What SB65 Actually Would Have Done
Every Utah school district collects a property tax called the minimum basic levy. Right now, that money stays local — it counts directly toward what your district owes for its own basic education program. SB65 (and its 2025 predecessor, SB37) would have required every district to send that money to the state first, dump it into a brand-new fund the state controls, and then wait up to 35 days for the state to send an equivalent amount back. Supporters called it an accounting cleanup. Critics — including Utah's own State Auditor — called it a way to make local school money legally indistinguishable from the state's general spending account, at least for a few weeks at a time.
Why would anyone want that?
The bill's sponsor, Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, has argued it gives the state more flexibility to move money between growing and shrinking districts — his own words were that "red dollars spend just as well as green dollars," meaning it shouldn't matter which pot of money pays a school's bills as long as the total is the same.
Why did it fail — twice?
In 2025, it passed both chambers and landed on Gov. Cox's desk — who vetoed it, citing legal and accounting ambiguity and a "public trust" problem. In 2026, Fillmore brought it back as SB65. It passed the Senate again, but died in the House before it ever got a real hearing — more on exactly how, below.
Why it's still worth watching
The sponsor, the House floor sponsor, and one of the bill's sharpest on-record critics all sit together on the same legislative committee that's supposed to workshop education bills before they're introduced. That committee didn't touch this bill either year. Two failed attempts in a row from the same senator, on the same interim committee, is usually a sign of a third attempt — not an abandoned idea.
Two Attempts, Two Deaths
2025 — Senate Bill 37
Fillmore's first version passed the House 41–27 and the Senate 20–8. Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed it, pointing to unresolved legal and accounting questions and a broader concern about public trust — specifically, whether money that passes through a general-purpose state account keeps the same legal protection it has when it stays with a local district.
2026 — Senate Bill 65
Fillmore brought the same core mechanism back as SB65, with Rep. Val L. Peterson as House floor sponsor. This time it didn't reach the governor's desk at all.
Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee hearing. Fillmore presented his own bill. Tina Cannon, Utah's elected State Auditor, testified against it — as did Jennifer Partridge of the Utah School Boards Association. Fillmore then moved to pass his own bill; it advanced 4–1–2.
Passed the Senate floor 18–11–0 and was sent to the House the same day. (Full roster below.)
House Education Committee agenda — SB65 was item #7 of 7, dead last. Fillmore only introduced the bill; no testimony, no discussion. Rep. Val L. Peterson — the bill's own House sponsor — wasn't even in the room, marked absent. A motion to adjourn passed before the committee ever got to it.
Without a rescheduled hearing, the House struck the bill's enacting clause — a procedural move that guts a bill without a floor vote. Filed as not passed the same day.
Read together: a bill can die from an up-or-down vote, or it can die from simply never being given the time. SB65 died the second way.
Where The Money Goes — Before and After
What actually changes
Districts still set their own tax rate — that doesn't change. What changes is who holds the money while it's in transit, and how much flexibility the state has over where the money that gets sent back actually comes from. The bill also would have repealed the current rule that sends any excess levy revenue straight to the constitutionally protected Uniform School Fund, and added a new disclosure line to property tax notices explaining the pass-through. Since the bill died, none of that disclosure language ever made it into law — Utah Code §59-2-1317 today says nothing about how the minimum basic levy is collected or where it goes.
The "Wash" Mechanism
The bill guarantees districts get an equivalent dollar amount back. It says nothing about which pool of money that amount has to come from — and that gap is exactly where a Granite School District finance administrator said the real risk lives.
Neither bill's text does this by itself. What it does is remove the structural reason it currently can't happen quietly.
Senate Final Passage — Feb 18, 2026 · 18–11–0
Yeas — 18
Nays — 11
The Alpine Connection
SB65 doesn't exist in isolation. It lands on top of a separate, already-shrinking tax base — and nowhere will that collision be sharper than in the new districts carved out of Alpine School District, effective July 2027.
The base is already leaking
Tax increment financing districts — TIFs, PIDs, CRAs — freeze a project area's taxable value at a base year and divert most of the growth above that base to the development itself, not to schools. Eagle Mountain's Sweetwater Industrial Park deal, tied to a Meta data center expansion, is projected to divert $13.5 million from Alpine School District's revenue over 20 years — 64.7% of the growth in that zone, with only 3.7% coming back to the district.
A 2017 carve-out — also sponsored by Fillmore — was supposed to wall the minimum basic levy off from exactly this kind of diversion. The Sweetwater numbers show Alpine's full combined rate going into the increment split anyway. Whether that carve-out is actually being honored is still an open question.
Then the district gets smaller
Alpine currently absorbs that $13.5M loss across roughly 84,000 students. After the 2027 split, Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs fall into the new West District — built from just four cities. The same diversion, unchanged, lands on a fraction of the tax base.
Now pool it statewide
Today, that shortfall is at least visible — a specific district losing a specific, traceable amount to a specific tax deal. Under SB65's pooled system, every district's minimum basic revenue gets mixed into one statewide fund before being redistributed. West District's shortfall would still get backfilled — but the link between "this data center deal cost this district this much" disappears into a statewide average. The dollar amount owed is guaranteed. The accountability isn't.
Worth noting: SB65 only pools the minimum basic levy. The Voted/Board Local Levy, Capital Levy, and Debt Service Levy stay local — so West District would still visibly carry TIF impact through those, even if a future version of this bill passes.
Who To Watch Before 2027
SB65 was never part of the Education Interim Committee's own formal bill requests for 2026 — that committee recommended three other bills instead, and explicitly declined to recommend two more. Fillmore introduced SB65 independently, bypassing the very body built to vet education-finance ideas before session.
That same interim committee is where a third attempt would most likely get pre-worked. Three names matter most:
Two failed attempts, same sponsor, same committee seat both times. If a third version shows up in 2027, it likely starts here.