Families and businesses are facing tough times. Household budgets are stretched, and spending decisions are on hold. Businesses are working overtime to meet their payrolls and to avoid shedding jobs.
And, at the state Capitol? They’re still engaged in an endless search for ways to get and to spend more of our money.
Just as Denver was host to the bill-signing of the largest expansion of the federal government in history, our state is also home to tax spenders working overtime to dismantle basic, common-sense taxpayer protections. These fundamental tools, including taxpayer refunds, citizen votes on tax increases and the 6 percent spending limit, are in daily peril under Denver’s gold dome.
That’s why I am calling for every candidate for state office this year — whether a statewide office or the legislature — to sign a pledge to safeguard Colorado’s taxpayer protections. As a businessman, I think it is vital to our economic well-being.
The latest target is the 6 percent Arveschoug-Bird statutory limit on the growth of the state budget. Advocates of unbridled spending in both parties decry this common-sense limit as an unreasonable straitjacket, because they believe that they know how to spend our money better than we do. For taxpayers, including those of us who run businesses, the spending cap puts reasonable parameters on government expansion, and gives us the ability to seek to attract quality jobs from states like California, which is plagued by runaway spending and taxes.
In these difficult economic times, what business or family wouldn’t be satisfied with a 6 percent growth rate in income and spending? Yet for some politicians, regrettably of both political parties, that sizeable growth is not enough.
Worse, they are frustrated that if the budget dips below the previous year’s levels, state law limits them to growing 6 percent on that new base. Only government believes that it should get an automatic raise, despite the burdens of tough times.
Abolishing the 6 percent cap will not do a thing to close the $600 million-plus budget gap our state currently faces. As we in the business community know, the economy has cycles. When our state recovers, it is important not to open the spending gates. If we allow spending to increase very rapidly when our revenues rebound, we will create spending expectations that must be met when revenues fall. This will put pressure on politicians to raise revenue and ultimately to raise our taxes, which is the wrong answer.
This is exactly what is at the core of California’s $42 billion deficit. The state, which can spend and tax without limits or taxpayer input, finds itself in dire straits.
Colorado needs to be a state that’s a job magnet, and fiscal responsibility and reasonable government growth are inviting measures for companies looking for a new home.
The solution is clear, and businesspeople and taxpayers of both parties must insist that candidates for office embrace a simple call to arms. First, preserve Arveshoug-Bird and keep the 6 percent ceiling intact. Second, find a route back to taxpayer refunds under TABOR. Third, preserve without question the right to vote before taxes are increased.
Finally, let’s target the true problem in Colorado’s budget. In 2000, Cary Kennedy — now our state treasurer — authored Amendment 23, which guaranteed schools an automatic increase of inflation plus 1 percentage point, regardless of any economic crises that would ever face Colorado. No business could run that way, and it’s terrible fiscal policy, no matter how much we all agree that quality education must be a central priority. No serious fiscal reform can be discussed without examining the continuing legacy of this massive drain on the state’s coffers.
It’s time that we taxpayers speak out to stop this Ferris wheel of spending. Otherwise, we are headed once again down the same expensive road that is increasingly waving goodbye to business- and family-sustaining jobs.
Walker Stapleton is president and CEO of Sonomawest Holdings, a publicly traded industrial real estate company.
