Shortly after the Colorado General Assembly approved the ballot measure that then became known as “Proposition CC”, a group of Republicans formed the “NO on CC” campaign committee. Some folks were surprised, and perhaps disappointed, to learn that University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl would be serving as co-chair for the “NO” committee. The sense of surprise was related, no doubt, to the belief Proposition CC proponents are promoting: that the measure — if approved by the voters this November — would provide more money for Colorado’s university system, the system overseen by Ms. Ganahl and her fellow regents.
Meanwhile, University of Colorado’s newly appointed President, Mark Kennedy, recently made a public promise to campaign in favor of Proposition CC — which would permanently end the taxpayer refunds required by the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR), and would allow the state government to spend money over and above the constitutional TABOR limits.
Proponents of the measure have promised that, for at least the first year, the money would be split evenly between three funding areas: K-12 education, higher education, and transportation. If approved, the measure would likely provide the state with additional funding — forever — but does not guarantee how the money would be spent, forever. A future legislature could use the money in whatever way the mood strikes them.
President Kennedy, speaking at a Faculty Council meeting in Denver, said he believed the university regents “weren’t unanimous” in their support of CC and were unlikely to approve a resolution supporting the measure… and so, he explained, he would be campaigning as a private citizen.
According to an article on The Complete Colorado Page Two, CU Regent Heidi Ganahl says President Kennedy “understands” why she opposes Proposition CC, and she understands why he supports it. And like Kennedy, she also believes its highly unlikely the Board of Regents would have ever passed a resolution supporting CC — with or without her presence on the “NO” campaign committee.
Some commentators are portraying the differences between Ganahl and Kennedy as “drama.”
From the Complete Colorado article:
“There is no drama,” she said. “I disagreed with President (Bruce) Benson — as did several of the regents — on the Hospital Provider Fee. There was no headline about that.”
Even the president of Metropolitan State University of Denver, Janine Davidson, who was a sorority Sister of Ganahl’s in college, sent her an email with a copy of Metro State’s resolution asking why Ganahl couldn’t get behind it.
Ganahl is clear on that answer.
“Our population has grown 15 percent in the last decade,” Ganahl said. “The [state] budget has grown 71 percent. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.”
We shared a chart yesterday in Part One that illustrates Colorado’s budget growth. (You can download the original Legislative report here.)
Regent Heidi Ganahl and her fellow members on the “NO on CC” committee refer to the proposed tax measure as “an end run around TABOR” — and claim that it’s merely the “first step” in a planned, longer-range effort to kill TABOR entirely.
That might be true, considering a quote from Scott Wasserman, the president of the left-leaning Bell Policy Center, as quoted in a Colorado Sun article last week. Here’s the quote:
“This is totally a rehearsal for future efforts, and I think we are learning how to do this in the current political climate…”
Heidi Ganahl counters the need to repeal TABOR by noting that “Colorado has the No. 1 economy in the country… and TABOR is a big part of that. There are already a lot of [state funding streams that make an end run] around TABOR. They’ve put $3 billion in additional fees a year through the FASTER program, Hospital Provider Fee and Referendum C.”
In the recent past, the Colorado legislature has put sizable new “fees” in place — fees that appear to be nothing more than “taxes” called by another name. Colorado courts have endorsed these tax-like “fees” as legitimate, based on the argument that… well, the TABOR amendment didn’t define the word “tax”, so the state’s lawyers can pick a different word when it’s convenient.
The Hospital Provider Fee, created in 2009, is a surcharge paid by patients every night that they are in the hospital. The money is then spent on funding Medicaid expansion in the state. Critics contend that this is actually a bed tax, but at least one judge has ruled that the state is perfectly free to call it a “fee” if they do desire. Similar criticisms have been leveled against FASTER — the 2009 bill that increased your car registration cost, with the money intended to “improve roadway safety, repair deteriorating bridges, and support and expand transit.”
Referendum C was discussed briefly in Part One; it allowed the state government to keep and spend the money it collected beyond the TABOR limit — for five years. It was marketed during the election campaign to be spent on health care, public education, transportation projects, and local fire and police pensions.
“Have you seen education getting better, or roads getting better, or higher ed getting more funding?” Ms. Ganahl said in the Complete Colorado article. “And there are two problems with [Proposition CC]. There is no sunset. It’s forever. And they did not put guardrails in, to assure where the money is going to go. So in a year, they can switch it up…
“There are no guarantees higher ed will get any money out of this…”
Even some big-name proponents of Referendum C have come out strongly against Proposition CC. Former CU President Hank Brown, and former Governor Bill Owens both campaigned in favor of Referendum C in 2005, but have said Proposition CC is “bad for Colorado.”
Ms. Ganahl notes that Referendum C failed to live up to its promises. “They promised to provide a big boost to higher ed, but five years prior to Ref C, the average yearly (state) spending was about 12 percent of the general fund on higher ed. During the five Ref C years, the average spending was about 10 percent of the general fund.”
CC proponents seem to believe that the road to better government spending is to give the government more money to spend.
Opponents seem to believe that the road to better government spending is to require the government to abide by the same kinds of financial restraints the taxpayers are forced to live by.