers to support the resolution.
“I don’t think this surprises anyone, that we would say taxes should be hard to raise,” Hesterman said. He noted when governments want to raise taxes, they must adhere to a public process. For ballot initiatives, he said there “isn’t a great opportunity” for Utahns to “give feedback on whether they’re OK with having their taxes raised on them or not.”
During Wednesday’s committee hearing, a handful of other Utahns urged senators to vote against SJR2, arguing the 60% threshold would set too high of a bar for ballot initiatives to be successful.
“This resolution represents a very direct threat to Utah voters who participate in direct democracy through ballot initiative,” said Helen Moser, a member of the Utah League of Women Voters who spoke on behalf of herself.
In 2018, when the state most recently saw a flurry of ballot initiative efforts, none received more than 60% of the vote. That year, voters approved an initiative for full Medicaid expansion with 53.3% of the vote. An initiative to legalize medical marijuana passed with 52.7%. And a Better Boundaries’ initiative to create an independent redistricting commission passed by a slim 50.3%.
The Medicaid expansion and medical marijuana initiatives both included tax increases. So if they were subject to the new thresholds outlined in SJR2, neither would have passed.
Ultimately, though, in 2019 the Utah lawmakers repealed and replaced all three of those initiatives with their own versions of the law. That led anti-gerrymandering groups including the Utah League of Women Voters to sue, and today the courts are still hashing out whether the Utah Legislature violated the Utah Constitution when it watered down Better Boundaries’ independent redistricting commission to an advisory role that lawmakers can ignore.
In a July ruling that sent that lawsuit back to district court, the Utah Supreme Court made clear that the Utah Legislature has limited power when it comes to altering “government reform” initiatives — but can still make changes so long as it meets a compelling government interest.
The court case over the Legislature’s repeal and replacement of Better Boundaries’ 2018 independent redistricting commission is still ongoing, and there are still many unanswered questions about exactly how to define a “government reform” initiative.
“What’s going on right now is a direct attempt to skirt” the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling that set limits on the Legislature’s power to amend government-reform initiatives, Moser said.
During Wednesday’s hearing, the committee’s chair Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, initiated a contentious back-and-forth with some members of the public who testified against the bill, including Moser. He and Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Highland, grilled them on why they were opposed to letting voters decide the proposed constitutional amendment if they were so in favor of voters’ voices being heard on ballot initiatives.
“The idea that — heaven forbid — we put an amendment on the ballot for the voters to choose whether or not to alter or reform their government, I guess the clutching at pearls at this is confusing to me,” Brammer said.
Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, was the lone vote against SJR2. She also defended Utahns who spoke against it, arguing it’s not “disrespectful or stupid” to argue against the resolution. She noted their concerns are centered around the crux of the resolution — whether the Utah Constitution should have a 60% threshold for ballot initiatives that would raise taxes.
She argued it’s a valid point to question whether it’s right to require 60% passage for ballot initiatives and not other types of questions Utahns might face on their ballot.
“With that, I feel uncomfortable that the threshold changes only for ballot initiatives” as opposed to other ballot questions or other efforts to raise taxes, Escamilla said before voting no.
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