Conflicting budget forecasts have set off a round of partisan finger-wagging between Gov. Bill Ritter and minority Republicans.
Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany of Colorado Springs, citing the Legislative Council’s forecast that revenues would drop $99.4 million below predictions, sent out an e-mail headlined “We told you so.” In it, he said, “We tried and tried to get them [majority Democrats] to not spend every dime that was forecast.” If only that was completely accurate.
And then there’s Ritter, naively sticking by the much-rosier forecast of his own Office of State Planning and Budgeting that there will be no drop in revenue.
Given the economy, he’d be wise to follow the lead of the Joint Budget Committee and institute a hiring freeze as a precautionary measure.
It’s time to show some caution. Ritter and the Democrats who control the statehouse have failed to do just that the past two years as they added 2,600 new state employees to the payroll — even as the economy soured. Those are permanent costs.
State Treasurer Cary Kennedy and Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, however, did lead the fight last spring to hold back on $269 million in projected spending until the budget picture was clear.
But Ritter, the Republican leadership and most Democrats joined ranks to defeat the Buescher/ Kennedy proposal. To their credit, Republicans did oppose adding so many new state employees, but that doesn’t mean the GOP opposed spending “every dime” of new revenue. They simply demanded spending every dime of new revenue on highway construction.
Buescher and Kennedy had urged delaying the transfer of some supplemental funding for highways and other capital construction — originally tapped at $269 million — until next March, when the budget picture would have been far clearer.
It failed, and the money was transferred as scheduled earlier this month — after declining revenue had reduced the actual transfer from the expected $269 million to just $42 million, $28 million of it marked for the Highway Users Tax Fund. Once in that trust fund, the money can’t be used for other state needs.
Two lessons are obvious:
• The state desperately needs a true and adequate “rainy day fund,” such as what would be provided by Amendment 59, the SAFE (Savings Account for Education) proposal.
• The state also needs to end the present policy of using the highway fund as its de facto reserve. The result of that policy, as if you didn’t already know, is that many of our highways and bridges are falling apart.
The legislature needs to propose a permanent and stable source of new transportation funding for voter approval in the fall of 2009.
And right now, Ritter should follow the bipartisan JBC’s lead and start cutting spending where he can.
