September 01, 2011 06:42 PM UTC

Once Again, You Can't Cut Your Way Out Of This

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Durango Herald’s Joe Hanel reports on yesterday’s release of the second part of a study by the University of Denver on the state of Colorado’s long-term fiscal stability.

Or lack thereof.

Legislators will have to make a nearly permanent 20 percent cut to the public school budget through 2025 and all but eliminate state support for colleges, according to a study released Wednesday by DU’s Center for Colorado’s Economic Future.

To avoid the cuts, Colorado voters would need to agree to a variety of tax increases on just about everyone, including a statewide property tax for schools, a sales tax on services and a graduated income tax that would impose higher rates on people making at least $100,000.

Charlie Brown, director of the DU center, acknowledged that it will be very difficult for lawmakers to take his advice…

Cuts, new taxes or a mix of both will have to fill the gap, the study said.

“We think the problem is of a sufficient magnitude that the solutions are going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very tough to either cut our way out of this or tax our way out of this,” Brown said.

Although the state’s General Fund will grow as population grows over the next fifteen years, Colorado’s tax structure–amounting to a total tax burden for citizens and businesses well below the national average–is expected to continuously fall short of the required income just to maintain services at current levels. Again, we’re talking about amounts that already hover near the bottom of state rankings. Meaning that without tax increases, even more service cuts, or a combination of the two, we can’t balance the budget at any point in the foreseeable future.

By 2025, it’s a gap between need and income of $3.5 billion.

Charlie Brown of the DU Center for Colorado’s Economic Future is absolutely right about the political difficulty of any solution, cuts, taxes, or both, to the structural and inevitable budget shortfalls that lie ahead. The only thing we can say is that in a state where funding levels are already so low, directly related to the state’s low total tax burden…balance suggests a particular direction things need to head in. If the DU study’s numbers prove accurate, we’re going to arrive at a day soon where conservatives who apoplectically freak out over the small five-year stopgap proposed by Sen. Rollie Heath in Proposition 103, or any suggestion for solving this long-term problem other than more cuts, are in a politically untenable position.

Because if the signposts on the road to ruin don’t motivate voters, the pain to follow just might.