State services feel measure's steady squeeze

In the booming 1990s, TABOR ensured that legislators maintained a penny-pinching edge. But the recession left many programs struggling to keep up and oftentimes falling behind.

By Mark P. Couch
Denver Post Staff Writer

Article Last Updated:09/15/2005 12:13:55 PM MDT

Eric Autobee, a 23-year-old guard at the Limon Correctional Facility, died in October 2002 after a prisoner struck him on the head with a metal kitchen ladle.

Prison officials said his death was a random act of violence, but to his parents, Eric is a casualty of policies caused by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.

They say their son died because the state failed to provide enough money to run prisons that are safe for its workers.

"We've been struggling with the loss, but we are devout Catholics and we know that we all die," Robert Autobee said. "What we can't accept are the policies that put my son in that position."

Those policies put cost savings ahead of human lives, the Autobees said. They are suing the state and have a lawsuit pending at the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Robert Autobee said the state's ongoing budget cuts - a legacy of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights - have led to mismanagement of scarce resources.

State officials are shifting government work to private companies that are more concerned with making profits than in serving the public, Autobee said.

The Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, added to the state constitution by voters in 1992, pushed Colorado into an era of tight budgets. And the amendment spawned a countermovement of budget-by-ballot initiatives.

TABOR sets strict spending limits on state government and gives voters the sole authority to raise taxes.

This fall, voters will consider a two-part plan to lift those limits, reduce tax refunds, increase the base for calculating future spending growth and let the state spend more money on roads, schools, health care programs and other government services, including prisons.

During the go-go 1990s, TABOR's spending constraints simply forced officials to pinch pennies when they might have been tempted to spend every dime.

But the squeeze on spending tightened in 2001 when a recession wiped out hundreds of millions of dollars in state revenues. Since 2001, the state has cut spending and made other budget adjustments to save about $1 billion.

Now that the state's economy has recovered, TABOR has kept the state budget stuck at recession levels.

If this fall's ballot measures fail, the state could face cutting $400 million more in spending next year, Gov. Bill Owens' office estimates.

How much is enough?

TABOR fans say the state doesn't need more tax money. Instead, the state needs to live within its means and use the money it gets more efficiently.

They point to subsidies for arts programs as wasteful spending. They chide the state for spending on economic development and tourism promotion. They promote plans to merge departments in charge of public schools and public universities.

But TABOR foes say you get what you pay for: If you spend less, you get less. During the 1990s, Coloradans spent less on government services, and they got less.

TABOR opponents say government has gone from hungry to starving.

"We've gone from lean to ano rexic," said Wade Buchanan, president of The Bell Policy Center in Denver. "At some point we have to have a discussion about what is the right body weight."

In department after department, spending in Colorado is falling behind states it used to lead, and the state is struggling to meet the demands caused by population growth.

Public schools. Between 1991 and 2000, state and local per-pupil funding of public schools fell from $299 above the national average to $697 below it. The state fell from 26th to 32nd in per-pupil spending between 1991 and 2000.

Even after voters ordered the state to increase spending on public schools by passing Amendment 23 in 2000, state school funding - adjusted for inflation - is still below where it was 17 years ago. Though education funding has made up some lost ground since 2000, it remains $331-per-pupil below 1988 levels.

The report card for school performance in the TABOR era is mixed: Colorado students consistently get better test scores than the national average, but the graduation rate is dropping and more school buildings are falling into disrepair.

Higher education. Based on spending per $1,000 of residents' income, Colorado dropped from 34th in the nation in 1992 to 47th in 2004 in providing state tax support for higher education.

On a per-resident-student basis, state support has declined 34.6 percent since 2001. In 2001-02, the state spent $5,365 per student; in 2004-05, the state spent $3,511.

The cuts in funding have reduced the amount of financial aid available to lower-income students.

Health care. Colorado ranked 23rd in 1990 and 48th in 2004 in access to prenatal care.

At the same time, the percentage of low-birthweight babies in Colorado has been rising.

In 1990, 8 percent of the babies born were less-than-normal weight. By 2002, the rate increased to 8.9 percent. The national average that year was 7.8 percent.

Roads. In 1994, 65 percent of Colorado's roads were in poor condition, according to the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a nonprofit group that studies road policy. By 2001, 73 percent of the roads in the state's urban and suburban areas were considered poor.

Prisons. Between 1992 and 2002, the prisoner population grew four times as fast as the state's population.

In the late 1990s, prisoner assaults on staff increased sharply. In 1996, prisoners attacked staff members 50 times; by 2000, prison officials reported 173 prisoner assaults on staff.

Since the 2001 economic slowdown, prisons have been hit hard, taking $54 million in budget cuts, forcing staff cuts and boosting the number of prisoners per guard.

Currently, the prisons have 5.5 inmates per officer, said Alison Morgan, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections. The historic average is 4.31.

People feel budget pinch

But budgets are more than numbers. Budgets are also about people.

People like Susan Hall, who runs a small organic mesclun and herb farm near Larkspur.

Hall recalled the letter from state agricultural officials in 2002 that raised her licensing fee from $100 to $2,500.

The fee increased partly because of new federal requirements to monitor organic farms, but also because the state couldn't transfer money from the general fund to cover some of the cost.

"I was absolutely shocked," Hall said.

And people like Ken Clevinger, who waited in line for hours at a driver's license station in Denver.

Last summer, Clevinger missed an afternoon fishing trip with his grandson because he was stuck in line so long.

And people like Eugene Pearson, a senior molecular biology major at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

As a member of student government, Pearson agreed with other students to double the annual student fees from $423 to more than $800 to pay for construction projects that the state could no longer afford.

"I definitely felt let down by the Colorado legislature, because they are strangling the university," Pearson said.

To Robert Autobee, the state's restrictive spending decisions are more than a sign of benign neglect by elected officials and department heads.

Autobee said those decisions are a deliberate choice to squeeze spending so tight that state government cannot function properly.

"I said, 'I'm not here for a social visit,"' Autobee recalled telling the governor. "I told him, 'Your policies are directly responsible for the death of my son."'

The state's financial condition is much more complicated than a governor's choices - or even a state legislature's annual budget.

Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute and an opponent of Referendums C and D, said Autobee's death - no matter how tragic - cannot be blamed on TABOR.

"The complaint should be against Amendment 23, which squeezed the corrections budget by taking money away," Caldara said.

Amendment 23, approved in 2000, requires the state to increase spending on public schools - at a pace faster than inflation and growth in student enrollment.

"Spending restraints do not force a budget cut on a particular area, they force politicians to make priority judgments," Caldara said.

Voters often impose their will on lawmakers and sometimes give their leaders conflicting edicts.

The era of initiatives

The 1992 election - the year of TABOR's triumph - sparked a new era of populist activism in Colorado.

Colorado, like most other Western states, allows voters to bring their own proposed laws and constitutional amendments directly to the voters.

Since 1992, voters have approved 18 statewide ballot measures, the same number that passed in the preceding 38 years.

Colorado ranks third - behind Oregon and California - in the use of citizen initiatives to make laws and constitutional amendments.

"I think we are now being governed by a series of one-time votes," Owens said.

The Colorado Economic Futures Panel, a private group of academics and business leaders, said the unending array of initiatives is locking lawmakers to the past without giving them the flexibility to deal with the future.

"Until elected officials are given the tools they need to govern, and then held accountable for how they are used," the panel said in a report released in August, "fiscal policies will continue to be a complicated, fragmented and tangled web."

Coloradans are increasingly writing the state budget on the voter ballot.

In 1992, TABOR set spending limits. Amendment 23, passed in 2000, requires increases in public school funding.

Amendment 35, approved last year, raised tobacco taxes and channels money into health care programs that had been squeezed by TABOR and Amendment 23.

Those one-time votes lock spending decisions into the constitution and make it harder for lawmakers to deal with unexpected crises.

TABOR restricted state spending growth during a booming economy, but the amendment keeps the state budget from growing with the economy after a recession.

Amendment 23 orders an increase in spending, even when state revenues are collapsing.

Autobee doesn't want to debate democratic systems, economic fluctuations and budget politics. His son's killer has been sentenced to death, but Autobee wants more. He wants the state, particularly the Department of Corrections, to change how it serves the citizens.

"I don't see any justice by putting a man to death for killing my son and not punishing the state."