Emboldened by the Supreme Court's ruling that the constitution does not mean what it says, Colorado legislators recently "discovered" all sorts of ways to raise taxes. Not satisfied with tax and fee increases, extortion of businesses is the next place to fill the budget "hole". The Denver Post reports:
State lawmakers are proposing $300 million in cuts to higher-education spending as a means of forcing an agency that sells workers' compensation insurance to cough up $500 million.
The move Wednesday by the Joint Budget Committee came the same day lawmakers were told that a Colorado Supreme Court ruling last month upholding a mill-levy freeze also gave them broad discretion to eliminate tax exemptions and tax credits. Some Republicans called that authority "dangerous." (snip)
Of course, for the budget gap in Fiscal Year 2009, the legislature
could have just not increased the size of government over 2008 levels.
That would have saved $400 million off the top. However, the newly
unionized state workers likely would have balked at such a suggestion. So, it seems, it is easier for the state to cut college funding.
But the JBC agreed Wednesday to whack nearly half the appropriation that goes to colleges and universities to fill the remainder of the budget hole.
"We probably are looking at closing or consolidating some community colleges," said Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge, chairwoman of the JBC. "We have nowhere else to go."
The cuts to colleges could be avoided, though, if the JBC succeeds in draining money from Pinnacol Assurance, a quasi-governmental agency established by the legislature in 1915 to provide guaranteed workers' compensation insurance to employers.
Most likely, if Amendment 23 did not prevent cutting K-12 education, the budget cut would be for elementary schools. The extortion "for the children" sounds better when it is for kids than for 18-year-olds.
What happens if the extortion does not work, and Pinnacol prefers to keep its reserve funds. Everyone's favorite big-spending Republican, Don Marostica, is ready to lead the charge to storm Pinnacol's financial gates.
"They don't want to cooperate with us,"[ Representative Don
] Marostica said. "Now it's up to people in higher ed to see if they can
get Pinnacol to transfer the money. Otherwise, they (colleges) are out
$300 million."
Don Marostica may want colleges and college students to protest Pinnacol keeping its reserve funds. Perhaps he will succeed in his extortion.
However, it is more likely that the Tax Day Tea Parties on April 15 will attract larger crowds--not because the protestors are seeking government funds, but because they fight for economic liberty from the coercive power of a legislature run amok.
by Civil Sense
Comments