January 03, 2012 06:35 AM UTC

Is That Your Final Answer, Frank McNulty?

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• by: Colorado Pols

We wanted to make sure a story in today’s Denver paper from reporter Tim Hoover got a mention–a couple of weeks ago, we were forwarded some pre-legislative session Q&A between Hoover and House Speaker Frank McNulty on the Senior Homestead Exemption. A yearly battle as the hard fiscal choices are made, Republicans seized on the Homestead Exemption as their main point of opposition to Gov. John Hickenlooper’s latest proposed budget.

Because state revenue is beginning to recover from years of decline during the recession, Gov. Hickenlooper is proposing restoring previously-forecast cuts to public education in the coming year–not restoration of the hundreds of millions cut in recent years, of course, but at least a stanch on the recent bleeding. Republicans, after voting to rescind the Homestead Exemption themselves while they were in the majority, want to take the small measure of good fortune from improving revenue and immediately cut taxes with it. It’s a classic battle.

Unfortunately for Speaker McNulty, during the recent pre-session Q&A we discussed, and as Hoover ably follows up today, he didn’t really want to debate the senior property tax break-vs. education funding question. Responding to questions about the Homestead Exemption’s often well-heeled beneficiaries, McNulty said that he would support an “asset test” for benefits “across the board.” This was a clear shot at Medicaid, a program with substantially more beneficiaries (not to mention different political constituencies) than the senior property tax break.

McNulty should have stuck to the main issue: as Hoover explains, new federal health reform doesn’t allow asset testing for Medicaid. What’s more, Colorado was recently awarded millions in federal funding for increased children’s enrollment–funds we wouldn’t have gotten if we’d had an asset test that would have saved far less. That last is reportedly based on the state’s prior experience with asset testing.

And it’s important to understand just how silly or, well, heartless this is, because the state today “asset tests” for Medicaid for adults–just not for children’s coverage.

Bottom line: McNulty doesn’t want to wage a politically unsightly battle of senior homeowners vs. either kids on Medicaid or kids in public schools. He’s going to fight for the property tax break for seniors just the way it is, with no means or asset testing of any kind, regardless of momentary chaff thrown up in a Q&A–and when that policy goal is questioned, vague diversions about stuff they can’t do is a lot easier than admitting they think a politically motivated property tax cut should come before health care and education for kids.

Perhaps most noteworthy is to see a reporter not letting him get away with it.