Summit County officials are keeping a close, concerned eye on the proposals moving through the Utah Legislature. We talked to Council member Kim Carson about a major topic—the lawmakers proposal for Medicaid expansion.
Carson told us they’re very concerned about the Medicaid proposal—which depends on the state getting a federal waiver from the Affordable Care Act.
“It did pass through the senate on Monday and the proposal is to expand Medicaid up to 100% of the poverty level. Under the ACA it’s required that you go to 138%. So the state of Utah, if this bill passes through the house and the governor signs it, they will be requesting a waiver to be able to go to the 100% level. That means about 50,000 fewer people in the state will be served.”
She said Summit County’s mental health services will be impacted by the lawmakers’ bid to supplant the Medicaid plan that voters approved in Proposition 3.
“The legislature doesn’t feel like the additional tax that was in the proposition will cover the costs, especially future costs. So what they’re proposing is an immediate cut to different mental health related programing in order to help make that up. They’re looking at $15 million worth of cuts and those will affect Summit County. We’re looking at our drug court program, justice reinvestment program and then a number of other substance abuse disorder funding. So we’re really concerned about that. If they implement those cuts and then they don’t get the waiver then there will be no Medicaid expansion and our concern, then too is that they’ve already made those cuts to the mental health program it’ll be really difficult to get those dollars back.”
While the state has a whopper of a surplus, she noted that’s related to education.
“Now the surplus primarily comes from income tax, and those income tax dollars are targeted directly towards education. So that’s a good thing they should funnel as much of that as they can into education, but it looks like they’re looking at a tax cut instead.”
On another legislative item, a lawmaker from San Juan County wants to look at making it easier for communities to secede and form a new county. Carson said any area in Utah could be affected by this.
“Right now, if somebody’s going to split off everybody in the county has the opportunity to vote on that proposal. So this is saying that only those in the area that would be splitting off have the opportunity to vote, that’s really concerning. I don’t know if you remember when the Canyons School District split off down in Salt Lake and there was a big controversy over what tax dollars were going to be going into that new district. I see this as having similar potential. So you could have a wealthy area of a county vote to split themselves off and not support the rest of the county. I think in San Juan what they’d like to do is split off a portion of the county away from the area that includes the tribal land.”
