A bipartisan compromise to solve Colorado's perennial tug of war between the ballooning education budget and strict state spending caps ran into trouble Tuesday.The pact should have gone something like this: Republicans agree to let government keep more tax dollars by relaxing portions of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, known as TABOR, that limit revenue growth. Democrats give up state-mandated increases in education funding, also known as Amendment 23.
The proposal would free up more funds for higher education, transportation and other needs, but a Democratic add-on to an unrelated bill left Republican leaders saying the deal was off...
Rep. Debbie Benefield, D-Arvada, pushed the added part of that formula — the guaranteed 5 percent-a-year increase in education funding — to the school finance bill last week.
So it appears that Benefield tried to keep the A23 provisions in place (statutorily) by sneaking them onto the school finance act. It's the sort of ham handed amateurish play that you see fairly regularly in the state house. You're dealing with amateur politicians for the most part, who have next to no staff and certainly no real political advisers. These sorts of things happen.
Still this is pretty irritating. The coalition that Speaker Romanoff cobbled together was pretty tenuous at best, everyone surely understood that the deal could not be monkeyed with or the Republicans would just walk away and effectively kill the proposal in its cradle. This is a bad move politically too as it allows Republicans to argue to the public that the Democrats cannot negotiate in good faith and that certain members with ties to the education establishment cannot be trusted.
Romanoff and Majority Leader Alice Madden usually do a better job of keeping there caucus together but if a member gets a wild hair there's little that can be done to stop them. I liked this deal, I think it was a good compromise - everyone gives a little and the state as a whole benefits. I'm not sure it would have made it out of the legislature (I suspect it would have died in the Senate) and if it did the Amendment would have faced an uphill climb with the electorate. It would have been nice to at least put it to a vote though.
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