After an elaborate effort to provide political cover, Salt Lake County now will have the sales tax increase for transportation that its voters turned down three years ago.
It started with an accommodating bill in the Utah Legislature’s 2018 session. Salt Lake County voters had rejected the same tax increase in 2015, so legislators passed it instead as a county option, allowing counties to raise the tax without another public vote.
That was followed by some sly passiveness by the Salt Lake County Council. Instead of voting the tax increase up or down, the council passed the buck.