The promoters of Referendums C and D on this year’s Colorado ballot have finally resorted to a familiar trick: the exploitation of the state’s schoolchildren.
The recent ad favoring the two measures features fetching photos of schoolchildren while the narrator describes all of the “hits” public education has taken in recent years and pleads with the audience to put an end to the agony by voting for the ballot measures.
The ad is clever in that it doesn’t use the words “cuts” or “reductions.” The implication is nonetheless clear: Public education will continue to suffer without approval of C (lifting revenue ceilings) and D (a capital improvements borrowing package).
Those statements are deliberately misleading in that public education has, by any reasonable measure, been favored in recent years.
Colorado voters passed Amendment 23 several years ago specifically to ensure that public education would always be first in line for state funds. This misbegotten measure literally requires public education to be funded at higher levels even if that budgetary mandate disadvantages all other sectors of the state budget.
The nature of public education ensures that most of the money appropriated, whether by a state or school district, goes to fund teacher salaries, pensions and other benefits. It is no wonder, then, that the Colorado Education Association (CEA), one of the state’s largest labor unions, was one of the big boosters of Amendment 23 and is one of the big tub-thumpers of Referendums C and D.
The reasons why schoolchildren have been drafted into the current political campaign aren’t hard to discern. One explanation is that the CEA is being paid back for its support of the ballot measures. Another is that backers of C and D figured out that alluring photos of schoolchildren are more appealing than pictures of prisoners or people lined up for Medicaid or welfare benefits.
It’s simply misleading to suggest that C and D are needed to rescue the already rescued.
Few people would argue that the state doesn’t have financial problems. It does. The state’s colleges and universities, unlike K-12 education, have suffered some, but it has been mostly because of spending priorities in Amendment 23 rather than the requirements of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
Even in this much-discussed area, few tears should be shed. After all, when Amendment 23 was on the ballot, few figures in higher education warned the public about its obvious effects. In that sense, the wounds suffered since must be considered self-inflicted.
Of course, it has become conventional wisdom to say that even if Amendment 23 was a mistake, it can’t be easily corrected. That may or may not be true, but there hasn’t been a serious attempt to correct Amendment 23, because most politicians would rather beat up on TABOR.
That’s not the only sign of political laziness in this state. Not enough has been done to reduce the rapidly increasing costs of Medicaid, a budget-buster for years. Nor have many state officials tried to take on the issue of illegal immigration, preferring instead to say that immigration is a national problem and that little can be done at the state level to address its obvious impacts.
The direct impact of C, should it pass, would be to allow the state to spend an additional $3.1 billion over the next five years that it would otherwise have to refund. The indirect impact would be bigger and last much longer. Once the higher spending base was achieved in 2011, it will, in the words of the legislative fiscal note, be in effect “for each succeeding fiscal year.”
In other words, the much-maligned downward ratchet effect of TABOR will have been replaced with an upward ratchet effect. That may please some, but it will surely surprise many others.
So, on balance, while it is true that there is some risk in voting against C and D, recent history suggests there’s a greater risk in voting for it.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His columns appear on Wednesday.
