http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/blog_rss/tomplant This was formerly the Colorado Budget Blog - but the budget season is over and... well... I didn't keep up with it all that well. So now the lid is off - anything Colorado and mostly Colorado Politics is up for grabs. Bob Beauprez recently proposed a new method of highway funding : increasing the sales tax and eliminating the gas tax. Mr. Both Ways needs to stop thinking everything's an either/or proposition. Beauprez is right about one thing - the gas tax as it is currently formulated won't keep up with transportation demands. Colorado charges 22 cents for every gallon of gasoline. Eight years ago, that was 22% of the cost - today it's about 7%. So, as our tax has been declining - the costs associated with transportation funding - concrete, steel, asphalt - have been growing exponentially. Add onto that the fact that Colorado is one of the fastest growing states in the country with increasingly complex transportation demands and you see the light at the end of the tunnel should be a train, but, since we can't afford it, it's just some guy walking in the tunnel with a flashlight. So, why not eliminate the gas tax and increase the sales tax? Colorado is home to two primary interstates in the country - I-25 and I-70. Each of them hosts countless cross-country truckers who buy gas, but rarely stop for more than a bad cup of coffee and a burger. So, by moving the revenue stream for maintaining the highways from gas tax to sales tax, we shift the costs of transportation from these out of state taxpayers who have the highest impact on the roads to our citizens who may be riding a bike to work, for all we know. Furthermore, the certainty of the funding source is brought into question with a sales-tax based revenue stream. Currently, our HUTF (Highway Users Tax Fund) is a dedicated cash fund that can only be used for transportation costs. By shifting the burden to sales-tax, that certainty is removed. In a recent article in the Rocky - Dave Owen said "I think Beauprez's on the right track. You need some dedicated dollars for highways outside of general fund surplus, because in five years that's going to go away" (when the Ref C tax reprieve expires). While I like Dave - he couldn't be more wrong. First of all - we have "dedicated dollars for highways outside of the general fund surplus" now - IT'S CALLED THE GAS TAX! When Dave said "general fund surplus" what he really meant was "excess general fund" (believe it or not, there's a difference). If you eliminate the gas tax, you will ONLY have excess general fund dollars for transportation, because that's where our sales tax dollars are going. Finally, our excess general fund doesn't go away after the Ref C timeout because Referendum C resets the TABOR base to the highest revenue level during the 5 year timeout. Until the next severe recession (such as 2001-2004) we will continue to have excess general fund (defined as revenues above our 6% General Fund spending cap). Then, when we recover from that recession, we will have them again because Ref C fixed the ratchet down effect in TABOR. We will be able to recover. That was the whole idea. That's not to say transportation can't benefit from a variety of funding sources. It can. Most states enjoy both revenues from a gas tax and sales tax - Colorado does as well. Senate Bill 1 from 1994 set the process. If the state has sufficient revenues to meet our basic 6% general fund operating obligations (creating that "surplus" Dave Owen was talking about) then about 10% of sales tax revenues are dedicated to transportation. Ostensibly, 10% was chosen was because it was calculated that somewhere around that amount was probably what was being spent on transportation related purchases. We know that our projected revenues for transportation are drastically below the amount we are going to need over the next 20 years. Some estimates say as much as $100 Billion (with a "B"!) less than the projected need. So, why not beef up the sales tax portion, and keep the gas tax? Or index the gas tax to the price of gas instead of by volume? Businesses cite "transportation infrastructure" as one of the most important considerations in establishing corporate headquarters in a state (along with K-12 and Higher Education) - so, how about addressing the corporate income tax rate in Colorado - one of the lowest in the country? The state will have to come to terms with the transportation funding quagmire, but a shell game of revenues isn't going to do the trick. And shifting costs from out of state drivers to our Colorado residents isn't a very Colorado friendly solution either. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/C2N9 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/C2N9/commentary#comments Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:08:22 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/C2N9 Tomplant http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/profile_picture/e75c0ebf7b6613c410_knlmv2uvp.gif Tomplant 4 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/C2N9/ The Colorado General Assembly has been in special session (or as it is offically known: the first extraordinary session of 2006) for 5 days. It is a good lesson in how not to make law. The session is ostensibly to address the immigration problem in Colorado - only thing is, no one can articulate very well what the problem is. The Republicans have claimed that the state spends billions of dollars every year on services for illegal immigrants - but the Owens Administration, when pressed by the Joint Budget Committee to identify and quantify the costs, couldn't do it. They have no idea how much they spend on services, what those services are and whether or not the state can actually do anything constitutionally to limit the services. No kidding. So, we have taken a reckless shotgun approach (the Cheney Strategy?) to legislating. 50 bills were introduced to be considered in a 5 day session. Bills were written on Wednesday, introduced on Thursday, heard in committee Thursday morning, on the floor Thursday night and sent to the Senate for the same treatment on Friday. This is really the worst possible kind of sausage. Do we have an immigration problem? Sure we do. Our system is broken. It sustains a dangerous business of "Coyotes" along the country's southern border. The illegal immigration process can lead to extortion, slavery, and sometimes death. It's a process that lives in the shadows and the shadows are not kind. Furthermore, our legal process for immigration is so onerous that few can navigate the red tape. It doesn't work. But these are issues that need to be addressed by the Federal Government through treaty, agreement and sytemic change - not the states. And most certainly not states that don't even sit on our country's borders. The Republicans claimed this was about policy, not politics. But recently, these claims have been exposed as a sham. They have been calling for a Constitutional amendment to limit services as long as we don't identify what services are going to be limited. They want to have the legislature do that next year. "The people need to have a voice" - they say. A voice in what? A bill to articulate the specific services that are allowed and not allowed (HB 1023 sponsored by Andrew Romanoff and Joan Fitz-Gerald) has been attacked by the Republicans. Why? Well, because it's not going to a vote of the people. Recently, they said they would support it if we passed it and then put it on the ballot too. This exposed the real reason they wanted the session. The Session's not to address services, it's not to address the problem, it is to put an anti-immigrant question on the ballot that will turn out more of their voters than the Democrats. Period. Why else would you pass law and then put something on the ballot to ask if we should pass the law? Why would we legislate through the constitution when we already have language in statute? The Session is an effort by the Republicans to hold a state sponsored press conference on illegal immigration. It makes a mockery of our system of deliberative democracy and is a shameful display of partisan posturing at the public trough. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/C2jd http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/C2jd/commentary#comments Mon, 10 Jul 2006 12:50:54 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/C2jd Tomplant http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/profile_picture/e75c0ebf7b6613c410_knlmv2uvp.gif Tomplant 21 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/C2jd/ One of the things that I hear frequently when I speak with groups about our budget is "why don't you just take the money out of prisons?" The reality is: if we're going to put people in prison, we have to pay for them to be there. Our prison situation is a ticking timebomb. We've known this for some time. In fact, the Joint Budget Committee submitted a list of potential sentencing changes two years ago to the Governor suggesting ways to alleviate our projected prison bed shortfall. The Governor told us he would veto any and all measures to change our sentencing guidelines. So, now we are looking at 1,000 new prisoners (net) every year. We are currently building a prison - CSPII - in Pueblo. It's a major undertaking. It's costing us over $100 Million to build it and even more to staff it. It only holds 954 prisoners. We would need to build one every year to keep up with our prison population. This is just insane. The Corrections Department presented their budget proposal to us today. In response to questions from the committee members, the DOC projected that they will need $182 Million in new operating expenses and $370 Million in new buildings in just the next five years to keep up with their prison population. This is an area where political rhetoric runs headfirst into political reality. You will hear over and over again from political leaders that they don't want to appear "soft on crime" so they will oppose any sentencing reforms. You will also hear from these same people that we need to stop spending so much money in Government. The reality is: you can't have it both ways. If you're going to do the time, we have to pay the dime. Political courage is in short supply to address this impending disaster in our corrections system. The Budget committee is looking toward substantial investments in mental health programs and substance abuse programs as well as youth diversion and alternatives to incarceration, which will have some impact. But as long as we have inflexible mandatory sentencing guidelines, we are going to continue to see more and more people put into prisons. That means more and more taxpayer dollars going to incarceration rather than education and health care. This is a dangerous dynamic that will impact our economy and our society for decades to come. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHrH http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHrH/commentary#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2006 17:17:00 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHrH Tomplant http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/profile_picture/e75c0ebf7b6613c410_knlmv2uvp.gif Tomplant 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CHrH/ On Monday, December 20, Mike Mauer - our legislative council economist - came to the JBC with the latest budget revenue projections. We set our budget each year based on the projected revenues and expenditures to the state, so these on-going revenue projection updates help us to understand how well we are keeping within our projected budget. The news was indeed good for the state. We continue to have a strong and rebounding economy. While the oil and gas exploration revenues continue to come in higher than projected, since Referendum C relieved the state of the impacts of TABOR, these increases aren't negatively impacting our ability to provide essential services. Some of my colleagues from the extreme right end of the ideological spectrum have been quoted as saying that this is an increase in the "blank check" to the legislature. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, this statement reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the many dynamics involved in developing our state budget. The legislature has a limit on expenditures of 6% from the General Fund above the expenditures in the previous year. The same limit that we had when Referendum C passed exists today after our latest budget projections. So - the allowable appropriations in 2005-06 were $114M prior to the latest projections and they are $114M today. What we did learn was that due to high revenues in the oil and gas industry and the inability of TABOR to distinguish between those revenues and general revenues - had Referendum C NOT passed, we would be $145M short for the current year's budget. That is we would be facing $145M in cuts when the legislature begins it's session in January. Thanks to the wisdom of the citizens of the state of colorado, we don't face this devastation for the state. While we are limited in how much we can increase our budget as I mentioned before, we are all relieved to not be facing hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to our essential services and the foundation upon which the strength of our economy rests. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHph http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHph/commentary#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:57:37 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHph Tomplant http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/profile_picture/e75c0ebf7b6613c410_knlmv2uvp.gif Tomplant 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CHph/ The Economic Recession that began in 2001-2002 impacted many services in Colorado. Yesterday, we received a briefing on one of those areas - Services for the Mentally Ill. In the past 4 years, we saw an increase in anti-psychotic pharmaceutical costs of 300% - at the same time, we saw a reduction in funding for our Mental Health Safety Net System of 33%. We will get a clarification of the individual impact of these cuts from the Department at their hearing, but staff estimates the number of mentally ill in the state who are not receiving services currently just due to those cuts at 1,724 individuals. While that number is remarkable and the thought of 1,724 mentally illl people who were receiving services in 2002 and are no longer receiving those services is very disturbing consider a report by the department of Human Services that evaluated the level of need in the state. The Department evaluated the unmet need for mental health services in the state through 2004- they estimate a colorado population of 66,000 people (approximately the population of Longmont) with "serious mental illnesses" not receiving services. If we were to cover all of these individuals with services, it would cost over $200 Million - a ten fold increase over our current appropriated amount. You can read this section of the report by Alexis Senger of the JBC Staff on page 71 of the briefing report found at: Link Tom Plant http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CH5Y http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CH5Y/commentary#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2005 12:31:49 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CH5Y Tomplant http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/profile_picture/e75c0ebf7b6613c410_knlmv2uvp.gif Tomplant 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CH5Y/ The election of 2005 generated a great deal of interest in the Colorado Budget - there was also a great deal of mis-information about how monies are appropriated and the programs administered by the state. The Joint Budget Committee starts meeting today - November 21st, 2005 in our process of going through every line in the budget as we set the 2006-07 appropriations. Our Budget year runs from July 1-June 30. So we are starting the process of setting the budget for the year beginning July 1, 2006. I'm not sure exactly how these blog things work, my intention is to have discussion posts each day on a particular part of the budget. But, we'll kind of wing it for a while! Thanks for checking out the Colorado Budget Blog - I'll be the guy doing these posts, my name is Tom Plant - I'm a State Representative from House District 13 and the Chair of the Joint Budget Committee. I promise to post as time permits. But you know how it gets... Be gentle. Be patient. I'll figure this out eventually. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHNQ http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHNQ/commentary#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:33:46 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/tomplant/CHNQ Tomplant http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/profile_picture/e75c0ebf7b6613c410_knlmv2uvp.gif Tomplant 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CHNQ/