Talk about dodging a bullet. If just one more justice on the state Supreme Court had sided with plaintiffs who sued the state over K-12 education funding under Amendment 23, Colorado would have faced the staggering prospect of coming up with $850 million to make up for revenue that was cut during the Great Recession — and no way to get the money without devastating a host of other programs in the state budget.
That’s good news for the state and for rational budgeting that allows lawmakers to adjust to real-world events. But whether the court’s ruling is good news for the faithful execution of ballot measures passed by voters is another question.
By a 4-3 majority, the court said the legislature’s controversial interpretation of Amendment 23 during the funding crisis that followed the collapse of financial markets was appropriate and legal. The majority said, in effect, that what voters understood they were doing in 2000 was false.
Voters were promised that if they passed Amendment 23, it would boost education funding by no less than inflation plus 1 percent for the first 10 years and from that day forward at no less than the rate of inflation. But in fact, the court says, the amendment actually allowed education funding to divert from that trajectory by more than $1 billion at the height of the recession. Lawmakers have since restored some of the lost funding but are still providing substantially less than what what would have been the case.
And now, the court says, lawmakers are off the hook.
Well, no doubt legally they are, since the court’s ruling is now the official interpretation of Amendment 23 — and one that saves the state from budgetary turmoil. But that doesn’t mean lawmakers have been absolved of their duty to restore as much of the lost Amendment 23 funding as they are able to in future years.
As the dissenting justices pointed out, “Voters surely did not intend the annual increases to statewide base per pupil funding to be pointless.” Quite the opposite, in fact. And lawmakers should still try to honor that expectation.
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