June 26, 2009 01:41 AM UTC

It's the revenue, people.

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• by: COFPI

Colorado is home to a great many wonderful attributes.  Our fiscal system is not one of them.  That’s driven home by yet another bit of empirical evidence showing that our state-the 8th wealthiest in the country, at last check-continues to lag woefully behind most every other state when it comes to investing in key job-creating areas like education, health care, higher education, and transportation.

We’re 47th in total state investment, 48th in K-12 education, 49th in health care for low-income families, 35th for health care for low-income children, 48th in higher education, and 48th in transportation and infrastructure.  Good times, so long as you or your family don’t use bridges and roads, go to public school, want your kids to go college, want families and children to have access to health care, and want to be economically competitive with any or all of our mountain west neighbors.    

These rankings are not really a surprise when you consider that Colorado ranks 49th in state taxation and 46th in combined state and local taxation (per $1000 personal income).  It’s not rocket science, it’s just the other side of the ledger.

Now, of course, there are many ideologues who think investing so little in our future is a good and noble thing – that to bleed the public sector dry until there is nothing left is the righteous path to progress.  Not so.  

These loud but few public service cut-and-runners are either unable or unwilling to see the writing on the wall:  it’s the revenue, people.  Simply put, Colorado lawmakers and voters have built a system of government that our revenue cannot sustain.  And we can’t just cut our way out of this problem.    

While other states continue to invest more in the very areas that create jobs and bring economic growth, Colorado continues to lag behind.  Our neighbors in Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, and elsewhere continue to invest more in their schools, their roads, their colleges, their health care system, and their economic future, while we stand frozen by the prospect of addressing our revenue problems.  What does that say about our priorities here in Colorado and the kind of state we want?