Romanoff pushes spending-limits reform

By Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, April 24, 2008

House Speaker Andrew Romanoff said he is determined to ask Coloradans this November to lift the spending limits in the Colorado Constitution, even if it means gathering petition signatures instead of lawmakers' votes.

The Denver Democrat said that while he would still prefer to have lawmakers send the question to voters, he might not get the two-thirds support he needs during the last week or so of the session.

Romanoff has therefore decided to file paperwork by today's deadline for a citizen's ballot initiative, said his bill's co-sponsor, Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins.

Feels burned

Romanoff said Thursday he feels burned by Republicans who he thought were negotiating in good faith on a plan to untangle conflicting spending mandates in the constitution, including the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.

Now, Romanoff said, he realizes they were just buying time to galvanize their caucus against the plan.

"I feel like I wasted time in what I thought were genuine policy negotiations that turned out to have been political stalling tactics," he said.

"And I'm embarrassed to admit that, because it makes me look like an idiot. I feel like an idiot, but that's the way it's played out. It's not a game, and it's not over yet."

House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker, said he and Romanoff have been playing a game of political chess as the speaker has tried to get at least four Republicans from each chamber on board with his plan.

But May rejected Romanoff's notion that Republicans were just playing politics. May said the truth is that Romanoff's plan was bad policy because it would gut TABOR.

Romanoff has been struggling for years to come up with a way to untie the constitution's knot of conflicting spending mandates.

By January, he thought he'd landed a way to solve the problem. His proposal would ask voters to lift TABOR's spending limits; repeal the spending requirements of Amendment 23; create a reserve inside the state education fund; and keep transportation funding at current levels.

'TABOR is gospel'

He realized that many Republican lawmakers would reject outright any proposal to meddle with TABOR. "They believe TABOR is gospel," Romanoff said.

But Romanoff said he believed that some Republicans, especially those who voted for Referendum C in 2005, would agree to support the plan because it would also free state government from Amendment 23's mandate that K-12 spending increase even when the overall budget does not.

Romanoff began approaching lawmakers and Gov. Bill Ritter about his plan six weeks ago.

One by one, however, Romanoff said most of the potential Republican swing votes closed ranks with their caucus.

Johnson, the bill co-sponsor, said he was frustrated by his fellow Republicans.

'Honest offer'

"I think the Democrats are making an honest offer here to the Republicans to come to the table and shape this question, and the Republicans don't seem to be taking him up on that offer," he said. "I think it's the biggest problem facing the state, and I think we ought to have a hand in fixing it."

May said he told Romanoff from the start he didn't care about the offer to strip Amendment 23 from the constitution, because the Democrats in charge of the legislature could put those K-12 spending provisions right back into law. Besides, he said, Amendment 23's requirement that the state increase spending on K-12 education by 1 percent per year was set to expire in two years anyway.

He said he agreed with Romanoff that the constitution had been balled up because it's one of the easiest in the country to amend. But he said any solution would need to retain spending limits of some sort.

May said he offered to help Romanoff convene a bipartisan panel of lawmakers this summer to look at a long-term solution, but Romanoff said no.

Before Romanoff leaves

"He wants to have this done before he leaves," May said of the term-limited Romanoff. "This isn't something that has to be on the ballot this fall. . . . And, for us to buy in, it's got to include some revenue limitations."

Romanoff said he's not sure he has even locked up all the members of his own party.

Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, said he's reserving judgment on Romanoff's plan until he hears it debated on the House floor.

The trouble is that while a lot of lawmakers know the constitution needs fixing, they don't yet perceive it as a crisis.

And while Democrats with safe seats say now is the time to solve the problem, campaign managers would tell any politician not to mess with TABOR or Amendment 23 unless they have to, Pommer said.

bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5059

Lifting TABOR

* What proposal says: Lift the spending limits in the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights; repeal the spending requirements of Amendment 23; create a reserve fund inside the state education fund; keep transportation funding at current levels.

* Pros: Untangles the knot of conflicting spending requirements in the Colorado Constitution; allows lawmakers to set budgets as they see fit.

* Cons: Those who want to limit government spending lose TABOR. Those who want to ensure K-12 education spending increases lose that constitutional guarantee.

* Status: This plan is being submitted both as a House Concurrent Resolution for the legislature and as a citizen's ballot initiative. In the legislature, it still must receive approval by a two-thirds vote in each house. The citizen's initiative is just being filed and signature gathering hasn't begun.