SALT LAKE CITY — If voters want to raise taxes through a citizen ballot initiative, the threshold for passage will need to be higher under a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot.
"It should be difficult for a group of citizens to band together to raise taxes on a minority of their neighbors," Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, said Friday during a speech to the Utah Taxpayers Association.
The amendment — which has not yet been named — would change the threshold for a citizen initiative that increases taxes to pass from a simple majority to 60%.
"I think it makes more sense for tax increases to have very broad consensus. The power to tax is the power to destroy. And Utah has a small government approach. I think Utah citizens will support that approach," Sen. Fillmore told FOX 13 News on Friday.
The last time a tax increase was approved by citizen initiative was in 2018 through Proposition 3, which expanded Medicaid coverage. It passed with 53% of the vote.
Some who supported Medicaid expansion said they were concerned about the proposed constitutional amendment.
"It was a significant number of people that supported the tax increase that has benefited tens of thousands of Utahns in getting health care," said Nate Crippes with the Disability Law Center. "I don’t see a reason to do this other than to just make it harder for voters to get what they want when the legislature isn’t listening to the desire of the people."
But Utah Taxpayers Association President Billy Hesterman said he was supportive of the amendment.
"When you’re dealing with the bank accounts of Utah families? We just want to make sure Utahns really want to go forward with that tax increase," he told FOX 13 News. "Make sure there’s no question, there’s no doubt, yes we want to pay for this not just who had the best get out the vote campaign on Election Day."
Utah State Tax Commission Chair John Valentine said the commission has not taken a position on the amendment, but he personally supported the amendment. House Minority Whip Jennifer Dailey-Provost, D-Salt Lake City, has been outspoken in her opposition to it.
"I find it to be something of an anathema that we would ask our constituents, our citizens, to accept a different thresholds than we accept for ourselves being elected to the position we hold," she told FOX 13 News.
The amendment will be on the ballot in November.
