March 21, 2012 10:23 PM UTC

When Good News Makes Everybody Mad

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Durango Herald’s Joe Hanel reported yesterday:

An improving economy will bring about $150 million more to the state budget next year, about a 2 percent improvement over the previous projection from December…

While the improving economy is good news for Coloradans as a whole, the slight increase in cash flow threatens to touch off a battle over how to spend it.

Republicans want to spend nearly $100 million to restore a tax break for seniors who have owned their homes for at least 10 years – a promise Republicans made last summer.

“I don’t think anybody has the appetite to balance this budget on the backs of seniors,” said Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, a member of the Joint Budget Committee.

The JBC has a deadline of Friday to finish writing the budget for next year.

We heard a few minutes ago that the Joint Budget Committee is asking for a delay in that deadline of at least a week, citing disagreement over what improving revenue forecasts should mean in terms of priorities for this year’s “Long Bill”–as the name implies, the lengthy piece of legislation that allocates annual appropriations for the operations of state government.

Republicans are signaling a determination to fight it out over restoring the senior homestead tax exemption, a break that has only actually been made available a few times in the decade it has technically existed. Apart from some additional revenue, the situation hasn’t really changed from our last discussion before the session. The state has cut over $700 million from public education in the last few years while demands on the system have grown–Democrats argue there are years of cuts to remediate before the state can give away $100 million. Gov. John Hickenlooper has been pretty solid in his preference for restoring cuts first; before restoring a tax exemption that beneficiaries haven’t been able to count on anyway.

Sometimes, good news can open the door to compromise, and maybe that’s still possible in this case: perhaps a “means tested” version of the homestead exemption? Or, good news can reveal underlying motives, and harden opposing sides instead of bringing them together.

Either way, we’d say arguing how to handle an improving situation beats the alternative.