Education Evacuation

As a follow-on to yesterday's post, today's paper points to yet another reason why we may have to evacuate the Rocky Mountains. According to Denver Post columnist Diane Carmen:

Because of TABOR's revenue limitations, higher ed has shrunk from 20 percent of the state budget to 11 percent since 1990. On a per-student basis, state support has dropped by 43 percent since 1995. And under TABOR, tuition cannot be increased to compensate.

At this rate, economists figure state support of higher education will be phased out entirely by 2009.

So much for my plan to invest in a Colorado 529 Savings Plan.

For those of you not from Colorado, the acronym TABOR may be a mystery to you. Here's the skinny. The Tax Payer Bill of Rights ensures that the state does not keep any revenue in excess of some magical amount. Score one for the harried taxpayer who gets a refund check each year.

Recent history, however, seems to indicate that the magical amount is something less than the actual cost of providing the services that the elected representatives of the state seemed to think their constituents wanted. The state, not having the federal government's ability to spend into deficit has thus been cutting programs and services left and right. Subtract two for the harried taxpayer who, despite a fatter wallet, now must deal with subpar services in infrastructure, education, and security.

Enter Amendment 23 into the revenue shortfall mix. In 2000 this voter initiated referendum was passed to require specific (annually increasing) increases in PK-12 public education. The goal was to help Colorado's laggard schools since through much of the 1990's education spending in Colorado did not keep pace with inflation.

(These two diametrically opposed referendums demonstrate one of the reasons why I'm more in favor of traditional representative democracy than the direct democracy of citizen initiatives.)

The bottom line is that the voters of Colorado and their snake-oil state representatives have created a mess. Can they clean it up and preserve the obvious benefits that publicly subsidized higher education provides to the state? Color me skeptical. Afterall, these are the same elected representatives who seem more interested in debating bills to create special rights aimed at protecting the sensitive feelings of conservative students than in solving real problems.