A common theme in the 2025 legislative session was lawmakers wanting to give their residents some kind of tax relief. Over the past five years we’ve seen the prices on pretty much everything increase which in turn has made the government cost more. The largest government expense is employees. While roads and buildings are expensive, employees are an on-going cost that does not go away. It is much more difficult to cut employees than it is to ask governments to hold off on building projects or cut pricey programs.
With all that in mind, we here at the Utah Taxpayers Association are asking, is it time to put a limit on government salaries?
While we do understand that we want qualified individuals to run our governments and agree that they should be paid a fair wage, we do want to be careful with how much those wages grow. Recently, Deseret News Reporter, Brigham Tomco, looked into some government salaries at the state level. His research found that while Governor Spencer Cox earns $182,200 in salary, not including benefits, his chief of staff had a salary of $338,000, not including benefits.
Tomco also found that the Chiefs of Staff in both the House and Senate of the state also make over $300,000 per year in salary which is more than what the Chiefs of Staff in Texas, California, Massachusetts and New York earn.
This is not a call to cut the pay of these particular individuals. There are only three of them and cutting their salaries won’t make a significant difference to Utah’s taxpayers.
Rather this is a call for the legislature to look at government salaries as a whole across the state at all levels of government. Tomco reported that the increase in pay for the chiefs has increased nearly 40% over the last five years. That makes one have to wonder, who else in government has seen such dramatic increases over the last half decade?
If we look at Alpine School District, via Utah’s Transparency Website, we can see that in 2019 the Superintendent was paid $219,750. The Superintendent now is paid $258,563. For the Central Utah Water Project, Utah’s largest water district by users, in 2019 the General Manager was paid $188,646. For 2024 the General Manager was paid $227,766. For Murray City, the city’s highest paid employee is the City Attorney. In 2024 the attorney was paid $211,348 but in 2019 the city attorney was only paid $155,188.
These data points are a snapshot of what is more than likely going on around the state. Elected officials are being told they need to increase wages so they can hold onto their employees and not lose them to the private sector.
We would argue, while government employees should be paid a fair wage, it isn’t necessarily the job of the taxpayers to ensure government employees have financial compensation equal to what they can make in the private sector. There are other benefits that come when working for the government, such as you likely will never have to worry about the city going out of business or being sold, so wages do not need to match what the private sector is paying equally.
Again, countless legislators came to me during the 2025 session and said they have residents that are saying they are paying too much in taxes and want to know what we can do to give them some relief. My answer to them is start here. Government salaries are often the biggest use of taxpayer money. If you want to make a significant contribution in controlling government costs to the taxpayer in the future, we need to get a hold on salaries and how much they increase now.