Lawmakers expect education to take biggest budget hit

JOHN SCHROYER

THE GAZETTE

DENVER - Will it be higher education? What about the Department of Public Safety? Or K-12 programs? What if two dozen agencies will have their funding cut completely?

That's pretty extreme. No agency is going to get it's funding completely cut. And if "agencies" means departments, we don't even have two dozen of them.

Those were just some of the possibilities buzzing around the Capitol this past week as lawmakers debated where hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts will have to be made. The questions could be answered as soon as Friday morning, when Gov. Bill Ritter's director of the office of state planning will deliver a series of proposed rollbacks to the Joint Budget Committee.

Ritter, a Democrat, said in his State of the State address last week that he'll seek an across-the-board 10 percent budget cut from each state department, which would total roughly $800 million in cuts. The LegislaAs part of that process, the governor asked each state department to come up with cuts equal to 10% of their budgets. That gives him -- and us -- a range to pick from.ture is facing an estimated $631 million shortfall for the current fiscal year due to the economic downturn, but many lawmakers fear that the actual number will be much greater.

Not really. We've said over and over that there won't be across-the-board cuts. Those never work out well. It's a lot better to look at what can be cut, then pick the cuts that do the least damage to state services.

As part of that process, the governor asked each state department to come up with cuts equal to 10% of their budgets. That gives him -- and us -- a range to pick from.

Colorado's constitutional funding restrictions, however, have left many legislators pointing to a single target - higher education.

"We are completely boxed in. Higher education will be where the cuts will have to come," said Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, a former member of the JBC. "The people of this state have dictated where we have to go, (because of) TABOR. People say, well, we have limited options. That's not true. We have no options."

Morse pointed out that the top half-dozen departments funded by the state eat up 94 percent of the state's $18.6 billion budget, but all of those except for higher education are protected either by state or federal law.

The Taxpayers Bill of Rights, authored by Colorado Springs anti-tax crusader Douglas Bruce, prohibits the Legislature from raising taxes without a vote of the people, and a separate constitutional provision precludes state expenditures from growing by more than 6 percent each year.

JBC Vice Chairman Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, agreed with Morse that the state's colleges and universities are in the cross hairs.

"We're going to lose another generation of kids. Literally, we're going to cause dropouts over the next few years," he said.

Pommer estimated that in this fiscal year and the next one, the Legislature will have to figure out how to cut the budget by perhaps $1 billion, adding, "Literally everything we can think of is on the table."

Legislators said they aren't certain what the governor has in mind, and no one in his office would let loose any hints. Speculation was rife, though, that gains made last year in education could be rolled back.

Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, said there's more than $100 million in K-12 education programs that are not shielded by Amendment 23, which safeguards most of public school funding.

Merrifield said the Legislature could decide to remove a portion of the $34.5 million it appropriated in last year's budget for full-day kindergarten.

Any school funding above the requirements of Amendment 23 could be on the table for cuts, said Glenn Gustafson, deputy superintendent and chief financial officer for Colorado Springs School District 11.

Every school district in the state received about $20 extra per pupil, in two payments, that could be cut, he said. For D-11, that would be about $600,000, he said.

Other at risk areas include the extra money provided to districts that receive the lowest per pupil allotment; extra money provided under a formula for districts with declining enrollment, and capital construction money for charter schools, he said.

"If they take it back right now, we would have to find those cuts," he said. "We would be in kind of pickle but they could retroactively take that away.

"While we're concerned about any reduction, we understand that the state has a problem and we do have reserves that can help us with some cuts Merrifield, who chairs the House Education Committee, said, "I'm going to try to protect as much as I can, but... I can see the writing on wall. We are just in deep, deep doo-doo."

Those cuts could also wind up hurting charter schools around the Colorado Springs area, said Rep. Amy Stephens, R-Monument.
She said she's heard rumors that a $10 million appropriation for charter school capital construction could be sliced in half.

"We have a lot of students affected by that," Stephens said.

She's another one who's also worried about higher education funding, especially for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, which she said "took a harder hit than some of our other universities" when a recession hit the state earlier this decade.

Stephens said she hopes the governor won't protect any sacred cows, but will demonstrate a willingness to withdraw many of the new state programs begun under his watch.

As long as we protect her sacred cows, like the additional $5 million earmarked just for charter schools last year, we can cut money for children in special education, preschool and anything else.

Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, linked much of the budget shortfall to illegal immigration. He referred to a recent
report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, which found that illegal immigrants cost Colorado roughly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars each year.

"Part of the solution to this budget problem is to deal with the illegal immigration problem, so that the people who are losing jobs have jobs to get," Schultheis said.

The bottom line for the JBC, however, is simple, said Rep. Don Marostica, R-Loveland.

"Anybody's ox could get gored. They have to just be prepared."

Gazette writer Sue McMillin contributed to this report