For months, you’ve been infused with information and bombarded with bombast about Referendums C and D on Tuesday’s ballot. But many voters are still confused about the effect the Colorado Economic Recovery Act twins will have on Colorado’s crumbling and congested transportation network.
Do you think C is all about colleges and health care while D is all about highways? Wrong. Both measures include money for transportation needs – and both earmark some of that cash for mass transit.
Yes, Referendum D would authorize the state to issue $1.2 billion in bonds to build 55 specific transportation projects. But C would also allocate a comparable sum for transportation needs before its five-year timeout from the Byzantine rules of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights expires in 2010.
Most of D’s 55 projects are for highways or bridges. But two would leverage state matching funds with federal grants to improve bus services in the Roaring Fork Transit Authority in Pitkin and Garfield counties and Grand Valley Transit in Mesa County.
The importance of Referendum D to rapid transit goes far beyond those two earmarked projects, however. Denver area voters last year authorized $4.7 billion for FasTracks. But the coming rail lines need to be integrated into the area’s highway network so commuters can get to the FasTracks stations and park-n-Rides. Referendum D includes 15 projects within the metro area and their completion will greatly enhance the efficiency of both existing bus services and future rail lines.
Most Coloradans understand Referendum D is vital to prevent our highways from turning into parking lots. But C also contains funds for pay-as-you-projects and crucial money to maintain and rebuild our existing highways.
That little-known fact answers a question asked by some well-meaning citizens. They don’t want the state to endure the $365 million in budget cuts we’d have to make next year if Referendum C fails. But they ask why the state is asking to retain $3.7 billion over the next five years when just $2 billion over that period would avert those cuts.
That’s a good question. The answer is that the $365 million in cuts next year are cuts from the existing 2005 budget. Most of the remaining funds in C would restore earlier cuts that were slashed from transportation needs in 2002.
Colorado relies heavily on an earmarked Highway User’s Tax Fund fed by the state’s 22 cent per gallon gasoline tax. Because the gas tax is a unit tax, it doesn’t keep up with inflation and thus has lost about half its purchasing power since it was last increased in 1991. Rather than increase that fuel tax, Gov. Roy Romer and the 1997 legislature passed Senate Bill 1. That law essentially said that after the state’s general fund had increased by 6 percent, any additional revenue remaining under the TABOR ceiling would be allocated to capital construction needs, mostly transportation. Gov. Bill Owens and then Senate President Stan Matsunaka renewed that law in 2002, with the added provision that 10 percent of the transportation money would be earmarked for mass transit. The provision was expected to pour about $200 million a year into the transportation budget to offset the falling fuel tax. But when the recession hammered the state later that year, the surplus vanished and not a dime of extra money went to highways or transit in Colorado.
That need to restore our crumbling transportation network accounts for most of the difference between the $2 billion necessary to merely avoid further cuts in the existing non-highway budgets and the $3.7 billion Referendum C is expected to raise in five years.
The state general fund is now about $6.2 billion. A 6 percent increase would be $370 million, or $2 billion if compounded over five years, for overall state purposes including health care and higher education. That leaves about $1.7 billion for capital construction needs, with most of that sum earmarked for highways or mass transit.
Referendum C contains the funding for both ballot measures, so C can pass or fail on its own, while D can’t pass if C fails. But citizens who want to slash the Gordian knots ensnaring our highways with a balanced transportation system will vote for both C and D.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local issues since 1963.
