MIDA's own Vice Chair sponsored a bill expanding the authority's tax power over Deer Valley — six weeks after his campaign was reported taking $11,000 from the resort's own developer. The state's own fiscal analysts said the bill would cost Utah's basic school fund $421,800 a year, every year, to make up what MIDA takes instead.
Most of the MIDA scope-creep story runs on inference and pattern-matching — small justifications growing into large ones over years. S.B. 169 is different: it comes with a number, calculated by the Legislature's own fiscal analysts, showing exactly what MIDA's tax capture costs the state's basic education fund. That number is real, ongoing, and attached to a bill sponsored by MIDA's own Vice Chair.
S.B. 169, "Military Installation Development Authority Modifications," 2024 General Session. Chief Sponsor Sen. Jerry W. Stevenson; Floor Sponsor Rep. Val L. Peterson. Tap a card to see why each provision matters.
The bill's official fiscal note, prepared by the Legislature's own Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst, spells out the cost in dollars:
The fiscal note's own language: enactment "could cost the Basic School Program $421,800 ongoing in FY 2025 from the Uniform School Fund to backfill lost Basic Levy property tax revenue allocated to the Military Installation Development Authority." In plain terms — the property tax that would normally fund Utah's basic per-pupil education formula gets diverted to MIDA within its project areas, and the state has to replace that lost money out of a separate education fund, every year, indefinitely.
These aren't costs that show up on a Wasatch County resident's property tax bill. The accommodations and resort taxes fall on transactions inside MIDA's project areas — hotel stays, resort purchases, services sold there — paid mostly by visitors, whoever is buying. The Uniform School Fund cost is different: that's a statewide burden, paid out of income tax revenue that funds Utah public schools everywhere, not a bill sent specifically to Wasatch County.
A simple illustration of the rate itself, not a claim about what any specific MIDA property currently charges — the bill sets 15% as the ceiling MIDA's board can impose, not a fixed rate already in effect everywhere.
The Park Record (Brock Marchant, March 1, 2024) reported opposition crossing party lines, concentrated on the physical-notice exemption and the broader pattern of authority expansion:
"MIDA already lacks transparency in many ways, and is emblematic with many of the state land authorities exceeding what they were originally intended. I don't believe this is a proper role of the state government in the end."
Rep. Brett Garner (D-West Valley City)
"I'm concerned with the continued expansion of authorities generally in Utah and the potential for these groups to make significant decisions and spend significant money without proper oversight or accountability. It remains an open question whether these bodies are constitutional or not, because they stretch the bounds of separation of powers."
Sen. Nate Blouin (D-Salt Lake)
Sen. Heidi Balderree (R-Salt Lake) told the Park Record it was specifically the physical-meeting-notice exemption that lost her vote — a Republican senator breaking from the bill's Republican sponsor on a transparency provision, not the underlying tax powers.
Sen. Jerry W. Stevenson is MIDA's sitting Vice Chair, on the authority's board since 2008. He has personally sponsored MIDA Act amendments across six legislative sessions:
Across a decade, the senator who sits on MIDA's own board and holds its Vice Chair seat has been the Legislature's primary author of the bills expanding what MIDA can do.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported, December 29, 2023 — six weeks before Stevenson introduced this bill — that his campaign had received $11,000 over the prior two years from Extell, the luxury developer behind the Deer Valley/Mayflower expansion, one of MIDA's largest and most tax-lucrative project areas, and its owner, Gary Barnett. The same Tribune reporting found Senate President Stuart Adams, also a sitting MIDA board member, had separately received "thousands of dollars" from the same developer. Collectively, the Tribune found Utah lawmakers who approved the Extell/Mayflower development had taken $100,000 from the developer.
Utah Senate President Stuart Adams and Sen. Jerry Stevenson, both Military Installation Development Authority board members, have received thousands of dollars from the Mayflower developer.
The Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 29, 2023
KPCW's own coverage of the SB169 committee hearing noted this connection directly. The bill Stevenson sponsored expands the tax tools available specifically to project areas including the one his own campaign donor developed.
At the February 9, 2024 Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee hearing (reported by KPCW's Grace Doerfler), MIDA's own chief legal officer, Nicole Cottle, told the committee the new taxes would be "an additional tool for financing MIDA's project areas," noting: "In many cases, these project areas are very infrastructure-heavy, very difficult projects to facilitate."
Stevenson himself was direct about the tax's expected permanence:
"I don't see that tax being taken off. It's a little bit like Park City — once that's in place, there's extra costs incurred with being a resort community."
Sen. Jerry Stevenson, committee testimony
Sen. Daniel McCay raised a structural objection but voted for the bill anyway:
"The idea that it be in perpetuity is the only thing that's kind of bothering me a little bit about the bill... Because MIDA, unlike being a local elected authority, there isn't really an elected membership that sets up that tax. Usually when we come up with a local option incremental sales tax like this might be, there's elected officials that are accountable for it."
Sen. Daniel McCay, committee testimony
McCay also pointed out that unlike Public Infrastructure Districts, where such sales taxes can only be levied on certain items, MIDA's new tax "could be applied to just about anything within the resort area." The committee advanced the bill unanimously despite McCay's stated reservations.
Months before S.B. 169 passed, MIDA had already created a new project area at Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah County — partnering with Utah County and a private developer, Storyteller Canyon Property Owner, LP, on a project MIDA's own plan describes as building "an accessible inn at the Sundance Mountain Resort that will be essential to providing a specialty wounded veterans assistance program." On December 19, 2023, the same day MIDA adopted the Sundance Project Area Plan, the MIDA Board — chaired by Senate President Stuart Adams — passed Ordinance 2023-01, levying the MIDA Accommodations Tax, the Resort Communities Tax, and an Energy Tax within the new project area, using authority MIDA already held. S.B. 169, passed the following spring, added to that authority with the new additional resort communities tax.
Passed the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee with a favorable recommendation, 5–0–3, February 7, 2024, after an earlier 4–0–4 amendment vote. Passed the Senate floor 19–4 on February 26, 2024, with six senators marked absent. Passed the House Business and Labor Committee with a unanimous favorable recommendation. Signed by the Governor March 21, 2024.