States like Wyoming and Texas and Oklahoma get significant revenue from their resource wealth. We also have a huge cost for our schooling as we have more kids per taxpayer than other states and we are constitutionally mandated to have income taxes pay for education.

Income tax revenue is also highly volatile but the real estate lobby prefers income tax to real estate taxes as our main source of revenue in the state.

Utah has a high amount of poorer counties where the wealth gap is huge. We still are required to provide basic services for those counties. This often dips heavily into state funds to cover for as counties like Garfield, Piute and Wayne county just don't have enough revenue sources.

On the positive side, We are the best budgeted state in the USA and our legislators are constantly trying to keep up with growth. We are one of the fastest growing states in America. So Keeping up with this is not easy but we do have a lot of good people who do their best to lead our state.