The most significant move to ease restrictions on the state budget since voters passed Referendum C in 2005 took a step forward Tuesday.
On a 4-3 party-line vote, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to repeal the Arveschoug-Bird limit. The 1991 provision, named after the lawmakers who sponsored it, limits growth in the state’s general fund to 6 percent a year.
Money collected above the limit must be spent on roads and other construction projects.
The fight over the 6 percent limit is shaping up to be one of the most contentious at the Capitol this year, and people on both sides of the issue say it is likely to be settled in court.
Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, the bill’s sponsor, told the committee that lawmakers, and not a formula written nearly 18 years ago, should write the state budget.
“Every generation should be able to govern for itself and not be unduly governed from the grave,” Morse said.
Under Arveschoug-Bird, in years when the state’s revenue drops, the 6 percent limit is set on the new, lower general fund total. Critics of this “ratchet down” effect say it has shrunk the general fund, the pot out of which most of the state’s operating needs are paid, by more than $1 billion in the last decade.
For years, lawmakers had assumed it would take a constitutional amendment to remove the 6 percent limit. A recent legal opinion, however, argued that the 6 percent cap is not a “spending limit” as defined by the state constitution and could be removed by lawmakers themselves.
That argument got no traction with Republicans Tuesday.
Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, said Morse was trying to “wordsmith” the meaning of limit.
“I guess what you’re basically willing to do is throw the constitution out,” King said. “It (the 6 percent cap) has always been interpreted as a limit.”
A host of advocates for greater spending on public services presented statistics on how Colorado has fallen close to the bottom of multiple indexes on funding for higher education, health care and child poverty programs.
“Colorado is becoming a state governed by formulas,” said Jane Urschel, deputy executive director of the Colorado Association of School Boards.
“Formulas are wonderful servants, but terrible masters.”
Only one Republican lawmaker, Rep. Don Marostica, R-Loveland, has signed onto the bill, causing him trouble with his own party.
But former Rep. Brad Young, R-Lamar, testified that he voted for — and co-sponsored — Arveschoug-Bird in 1991 but now believes it should be repealed.
He said the state could face double-digit inflation as it did during the 1970s. If that happens, the 6 percent limit could have a devastating effect on services, especially high education, Young said.
Marty Neilson, president of the Colorado Union of Taxpayers, was the only person to testify against the bill. She noted voters in November defeated Amendment 59, which would have weakened the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR.
“I am grateful for Arveschoug-Bird, and I am also grateful for TABOR,” Neilson told the committee. “Repealing this (6 percent) limit is out of your jurisdiction and should be a vote of the people.”
But a Republican amendment to refer the issue to voters failed on a party-line vote.
The bill, SB 228, now goes to the full Senate.
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
