TABOR strangling Colorado, despite recovering economy

The conservatives in the audience will be pleased that the beast is starving:

Colorado expects to spend less than 1 percent more on government services this fiscal year than last, while nationwide, spending growth will be almost 6 percent, a new study shows.

The numbers are evidence that Colorado is hamstrung by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, unable to recover from the recession like other states, say some analysts [. . .].

The numbers in the preliminary report on state budgets and tax actions, presented to lawmakers from all 50 states on Wednesday, show that most states collected tax revenues this year at a rate of about 5 or 6 percent above last year's rate. Next year's collections won't be up as much, about 3 percent, but spending on government programs is expected to rise 5.7 percent.

Colorado's economy also has improved, which translates into a projected 7 percent increase in tax revenues. But because TABOR limits how fast government can grow, most of those additional tax revenues will be returned to taxpayers or special-interest groups. [. . .]

Higher education will get a 1.5 percent bump in Colorado, compared with the national average of 7 percent. K-12 education is expected to grow by 3 percent overall, compared with the national average of 6 percent.

Henry Sobanet, director of Colorado's Office of State Planning and Budget, said the numbers show that other states are able to take advantage of the economic recovery better than Colorado can.

Colorado's TABOR caps "will not allow the budget to recover," said Sobanet, whose boss, [Republican!] Gov. Bill Owens, backs the referendums. There is a misconception in Colorado that "because the economy is coming back fine, the state government must be as well," Sobanet said.

But Colorado had to cut spending by tens of millions of dollars during the recession years, and because of TABOR, can't ratchet back up from those lowered numbers, he said. "Next year, we expect to be refunding money while simultaneously cutting programs," he said.

I started writing this post this morning, but after several nights of below-average sleep, I couldn't muster anything like coherent outrage.

Frankly, I still can't. It boggles my mind that some people want this for Wisconsin.

Now, I am not the kind of liberal who believes in spending for the sake of spending (come to think of it, I don't personally know any of that liberal), but the situation in Colorado demonstrates why artificial controls on spending under laws like the misnamed "taxpayer bill of rights" (TABOR) are a bad idea. In times of economic growth, such as the nation is seeing to an extent right now, states need the flexibility to use the higher tax revenue to shore up the budget and programs that lose out in lean years. What makes Colorado's position worse is that inflation is running considerably higher than they allowable increase in spending, which puts them in the awkward position of having to keep trimming despite the capacity to maintain present progam levels without overburdening taxpayers.

Anyway, if you have outrage, feel free to share it in the comments. I'm plum out.