Our topic today is education, sort of. So, we’ll start with a logic problem.
As you may have heard, state Sen. Rollie Heath is pushing a modest, sunsetting-after-five years tax hike to protect K-12 and higher-ed funding from big cuts over the next few rounds of projected state budget shortfalls.
It was a quixotic idea that nobody expected to go anywhere — and no one has any real idea now whether it might pass. But it identified a problem, and now the problem, for some, is that it has turned into a real issue. And in a time of growing populism, maybe it has a shot.
Proposition 103 is, we’re told, the only tax hike on the ballot in the nation, which shouldn’t come as a surprise at a time when Republicans are busy signing pledges never to raise taxes ever, with the possible exception of raising them for poor people.
And there’s another issue, for those who believe that putting more money into education means that you’re lining the backpacks of fat-cat teachers whose full embrace of derivatives caused not only the mortgage bubble crisis but also some really difficult times in calculus class.
Look, we know raising taxes is not the first step to take in a terrible economy. In fact, if you’re a Republican running for president, you’re so sure of the sanctity of this concept that you’d refuse to take $1 in tax hikes for every $10 in budget cuts.
But forget about Republicans for a minute, and let’s move to Democrats, who generally don’t sign anti-tax pledges and presumably think that raising revenues is important during a time of huge shortfalls. They also, for the most part, don’t think teachers are overpaid and agree that it’s important to support higher education.
And yet, much of the Democratic establishment in Colorado (read: Gov. John Hickenlooper) is basically mute on Prop. 103.
Why? We know about Hickenlooper. He pledged during his campaign against the Tancredo-Maes tag team not to support a tax hike in his first year, so he can’t really support 103, even if he winks occasionally in Heath’s direction and promises that, if passed, the money will go to education.
This is vintage Hickenlooper, who just appointed a Republican to the state Supreme Court. Hickenlooper will say he appointed the best candidate — and maybe he did. But the fact that Judge Brian Boatright is a Republican means Hick also gets to say he’s post-partisan, and who gets to argue? Sure, it may cost Democrats in redistricting court battles, but Hickenlooper still wins. And if he’s lucky 103 will win, too, meaning he can wink again.
But this is not just a Hickenlooper issue. When Bill Ritter was governor and Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, they still couldn’t pass — just as one example — in-state tuition for innocent children of illegal immigrants, a bill similar to one liberal Rick Perry pushed though as Texas governor.
This is not a brave bunch. To say that Democrats in the state are, well, risk averse, is completely without risk. Just look at very Democratic Denver, where some politicians are so nervous about accusations of nanny-statism that they can’t even bring themselves to support a sick-pay initiative similar to ones passed passed in cities like Seattle and San Francisco and Milwaukee.
What Prop. 103 does is offer up a five-year timeout, during which state income taxes and sales taxes return to 1999 levels. It would raise about $500 million a year for public education, preschool through college.
It’s not a major tax hike, although it’s certainly not the best way to structure even a modest hike. Why not, I asked Heath, go for a graduated income tax that wouldn’t take much money from those at the bottom of the income scale?
He didn’t do it, he said, because he didn’t think he could get it passed. He wanted something simple, something that wouldn’t be controversial, but that would simply protect education funding.
In fact, Heath calls the proposition a Band-Aid, which is the last thing politicians want to do. It’s a small-bore answer to a larger question.
But here’s the funny logic. Many people, including the editorial page of this newspaper, believe the reason to oppose 103 is because it’s not a comprehensive solution and might lead people to turn away from a Big Fix that would address the structural problems facing the state and the problem of conflicting citizen initiatives.
You have to believe two things to accept this argument:
One, that voters would think back to the low-key Prop. 103 campaign when, and if, the big fiscal showdown arrives.
Two, that the Big Fix is ever actually coming.
The Big Fix is not an easy fix, which is why it’s in Capital Letters. You’d need either a timeout from single-subject ballot measures — which would require a vote of the people — or a popular vote on a series of measures that could present real problems if, say, half passed and half failed.
We’ve had five years of Democratic governors without even a blueprint of what a Big Fix would look like. The fight would be like Ref. C all over again, except much bigger and without a Republican governor on board. Let’s just say, speaking of Big Fixes, the Broncos may get back to the Super Bowl before you see a real plan.
Heath is a big proponent of a Big Fix. But he doesn’t think we can wait. He knows the risks. But, as he says, he’s 73 and not running for anything else. He’s just running on the answer to the logic problem that voters will determine:
Would you vote against a proposition that doesn’t go far enough in order to wait for one that may never come?
E-mail Mike Littwin at mlittwin@denverpost.com.
