January 19, 2009 06:49 PM UTC

A Chance to Slay the TABOR Dragon?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Getting to the roots of Colorado’s endless fiscal nightmare is a delicate affair, as the Denver Post reports:

During a legislative session in which budget cuts will dominate the debate, several state political players from both parties have had initial but serious discussions about whether to take on that most famous of the state’s budget-binders: the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

In fact, some lawmakers opposed to TABOR said the current economic gloom might just provide the opening needed to defeat their old foe.

“There’s a consensus that the constitution doesn’t allow the legislature to deal with the issues facing the state,” said state Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder. “. . . I think there’s a feeling we need to do something.”

TABOR, among many other things, constrains the budget during healthy years by placing a revenue cap on the state. All revenue that comes in over that cap must be refunded. Generally speaking, Republicans adore the limitations and Democrats despise them.

The measure’s revenue limitations are in a timeout scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, though state coffers wouldn’t be bumping up against the cap this year anyway.

Sure, but the inability to build up reserves–or even use additional revenue to catch up deferred maintenance–in healthy years is a big reason why even minor economic downturns become budget-slashing emergencies for the state. And it’s not just TABOR, but TABOR’s interaction with numerous other spending mandates and limitations in the constitution that leaves lawmakers powerless to do anything besides cut when times get lean.

We said a couple days ago that the upshot in this bad situation may be that voters will get a bitter taste of the hard-right “drown the beast” model of (non)government perforce. There’s a consensus building that experiments in Colorado with shackling government to a mass of competing limits, with no concern for the increasing damage these twitty ideologically-stilted thinktank proposals are doing–indeed, the damage being an explicit goal–are one of the great failures of our times.

Evan Dreyer, a spokesman for Gov. Bill Ritter, said representatives from the governor’s office also have spoken with lawmakers about pursuing a TABOR change, something Ritter urged legislators to do during his State of the State speech.

Heath said he has also talked with University of Colorado President Bruce Benson and Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce boss Joe Blake.

Benson – a former state Republican Party chairman who supported the 5-year TABOR timeout known as Referendum C – confirmed the discussion on Friday and said “everything’s on the table.”

…Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry [said] taking on TABOR in a year when the state has so many other pressing fiscal issues would be a distraction.

“TABOR has zero impact on the budget cuts we will be forced to make this year,” Penry said. “Those are due entirely to the economy.”

Isn’t Josh Penry’s hubris-riddled statement exactly what we’re talking about? It’s not even cute anymore, it’s a simple inability to see beyond one’s own nose. To willfully refuse to acknowledge the underlying issues that impact Penry’s and the whole state government’s ability to function…well, it’s not quite the opposite of leadership, but it’s pretty close.

On the other hand, Democrats say sure–cast your lot with the throwback Doug Bruce TABOR warriors. Grandstand on yesterday’s battlefields. Tell us how great it is now that the government is broke like you’ve wanted for years. Better educated voters may be waiting in 2010 to make the whole Republican party pay dearly for it, to the dismay of Benson and other more reasonable figures.

This is something that former GOP Governor Bill Owens, for all his faults, began to realize toward the end of his term. Sometimes the ideology must give way in the face of reality–just a little, just enough that we can continue arguing about “big” or “small” government against the backdrop of a functioning government. But Senator Penry, it seems you’re no Bill Owens. And yes, the fact that you take that as a compliment is part of the problem.