June 23, 2009 05:45 PM UTC

"Just Like California"

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• by: Colorado Pols

This has got to be one of the dumbest arguments offered by Republicans in defense of Colorado’s slowly-unraveling web of conflicting spending mandates and restrictions–the idea that our unplanned constitutional and statutory hodge-podge of “reforms” helps protect us from the fiscal crises that have beset states like California.

Most recently restated by all-but-announced gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry in this weekend’s Pueblo Chieftain:

The governor and his legislative allies also decided to pull the rug out from under taxpayers by nixing a decades-old policy that had capped growth in the state budget. Yes, with the stroke of a pen, this governor eliminated the sensible budget restraints (such as the Arveschoug-Bird general fund limit) that have spared Coloradans the binge-and-purge budget calamities that have made national headlines in places like New York and California of late.

We don’t get this. There are a lot of reasonable arguments that can be made in defense of, for example, the recently rescinded Arveschoug-Bird general fund limit. But saying that limits like Arveschoug-Bird helped in any way to prevent a ‘California-style’ budget crisis in Colorado is deceptive to the point of Orwellian absurdity. Here’s why:

In 1978, California voters passed a conservative-backed ballot initiative known as Proposition 13. This measure dramatically restricted property tax growth in the state, starving local governments for revenue and forcing the whole state to rely on much more volatile (especially in a recession) income and sales taxes. Proposition 13 also contained a provision requiring that new local area taxes require a 2/3 majority vote in a public election, and a similar majority in the state legislature to increase just about any tax in California–is this sounding at all familiar to you?

California’s budget is choked–has been choked for 30 years–by a close cousin of Colorado’s own Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. The mechanics of their restrictions take a slightly different form, but the net effects are similar. It’s true that California may not have had the same type of growth restrictions as Colorado did in Arveschoug-Bird, but they surer than hell got the “drown government in a bathtub” part down. The kinds of devastating cuts California faces to the services residents take for granted every day are about to throw the failure of this ideologically-stilted tax policy into very sharp relief. And in this way, you bet, we can draw parallels to Colorado’s budget problems.

Just not the ones Josh Penry would prefer.