A Republican state senator suggested Thursday that money now used for public schools could pump nearly $4 billion into highway construction in the future.
The proposal, from Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, came during a meeting of the Long-Term Fiscal Stability Commission, a special panel looking into lasting solutions for Colorado’s budget woes.
Brophy said the state after 2011 could devote a portion of money that now goes into basic state aid for schools as required by Amendment 23 and send it to road construction.
Amendment 23, passed by voters in 2000, requires that state funding for public schools increase every year by the rate of inflation plus 1 percent. After 2011, the 1 percent requirement falls off, and the amendment requires only inflationary increases each year.
“If you dedicate all of that money (the 1 percent portion) for the next 10 years,” transportation would see $3.8 billion by 2021, he said.
Republican lawmakers generally have been critical of Amendment 23 as a constitutional spending mandate.
Meanwhile, many Democrats defend Amendment 23 as a measure needed to bolster the state’s education spending after a decade of cuts, and instead say the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, is the problem because it constitutionally limits revenue growth and spending.
Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, said it was wrong to talk about redirecting Amendment 23 money in the future because the commission had not yet discussed how education should be funded.
A special transportation panel appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, said in 2007 the state needs an additional $500 million each year just to maintain existing roads and bridges and $1.5 billion per year more to repair roads and bridges.
Morse said the fiscal stability commission was shirking its duty of defining what services the state should provide and how much it would take to fund them. He said the panel should settle on a dollar amount for transportation separate from education funding.
“Now that our nose is actually to the grindstone, we’re chickening out,” he said.
But Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway, a Republican, defended Brophy’s suggestion.
“He’s proposing an idea that I think is very meritorious,” Conway said.
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
