Report bashes Ritter's school funding plan

Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 21, 2007 at midnight

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Legislators should alter the state's school funding requirements instead of trying to raise more money for education, the head of a free-market think tank said Friday.

"They're avoiding the problem," said Jon Caldara, the director of the Golden-based Independence Institute. "It's like an alcoholic who wants to blame everything else except the booze."

Budget analysts say the state education fund will be in the red by the 2011-12 school year at current spending rates.

Gov. Bill Ritter proposes to cancel scheduled reductions in property tax rates to keep the fund solvent.

A report released Thursday by Caldara's group calls Ritter's proposal a tax increase because businesses and homeowners would pay more than if current law is not altered.

The report also takes issue with attorneys for the legislature, who have said in two opinions that Ritter's plan does not violate the tax limitation amendment passed by voters in 1992, called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. That measure requires a referendum on all tax increases.

Ritter's proposal "clearly violates the spirit of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights," the report says.

The reductions in property taxes occur under a 1994 school finance law.

But a 2000 state constitutional amendment requires school funding to increase more than the rate of inflation in order to bring Colorado up to the national median in financing education.

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