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WASHINGTON, Utah (AP) -- President Bush's proposed $2.77 trillion budget would advance the Central Utah Project, but cut funds for Utah housing programs and could increase the time and cost of moving uranium tailings in southeastern Utah.
The budget includes reductions in Community Development Block Grants that would reduce funds for Salt Lake City programs alone by more than $1 million, said Len Simon of Simon and Co. in Washington, D.C. The company represents Salt Lake City and other cities in other states.
Simon told the Deseret Morning News that it could mean even steeper cuts if the grant criteria are changed.
Jean Nielsen, director of the Salt Lake County Human Services Department, figures the reductions will mean $300,000 less for community grants that will hurt homeless shelters, low-income housing and food pantries.
"These cuts are impacting the people who are the most vulnerable," Nielsen said. "They don't have any other resources. There's nowhere else for them to go."
The county also will lose $350,000 in its youth programs, such as emergency shelters for children in cases of neglect.
Bush requested $40.2 million for the Central Utah Project, a decades-old project to transfer water from the Uinta Basin to the Wasatch Front. That is up from $34 million in fiscal 2006.
The president's budget includes $22.8 million for planning and beginning the moving of about 18 million tons of uranium tailings from near the Colorado River north of Moab to a site 30 miles north at Crescent Junction.
The cost was estimated at $470 million, but that could increase if the work is delayed.
The president's budget proposal contained less money for next year than the budget for this year.
"Oh, no. We need twice that much next year," Judy Carmichael, vice chairwoman of the Grand County Council, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
She said any delays beyond the eight-year estimated timetable would add to costs.
Don Metzler, manager of the project for the U.S. Energy Department's Grand Junction office, said the job might take an additional 14 years if such low funding levels continue.
Metzler said the Energy Department must prioritize many projects, some of them driven by regulatory compliance deadlines. The Atlas cleanup does not face such deadlines.
Bush's social funding cuts also would mean less money for Utah to help comply with the president's No Child Left Behind law.
"The promise was greater dollars and greater expectations," State Schools Superintendent Patti Harrington said. "They're breaking the promise."
The Education Department would get $54.4 billion for discretionary spending, down 6.4 percent from this year.
"It pretty much wiped out our Comprehensive School Reform Grant," which funds outside coaching to improve student achievement in several schools in Ogden, Harrington said. The state's efforts to create English language instruction programs for adults also were gutted by the cuts along with Even Start, an early-childhood preparation program in high-poverty areas.
The president proposed $198 million for the Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes program, which compensate rural counties for property taxes not collected on large amounts of federal land in their borders. Congress approved $236 million last year.
Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, called the PILT funding level "totally inappropriate."
On the plus side, the president proposed $80 million for commuter rail between Weber County and Salt Lake City, and $500,000 for an extension of the light rail system in the western part of Salt Lake County.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
