Gov. Bill Ritter surprised some people this year when he characterized the state’s budget as a “moral document.” But the six members of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee knew exactly what he was talking about.
This week the JBC released its “long bill narrative” outlining the proposed $17 billion budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year beginning July 1. The 292-page book isn’t an easy read. But it does spell out where Colorado’s priorities really lie.
I’ve followed the JBC since 1972. In 1977, I wrote these words about the budget process in the introduction to a book titled “Budgeting is the Answer” by a former chairman, Sen. Joe Shoemaker, R-Denver:
A visitor to the Capitol may scan the impressive murals on the wall or read the lines drawn there by the poet, Thomas Hornsby Ferril. The paintings and poetry celebrate the growth and development of a booming agricultural-industrial state where once was only the “Great American Desert.”
Such praises to the vision and courage of the state’s elders are common – and deserved. But to build the aqueducts and highways and bridges of Colorado and provide the education for Colorado’s children took more than vision and courage. It also took money – often tax money. Those funds had to be budgeted – and since they were scarce, they had to be weighed against other needs.
Had those decisions not been properly made, there would be little for the poets to sing about; and the desert would still rule Colorado. Yet there are no monuments to budget committees. The complex and intricate mechanisms which govern society may engage men’s minds – but seldom bestir their souls.
I’ve still never literally seen a monument to a budget committee. But metaphorically, all our great public works – our schools and colleges, our prisons, our highways and the other sinews of a great state – are monuments to those who funnel scarce tax dollars into the channels that best serve our public needs.
Serving on the JBC is a thankless task, because it can never fund all the demands that come before it. But we ordinary taxpayers owe a debt of thanks to these six legislators who toiled so long and hard at the vital job of translating the moral vision of 5 million Coloradans into the flesh and concrete of government programs. They are Sens. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge, and Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins; and Reps. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, and Al White, R-Winter Park.
If you want the details about where your money goes, go to the Colorado legislature’s Web page at www.leg.state.co.us and go to “service agencies.” Then click on “Joint Budget Committee,” followed by “Joint Budget Committee Staff Documents.” There you’ll find a brief outline of the budget, the full narrative and the long bill itself.
This budget is the third written to take advantage of the five-year timeout from the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights approved by voters in 2005. But passage of Referendum C did not change other laws adopted by the legislature itself that have resulted in channeling the lion’s share of the Ref C money into highways, even as Colorado continues to underfund higher education.
I watched a modest reversal of that “asphalt over ivy” mindset in the Senate Wednesday night when Sens. Sue Windels, D-Arvada, and Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, teamed up to shift $36 million that the budget had earmarked for additional highways to pay for higher education construction needs.
Colorado highways and colleges both have major unmet needs, but higher education suffered far more during the budget crisis than our roads and bridges did. If the Windels-Penry amendment survives the House, it will help build a brighter future for our children – proving once again that the budget is, indeed, a moral document.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post.
