LFA urges audit and cleanup of UDOT tramway fees amid quantity discrepancies
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Summary
Legislative Fiscal Analyst Rachel Bowe told the subcommittee that UDOT's tramway fee schedule shows mismatches between 'authorized' quantities and actual lifts; LFA recommended removing obsolete fee lines, aligning quantities with counts across the state, and directing a program audit to inform 2027 fee quantities.
Rachel Bowe, senior financial analyst with the Legislative Fiscal Analyst's office, returned to the subcommittee Feb. 2 with a follow-up on aerial tramway and ski-lift fees after earlier questions from members.
Bowe said she had reviewed a spreadsheet provided by the Utah Department of Transportation that lists fee names in the tramway program, the total number of each lift type across the state, the quantity shown in the fee bill, and the department’s requested fee amounts. She told the committee that in several cases the fee bill lists an "authorized quantity" that does not match the actual number of lifts in service. “It kinda just looks weird,” she told members, citing a line where an aerial tramway category showed zero existing lifts but an authorized quantity of one.
Bowe said UDOT recommended eliminating unused fee lines and that the LFA’s working recommendation is to increase the fee-quantity figures in the bill to match the actual counts “just to make sure that we're kinda we have all of our bases covered,” even though UDOT does not plan to charge the upper-end quantity in practice. She also said the program manager will audit active lifts next year and report results during the 2026 interim so the committee can consider revised quantities for the 2027 session.
Committee members pressed for clarity on whether the spreadsheet column should be labeled as an "estimated" quantity rather than "authorized," and asked LFA and UDOT to make program-cost data (salaries, travel, inspection time) transparent so members can judge whether fee revenue would cover inspection costs. Senator Reby warned that gondolas and small trams can differ hugely in capacity and that the committee should ensure fees reflect inspection risk and scale: "When you think about the gondola that's at Canyons that puts five people in and the tram at Snowbird that has 100 people on it, those are very different experiences," she said.
Next steps identified by the LFA and UDOT were: remove obsolete fee lines where no equipment exists; have the program manager conduct a lift audit and report findings to the committee during the 2026 interim; and adjust fee-quantity fields in the 2027 fee bill based on that audit. The subcommittee did not take formal action on the fee bill during the Feb. 2 meeting.
The committee asked staff to relabel quantity fields and to provide the program-cost breakdown used to justify fee amounts before finalizing any changes.