John Andrews let the cat out of the bag Thursday, admitting that if Referenda C and D are defeated in November, Colorado will be forced to slash billions of dollars from public school budgets over the next decade.
Actually, that’s the third cat Andrews has let out of the “anti” bag, which apparently just swarms with felines. On June 16, he admitted that defeat of Referendum D – by killing the $1.3 billion in highway funding Gov. Bill Owens is fighting for – would force Colorado to build more toll roads, a step he hailed as “bringing Colorado into the 21st century.”
Andrews was off by a couple of centuries. Actually, it’s a pair of 19th century laws passed in 1877 and 1896 granting eminent domain powers to private highways that developer Ray Wells wants to use to build his controversial “Super Slab” toll road east of Interstate 25.
The third mouser liberated by Andrews was his admission that defeat of Referendum C would force massive tuition increases for Colorado college students. Actually, Andrews thinks that higher tuition is a great idea.
You’ve got to give the former state Senate president credit for honesty. But anti-gummint panjandrum Jon Caldara must want to pull out the three hairs he has left on his head every time Andrews opens his mouth. Caldara has the same agenda Andrews does: more toll roads, fewer teachers and higher college tuition. But Caldara likes to pretend that these things won’t really happen if Coloradans refuse to release the notorious “ratchet” in the 1992 TABOR amendment that could slash about $4 billion from the state budget by 2010. Caldara purrs we can make up those lost billions out of those old faithfuls, fraud and waste.
Andrews broke from that party line Thursday as he journeyed to the Capitol to fulminate anew against the C and D twins.
Rather than releasing the TABOR ratchet, Andrews solemnly assured Coloradans it would be better to cut about $100 million annually from K-12 education and let tuition for state colleges and universities – already soaring by 15 percent or more this year – to go even further into the stratosphere.
“Higher education is a remarkable bargain for affluent Colorado families. I’d like to see tuition go up as much or more” than the 15 percent and higher increases already meted out at CU and CSU this year, Andrews burbled.
“Meow, meow,” the cats replied as they scurried from the bag.
Looking at Andrews’ cats one at a time, cutting $100 million annually from K-12 budgets would slash a total of $5.5 billion from public schools over the next decade. That’s because the cuts are cumulative: $100 million the first year, $200 million the second year, etc., rising to a $1 billion annual cut in the 10th year.
What would be the effect of such a “nuclear option” on our public schools? Colorado ranked 32nd in the nation in public school funding in 2003, the latest figures available. We averaged $7,384 per pupil, $657 below the national average of $8,041. The $5.5 billion cut urged by Andrews would drive us down to the very bottom by 2015. Look out, Mississippi; here comes Colorado!
Andrews’ paean to ever-rising college tuition echoes his Feb. 20 Denver Post column in which he rhapsodized: “What if there were no publicly owned and operated University of Colorado? No state higher-education system at all?”
Actually, I’m living in Andrews’ “no state higher education system at all” world now – and, brothers and sisters, it ain’t easy. My son Shane is now a graduate student in philosophy at Boston College – where he pays $990 per credit hour. My daughter is in her third year at the University of Denver Law School – at a tab of $948 per credit hour.
Fortunately for my family, Misty’s undergraduate degree was from Metropolitan State College and Shane’s is from the University of Colorado at Denver. At the private school rates we’re now paying for their graduate educations, it would have cost us about $120,000 each just to get their BAs, nearly a quarter of a million dollars for the pair. Compared to the tuition bills everybody would face in Andrews’ private school utopia, the $50 a year he’s promising us if we defeat Referendum C doesn’t look that alluring.
Bob Ewegen is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
