Excerpt
Sept. 15, 2005
State services feel measure's steady squeeze
By Mark P. Couch
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
TABOR sets
strict spending limits on state government and gives voters the sole authority
to raise taxes.
…
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.
…
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."'