The people at Pew have just issued a report card on state government performance. Colorado didn’t do so well.
As in 2005, the last time the Pew Center on the States issued a “Grading the States” report, Colorado got a C-plus. This is embarrassing for a state that is accustomed to ranking much higher in other measures of things that reflect a superior quality of life.
A C-plus, in today’s era of grade inflation, is somewhere south of acceptable. Today, most students and teachers seem to regard a “B” as the standard — rather like a “C” used to be. But a C-plus seems to say, “You’re really not doing very well at all, but we’re adding that little ‘plus’ there to preserve at least a shred of your self-esteem.”
Worse, Colorado hasn’t shown any overall improvement since its last report card in 2005, even though there has been a slight change in the political climate and an easing of its biggest problem, conflicting constitutional budgetary restrictions.
Referendum C in 2005, supported by a bipartisan coalition, put a five-year moratorium on TABOR refunds. But the state still has to cope with constitutional inconsistencies, including one provision “that mandates increases in K-12 spending and another that caps annual spending growth in the general fund at 6 percent,” Pew said.
The state’s other weaknesses are government employee training and development, infrastructure maintenance and several problems with a “fragmented” information technology system, including shortcomings in “strategic direction” and performance management and budgeting. Colorado in 2008 is lumped together with nine other C-plus states, including Alabama and Mississippi, and behind 31 states with better grades.
Among those is Wyoming, one of 18 states with the “national average” grade of B-minus.
Another neighbor, Utah, is one of three states with the highest grades. It, along with Virginia and Washington state, earned an A-minus. Utah, which is run entirely by Republicans, “manages itself with savvy business acumen,” Pew reports. It also got an A-minus in 2005.
The state with the lowest grade, a D-plus, is New Hampshire, which prides itself on rugged individualism as well as having the nation’s first primaries. But its fiscal management is a mess, according to Pew: “There’s a philosophy in the Granite State that constant fiscal crisis helps keep the state efficient.” It’s down from a C three years ago.
New Hampshire’s state government is politically split, as was Colorado’s in 2005. The Colorado legislature then was controlled by Democrats, as it is now, but the governor was Republican Bill Owens. Now everything is run by the Democrats, with bigger majorities in both legislative chambers and Bill Ritter in the governor’s office. And the state still struggles, says Pew.
Colorado may rank low in overall government efficiency, but it does rank high in its percentage of women legislators. But it’s not 37.9 percent, and it’s not No. 1, as a letter in the other paper — and a request for online comments the next day — claimed.
Vermont is still No. 1 at 37.8 percent. When Karen Middleton replaced Mike Garcia in the Colorado House, Colorado moved from No. 5, with 35 women members, to No. 2, with 36 women.
The other problem with the 37.9 percent factoid is that the Colorado legislature has 100 members, so any percentage has to be a whole number. By the way, D-plus New Hampshire is No. 3, at 35.8 percent, and A-minus Washington is No. 4, at 35.4 percent. Their legislatures don’t have 100 members, which makes it much tougher for numbers-challenged journalists to figure percentages.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News. His column appears twice a month.
