Philosophical split obvious in partisan budget feud

By Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Friday, April 4, 2008

The debate that led up to Senate approval of the $17.6 billion state budget Thursday revolved around a philosophical split between Republicans and Democrats on government spending.

A philosophical split? Or petty Dick Wadhams politics? I'm sitting in the Appropriations Committee right now where Republicans have sponsored bills spending more than $3 million. Just one morning. The fact is they've been voting to spend money all year, just as always. I've supported some of the bills and opposed others, just as always.

When the Republicans were in charge, they spent up to the 6% limit. There's no philosophical split, just politics.

Republicans called it "reckless" excess to add 1,334 state workers while the economy is tanking.

They were still fuming at the governor's office and majority Democrats for killing a "meager" $30 million "rainy day" fund proposal.

Of course they knew we were already working, with them, to build a rainy day fund with far more money in it -- more than $150 million.

"It's like adding 1,300 new state workers to the deck of the Titanic and we're heading for an iceberg and we're telling them to hold on as we turn up the steam," said Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs.

"But maybe we can offer them slushies after we hit," he added.

Democrats called it a frugal, smart budget that "invested" in vital programs - top-notch universities to crank out world- class workers and solar-power subsidies to spur the "new energy economy." Such spending, they said, will help Colorado power through choppy economic waters.

Democrats said the state still has a $283 million emergency reserve - four percent of the general fund, which both parties have tried to increase for years.

Republicans questioned why Democrats could not simply "reduce" the growth of spending below the maximum 6 percent limit.

We could have killed all if the bills they're sponsoring that spend money, but they would have complained about that too.

GOP lawmakers said Dems want to take the easy way out - tapping billions from the anticipated windfall from the state's oil-and-gas boom.

The Republicans have been working with us on that without complaining. And they've been insisting that some of the windfall get spent in their districts rather than go into the rainy day fund. Even if the Republicans didn't bring that up, the reporter could have mentioned it.

Senators voted 21-14, with only one Republican joining majority Democrats, to pass the spending plan.

When Democrats were in the minority, we voted for the budget even when he hated some of the things in it. Those budgets have a lot of cuts to important services because the Republicans had recklessly cut taxes. We could have all voted "no" and let the Republicans take all of the criticism for those cuts, but we chose to work with them and share the responsibility.

A conference committee will iron out differences between House and Senate versions before the bill goes to the governor.

Budget needs a solid reserve

The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 04/03/2008 10:18:34 PM MDT
The term "tempest in a teapot" well describes the partisan spat in the Colorado Senate on Thursday about whether to divert a mere $30 million in a $17.6 billion state budget to strengthen reserve funds that guard against a future economic downturn.

Unfortunately, the Post only pays attention to the tempests in teapots. That keeps people who read the paper from knowing what really happens in the legislature. It apparently keeps the editorial writers from knowing too, or they would realize that $17.6 billion is the total state budget, including federal money and cash funds. We can't use the federal money or fees for a rainy day fund, so it's misleading to use that number here.

After enough fulsome rhetoric to fill Folsom Field, the Senate voted 21-14 to reject the proposed spending cuts. Majority Democrats, some of whom initially supported the cuts, closed ranks after Gov. Bill Ritter said an upcoming bill earmarking federal mineral leasing revenues would provide a more substantial reserve.

In our view, that mineral leasing bill is a fine idea — but no substitute for a responsible fiscal reserve. Here's why:

• The budget passed for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is the fourth prepared under the five-year timeout from the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights that voters approved in 2005. By law, that budget now contains just a 4 percent reserve, $300.8 million. That's woefully inadequate to guard against the kind of severe budget cuts triggered by the 2001-03 recession. The state urgently needs to at least double its reserve to the 8 percent level that would have been phased in by a bill that passed the House 64-1 last year only to die in the Senate.

So we should cut $300 million out of the budget this year to avoid possibly having to cut $300 million out of the budget in some future year? It's good to have money in reserve, but hard cut our already-bare-bones budget and watch people suffer for it.

And the severe budget cuts in 2003 and 2004 were more the result of the permanent tax cuts the state made in 1999 and 2000 than from the recession.

• Against those budgetary goals, the proposed $30 million in additional reserves was more useful for its symbolism than its effect. That sum is a piffling 0.4 percent of the current general fund obligations facing the state, which total $7.8 billion. Far from protecting citizens from a "rainy day," such a Lilliputian reserve would dissolve with the morning dew.

So they do understand the difference between the $17.6 billion total budget and the $7.8 billion general fund. I guess the accurate number wasn't dramatic enough for the lead paragraph.

I didn't like the Senate's $30 million plan, but notice how the editorialists play with the numbers here. Their "piffling 0.4%" is Lilliputian compared to the general fund, but they don't mention that it would have been added to the existing $300 million reserve which is 4% of the GF by itself.

Then there's the state education fund. It's solvent today because we fixed a law last year that had been bankrupting it. That means during the next recession the increases in school spending required by Amendment 23 won't have the same devastating affect on the general fund that they did during the last recession.

Back then, the ed fund was broke because the Republicans running the legislature spent it dry, despite opposing Amendment 23 when it was on the ballot.

• The Post has editorialized repeatedly in favor of the bill by Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, and Rep. David Balmer, R-Centennial, to create a permanent endowment fund for higher education from an upcoming windfall from federal mineral leases. But that endowment fund won't generate much in earnings in its early years — and raiding the principal to support highways, health care or other needs would defeat the purpose of an endowment for higher education.

If the fund does rise to, say, $500 million by 2020, it may be possible to borrow from it to cushion against future recessions. But to avoid raiding the fund for pork-barrel spending, it should require a 60 percent legislative majority to tap the permanent fund — and all money borrowed should be repaid with interest within no more than five years.

While we will continue to campaign for a more responsible budget reserve for future years, we also understand that the six-member Joint Budget Committee that crafted the upcoming budget must work within the existing laws.

On balance, Sens. Moe Keller, Steve Johnson and John Morse and Reps. Bernie Buescher, Jack Pommer and Al White worked hard and wisely to write a responsible blueprint for Colorado's future.

OK, so it's a nice complement. Should I take back everything I set about the editorial? No. The last sentence or two doesn't make up for the rest. They admitted they were reacting to a "tempest in a teapot." They know the whole tempest was nothing more than a Dick Wadhams-written script to make Democrats look bad and set the stage for his scorched-earth campaign against us in the fall.

If the Post really wanted to write something sensible about the budget and a reserve, they could have asked us what our plan is. We could have debated the realistic scenarios for a drop in revenue. We could have discussed what parts of the budget really need protecting. We could have explained what we would cut and where we would fund money in a downturn.

They didn't do that. They never do. It's much easier for them to take the script Dick Wadhams writes for them, add some of their own words to it, and put it in print.

Charter schools likely to get more for renovation, construction

April 1, 2008 - 7:29PM
The annual battle over charter school funding began anew Tuesday with the release of a report by the Colorado League of Charter Schools saying that students in those institutions receive less funding than kids in traditional public schools.

Their annually-recycled dishonest lobbying campaign to get even more money than they already get. It would be nice if a newspaper would add up the amount of money charter schools get compared to public schools, rather than just reporting this nonsense every year.

Charter school opponents countered that those schools can take advantage of more grant funding than other schools but often don't. Still, they conceded that charters are likely to get twice their usual funding for facility renovations and construction this year.

The report said charter schools spend $480 out of the $6,369 they receive in per-pupil funding on operating expenses for facilities because, unlike traditional public schools, they must buy or fix up buildings not owned by the school districts where they operate. With operational costs subtracted, their per-pupil funding falls below the state minimum, the report said.

What about the charter schools that get free facilities from school districts? They never mention that, as a powerful special interest, they forced through a state law requiring school districts to give them any space the district has available.

They, and the newspapers, also leave out the fact that public schools don't get state money for buildings either. They have to go to the voters and, if the voters say no, the public schools have to live without the money.

(There is one exception. We settled a lawsuit filed by Colorado's poorest districts a decade or so ago, and the settlement requires us to pay a minimal amount of money to them so they can eliminate conditions that are dangerous to their students. Charter schools can apply for that money just like any public school. The private payoff to charter schools, on the other hand, is only for charter schools; no public school can ask for it).

When districts ask voters for building an maintenance money, the charter schools get it too. That's another requirement the charter lobbyists got the legislature to ram down the throats of school districts. Of course charter schools could ask the voters for money too, but they've never been willing to live by democratic rules. It's easier for them to lobby the legislature until it overrules local voters and takes away their ability to determine where their tax money goes.

As far as them having to "spend $480 out of the $6,369 they receive in per-pupil funding" on their buildings, that's misleading too. Every district along the Front Range has to spend $500 from each public school student's per pupil revenue on special education. Charter schools have weaseled their way out of that. A lot of charter schools also, by state law, get a share of the district's at-risk money even though they refuse to accept at-risk students.

Then, of course, there's the original lie that got charter schools responsibility-free, taxpayer money in the first place. They promised their schools would be better and less expensive than public schools and, specifically, that they would never need capital construction and maintenance money.

That promise lasted just long enough to dupe the legislature. They've never been better, or even as good, as public schools. But immediately after getting themselves written into state law, the demanded -- and got -- the same funding public schools get. Even that wasn't, and isn't, enough. Today they get more. And it's still not enough, which is why this article is in the paper. It's part of their relentless demands for more and more money.

The need to find affordable facilities also means charter schools can be illequipped to serve all students' needs. A full 39 percent of them don't have access to a gym, and only 28 percent of charters have kitchen facilities that meet federal standards, the report said.

Less than 1 percent of Colorado Department of Education facilities grants have gone to charter schools since 2000, though those schools serve roughly 7 percent of Colorado's public school students. Some school districts have included charters in bond issues on ballots, while others have not, league president Jim Griffin said.

What the charter school lobbyists, and the newspaper, is leaving out here -- knowingly -- is that those grants don't go to 99% of our public schools either. The state makes those grants because we were forced to by a lawsuit, and the grants only go to the poorest schools that are the most dangerous to students.

Most public schools in the state aren't greedy enough to even apply for the grants. They realize that the money only goes to schools that desperately need it. It's a good indication of how avaricious the charter lobby is that they would even try to take money away from those students.

The solution is to dedicate more funding to charter schools' capital needs, Griffin argued. He expects a provision in the 2008 School Finance Act to provide $10 million for that, rather than the usual $5 million, he said.

"We have to do what it takes to bring our charter schools up to the standards we expect in Colorado," said Yuma Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, noting one charter school in Granby serves lunch in a tent.

Update: During the debate over the school finance bill I offered an amendment that would have actually helped get a lunchroom for the charter school in Granby. I say "helped" because we can't tell charter schools how to spend their money. The Republicans the pro-charter Democrats supported the amendment and it was put into the bill. The charter school lobby was furious. They don't like to see a great unfairness poster issue like that go away. They also don't like distributing funds on a need basis.

Charter lobbyists got the Senate to strip the amendment out. They kept the money in the budget, exclusively for charter schools, but distributed across the board so it won't help any individual, low-income school fix anything.

When the bill came back to the House the charter lobby has gotten its legislators back in line. They said the Granby lunch-in-a-ten situation wasn't an issue anymore. And it won't me, until next year's school finance act when it will be ressurected as a glaring example of unfairness toward charter schools.

On a broader note, what do you think would be the response if a school district told people it could afford to open a new school, then opened it without a lunchroom and complained about students having to eat in a tent?

But House Education Committee Chairman Mike Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, said the report twists the funding numbers.

All schools factor facility costs as a percentage of their per-pupil funding, and because some charter schools don't have a gym or cafeteria, they have less of a facility to maintain with that money, he said.

The School Finance Act does not contain any special allocation for the schools that house 93 percent of Colorado's public school students, nor do those schools have access to federal or private grant programs specified for charters, he said.