Colorado conservatives come in many flavors. But sometimes their philosophies don’t mix well, like spreading mustard over chocolate.
Take state Rep. Josh Penry, who represents Mesa and Delta counties. Like most citizens of Colorado West, Penry espouses the conservative maxim: “That government is best which is closest to the people.” He wants to keep as much power and resources at the local level as practical.
Over this traditional chocolate base, we now slather a heavy layer of horseradish in the form of a “Starve the Beast” conservative, Independence Institute impresario Jon Caldara. Ideologues who regard government as a beast generally want to starve it at all levels, including local government. Caldara is a case in point.
Sometimes these disparate flavors of conservatism can work together, as they did when both Caldara and Penry fought against Referendums C and D last year. But now Caldara is promoting a constitutional amendment that would take money from energy-producing regions of the Western Slope and northeastern Colorado and funnel the proceeds to residents of the populous Front Range region.
Penry denounces Caldara’s brainstorm as “income redistribution.” As you may suspect, gentle reader, when a Republican uses the phrase “income redistribution,” it is not intended as a compliment. Indeed, it carries the same lethal contempt that the phrase “right deviationist” did when Joseph Stalin aimed it at Nikolai Bukharin shortly before he had the old Bolshevik executed in 1938.
As Caldara explained in a recent e-mail: “I have proposed a constitutional amendment that would take excess tax revenues from the state’s oil and gas severance tax and rebate that money to needy families to offset increased energy costs. … The Home Energy Adjustment Tax rebate would allow severance taxes to grow by population and inflation, but anything over that would be rebated annually to Colorado families to offset their ever-growing heating costs.”
State budget chief Henry Sobanet estimates Caldara’s proposed rebates – which would go to all taxpayers, not just “needy families” – would amount to about $16 each. That sounds good – if you live in Denver. Unfortunately, at least half of Caldara’s rebates would come from the coffers of local governments, mostly on the Western Slope, that are scrambling to deal with the impacts of burgeoning energy development. According to the state Department of Local Affairs, severance taxes totaled $418.7 million over the 10 years from 1995 to 2004. By law, half of that money, $208.7 million, went to local governments to deal with the impact of energy development on the areas where it occurs. The rest went to the state, where part of it went into perpetual trust and the rest to such needs as the state Geological Survey, Oil and Gas Commission, water resources and mine safety programs.
As Penry sees it, redirecting severance revenues away from local governments will stop energy producing regions from coping with the problems that burgeoning energy development will inevitably cause.
“He takes money earmarked for local governments in energy-producing regions and redistributes it mostly to urban areas. We can have a legitimate discussion as to what can be done with severance taxes. But this (Caldara’s plan) is an awful solution,” Penry says.
“If oil shale comes on-line, it will have an enormous impact on Western Colorado,” he noted, “affecting everything from water to roads, schools and whole new communities.”
Penry believes Caldara’s plan would perpetuate the traditional “boom-and-bust” cycle that has plagued our state economy since the gold rush and silver boom.
“Energy reserves will eventually be exhausted and so while those severance taxes are coming in, you have to be planning to diversify your economy for the day when that production ends. But if you choke off the severance tax revenue, you choke off the oxygen that fuels that diversity,” Penry says.
That’s why two Colorado conservatives are now on different sides of the severance tax issue.
Penry wants to focus government resources at the local level – and simply doesn’t believe that the hard-working people of Western Colorado are beasts to be starved.
Bob Ewegen is The Post’s deputy editorial page editor.
