The hardest thing our political representatives do is make difficult decisions about competing priorities. During times of budget shortfalls, this challenge is magnified exponentially. During the recent state legislative session, lawmakers considered a proposal to send to the ballot a question Colorado voters have settled, not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions.
Fortunately, the proposal didn’t make it out of its first committee hearing.
The measure would have asked voters to divert lottery proceeds from the Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) trust to education for a five-year period. It’s true that this would make a big difference, but not a positive one. Such a diversion wouldn’t measurably impact education in the state, but would eliminate the only significant source of funding for what makes Colorado special.
Colorado voters created the lottery specifically to fund Colorado’s parks, trails, rivers, open space and wildlife resources. Guess how much general fund money is spent on these amenities? Zero. All of the funding comes directly from GOCO, other lottery funds, local governments, or user fees such as state park passes and hunting and fishing licenses. In fact, the visionaries behind the Colorado Lottery specifically sought to create a source of funding outside of the state general fund so that it would not compete with funding needed for the basic services of schools, roads and prisons. Great Outdoors Colorado was created to make sure this was done efficiently and effectively.
GOCO grants are used not for frivolous expenditures but for projects that make a real difference in the everyday lives, health and pocketbooks of Coloradans across the state. Grants are made for projects like a playground at a school on the Eastern Plains; a park in a low-income Denver neighborhood; a river-walk trail for families to enjoy close to home; conserving a working ranch providing food, wildlife habitat, and scenic views along a pastoral country road; and state parks, which provide nearby and affordable places for families to hike, camp, fish and explore.
Competition for these grants remains fierce. Communities around the state recognize what we have learned from numerous empirical economic studies: Investments in public spaces, natural areas and trails deliver an enormous return on that investment.
We also know that parks and trails improve our collective and individual health. Even here in Colorado, where residents are among the slimmest of any in the nation, we have a health crisis looming. One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to combat that is to provide our citizens with accessible and safe parks and trails.
Parks, playgrounds, community gardens and connected trails are not simply amenities, but real drivers in local economies — drivers of tourism, of property value, of health, and ultimately of jobs, as many businesses make decisions about where to locate largely on quality of life concerns.
Colorado’s education budget makes up half of the state general fund, $5.2 billion per year. But diverting $56 million per year from GOCO adds up to only 1 percent of that $5.2 billion, not enough to have any real impact on improving education. Moving money from one priority, where it makes an enormous difference, to a different priority, where it amounts to a rounding factor, makes no sense.
Is it really worth eliminating the only statewide source of money that makes Colorado such a compelling place to live and raise a family to temporarily provide a tiny boost to education in Colorado?
We don’t think so. Our kids deserve a lasting fix to education funding, a bold, comprehensive fix, not a patchwork of diversions and half-measures.
Tim Wohlgenant is Colorado and Southwest director for the Trust for Public Land. Happy Haynes is a member of the Denver School Board. Sam Mamet, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, contributed to this commentary.
