Damn that Arveschoug-Bird!

3 thoughts on “Damn that Arveschoug-Bird!”

1. AB was a law passed by the Leg that limited spending growth (as opposed to limiting revenue growth like TABOR).

   However, AB became constitutionalized by TABOR.

   The difference between TABOR and AB essentially our capital construction budget.

   Why do I know this?  Because Tom Russell, who is running for Romanoff’s seat, is on a personal mission to fix the mess created by TABOR and its ilk.  

   As you would expect from a stanford educated law professor, he loves explaining the details because he wants other people to understand them as much as he does.   Less espected from a law professor, he prefers Hawaiian shirts to suits–who knew.  I don’t understand this as well as I should, legal history is a bit weak for me, don’t ask to see my transcripts.

   TABOR and the other conflicting measures create a straightjacket of “good ideas”.  I’m sick of “good ideas” with bad implementation; implementation that lacks a robust understanding of the interaction of disparate laws.

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2. In the corporate world I came from, the budget wonks spoke in a language that resembled English.  The same appears to be true for government budgeteers.

   Here are the budget requests (year-over-year percentage increases) by major department for FY 2008-09 (requested amounts) where the budget requests are allegedly subject to the 6% A-B limit.  The info comes from the Governor’s web site for those of you who will invariably accuse me of making this up.  Here’s the link:

   http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Sat…

   Don’t ask me why or how the requested amounts in each individual department can be greater than 6%’ cause I don’t know.

   For simplicity, I excluded any department with a budget less than $10 million.

   Department

   Corrections +6%
   
   Education +5.2%
   
   Health Care Policy +7.2%
   
   Higher Education +8%
   
   Human Services +4.2%
   
   Judicial +6.5%
   
   Legislature +6%
   
   Natural Resources +6.1%
   
   Personnel +10.2%
   
   Public Health +10.2%
   
   Public Safety +10%
   
   Revenue +4.9%

   How this adds up to satisfy the 6% spending limit I cannot even begin to speculate.

   Note that no department in the entire state ever requests (or appears to ever suffer) a decrease in budget.

   In the corporate world, if a department requests a 10% increase in its budget, it has to justify that request by proving that it will deliver results that are worth the increase.  In the world of government budgeting, however, I suspect such processes and reviews are absent.  Government appears to assume that whatever an agency did last year, it will keep on doing that next year with an adjustment for inflation.

   Will Higher Education outcomes (as measured by some metric) be 8% higher if the department’s budget increases by 10%?  Will crime (you pick the metric) drop by 10% if Public Safety gets 10% more money?

   Absent some sort of accountability, I fear that this budget process is a giant black hole.  Maybe the legislature needs a dose of Doug Bruce.

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   1. AB only governs general fund appropriations.  Capital construction expenditures are not covered by AB.

      I am surprised that any of the departments request lower than 6% (they can’t make up needs in the future–and the compounding impact can hurt them down the road), but remember these are requests.

      I am not the right person to explain how this all works.

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