How it All Started
At statehood in 1896, Congress placed land in trust to support public education and other essential public institutions. The State of Utah must generate revenue from these lands to benefit the designated beneficiaries.
Designated Beneficiary Institutions
These lands are held in trust specifically to generate revenue to support each designated beneficiary institution. Each receives an annual distribution from their permanent fund. Distributions provide an important and growing source of funding for several of Utah’s most important public purposes.
What Is a Trust?
In its simplest form, a trust is a legal relationship in which one party holds property for the benefit of another, creating a three-way fiduciary relationship among a settlor, trustee, and beneficiary.
Trustee
Duties and Responsibilities
Central principles must guide Trust management: Productivity, undivided loyalty, accountability, enforceability, and perpetuity. Any person or entity acting in an official state capacity who makes trust decisions or recommendations is a trustee.
Trustees are obligated to manage Trust resources for the benefit of the beneficiary. Benefit is typically defined in terms of monetary returns. The trustee must exercise prudence, skill, and diligence in making the trust productive for the specified beneficiary.
Trustees cannot prohibit or diminish revenue generation on school and institutional trust lands through management practice, policy, or designation without fully compensating the trust for lost revenue. All actions trustees take on school trust lands should consider, first and foremost, their financial impact on the trust.
Trustees are responsible for keeping property records, accounts of receipts and disbursements, and to providing this information to the beneficiary.
Trust goals are enforceable. Clarity of the purpose of the trust facilitates evaluating whether the trust goals have been achieved.
Perpetuity became a component of the School and Institutional Trust when the Permanent School Fund was first established in the 1890s. The trustees of a perpetual trust, such as the Permanent School Fund, must reasonably balance the short- and long-term interests of the current and future trust beneficiaries. While trustees must make the trust economically productive in the present time, trustees must also protect the productivity of the trusts in the long run. The long-term objective is to produce as much revenue as possible to aid both current and future beneficiaries of the trust lands —primarily public education of K-12 students.
Distributions for the College of Mines and Earth Sciences at the University of Utah help educate and prepare students for careers related to mining. The college has established national recognition and is pivotal in developing expertise that is increasingly vital to the nation’s mining and energy future.
Distributions sent to the Miners Hospital Trust provide funding to operate and expand the reach of Utah’s Miners Hospital Program to treat patients with mining related injuries and illnesses. There are currently 1,704 miners enrolled and receiving treatment from this program.
Utah's schoolchildren represent the largest beneficiary institution and receive 95% of all trust distributions combined. Public K-12 schools receive trust distributions separate from other legislatively appropriated funds for education. School Community Councils, made up of parents, principals, and teachers prepare plans tailored to address unique academic needs of students in each school.
Utah’s Schools for the Deaf and Blind Trust distributions provide specialized programming and enriched learning opportunities beyond the normal scope of traditional school programs. These enhanced education services benefit students enrolled in schools that specifically support the deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or deaf-blind.
Trust land fund distributions to the University of Utah, one of Utah’s prestigious land grant higher education institutions, are used to help fund an academic environment in which the highest standards of intellectual integrity and scholarship are practiced. With 18 colleges and schools and nearly 100 departments, the University of Utah contributes to the intellectual energy of the State. Many of its colleges and programs rank very high on national and world-wide scales for their research and academic excellence.
Distributions sent to Utah State University help support its distinction of being one of the nation’s premier student-centered land-grant universities. In 2020, the Washington Monthly recognized it as the number 2 public university in the nation. The university prides itself in fostering the principle that academics come first, the importance of cultural diversity, and serving the public through learning, discovery, and engagement.
Distributions are sent to Utah’s Division of Juvenile Justice and Youth Services to help provide youth offenders a continuum of supervision, rehabilitation, along with education and vocation training programs.
In advance of the 2004-2008 renovation of the Utah State Capitol, trust lands that were managed for Utah’s public buildings were sold. The proceeds were used to help offset the costs of extensive renovation and restoration of this iconic building.
Distributions from the Reservoirs Trust are carefully utilized by the Utah Division of Water Resources and are used to help fund new water construction projects, fund repairs of existing and aging projects, and improve water efficiency across the state.
The distributions to Utah’s Colleges of Education support the state’s teacher colleges and help train and strengthen Utah’s teaching community. The Colleges of Education Trust consists of six universities throughout Utah who award teaching degrees (University of Utah, Utah Tech University, Southern Utah University, Utah State University, Utah Valley University, and Weber State University).
Distributions for the Utah State Hospital assist in its mission to provide excellent care in a safe and respectful environment to promote hope and quality of life for individuals with mental illness.
