Think you could do a better job of balancing the state budget than lawmakers?
A new online tool gives Coloradans the chance to try their hands at bean counting.
Called the Colorado Backseat Budgeter, the site was developed by Colorado State University’s Bighorn Leadership Development Program, which offers courses and training on state public policy issues.
The online budget presents users with a scenario of a $741 million deficit. It then allows would-be budget writers the chance to increase or decrease general fund spending for certain categories like K-12 education or corrections or health care. It also allows them to increase or decrease revenues, either by raising taxes and fees or by eliminating tax exemptions.
Users quickly find that they have few options, running into constitutional roadblocks such as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, which requires all tax increases to go before voters, and Amendment 23, which mandates spending increases every year for K-12 education.
So, for example, users who try to whack spending for public schools trigger a blinking “constitutional warning” showing that it’s impossible to do so.
Meanwhile, tax increases also prompt a constitutional warning that voter approval is necessary.
Some revenue options that are possible under the virtual budget’s parameters include temporarily eliminating a number of tax exemptions and increasing various fees, which the Web tool estimates would generate up to $365 million.
The website gives a basic grounding to Coloradans unfamiliar with the state’s complicated budget process and myriad constitutional restrictions. However, the actual budget process and the many ways lawmakers have tried to balance spending and revenue is far more complicated.
For example, while the website implies that no cutting is possible to K-12 education because of Amendment 23, Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, and some lawmakers, are looking at doing just that. They argue that Amendment 23 does not protect certain factors that increase funding for individual school districts, such as cost-of-living adjustments, and so education could be cut.
Some education groups say the legal arguments behind the cutting is flawed and could result in a lawsuit.
Meanwhile, lawmakers have used a variety of other tools to reduce spending or shore up flagging general-fund revenues that are not included on the site. They have tapped cash funds that are generated by fees on state services for hundreds of millions of dollars, nearly draining the funds.
And they have changed some policies that cost the state money. Lawmakers, for example, have eliminated in the current budget year a property- tax break for seniors that costs the state about $100 million a year.
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
Making the cut
The website tracks how users would cut the budget, if given the chance.
72 percent: Users who favored cutting spending to health care for poor
66.6 percent: Users who favored cutting spending to higher education
83.6 percent: Users who favored cutting spending to human- services programs
Your turn. engagedpublic
