Mount Virtus

Today’s Wall Street Journal takes notice of Colorado’s brewing battle between Big Labor and the state’s economic well-being:

A labor-union campaign in Colorado to tighten restrictions on layoffs and crack down on corporate fraud could put Democrats in an awkward position as they gather here in August for their presidential convention.

Unions are pushing to get a total of six measures on the fall ballot, all of them opposed by small-business owners and corporate interests.

“If they pass, it would be like putting a big ‘Do Not Locate Your Business Here’ sign on Colorado,” said John Brackney, president of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce.

Don’t believe the unions’ initiatives would harm the economy? How about this opinion from a normally reliable pro-union academic:

But others said they would impose an unprecedented burden on businesses of all sizes. “I think they would turn the lights out in the state,” said Ray Hogler, a professor of labor law at Colorado State University.

The major point overlooked by the Journal? That though Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter has sought to get business and labor interests to avoid the “mutually assured destruction” of a costly ballot battle this fall, it is Ritter who owns the responsibility for setting this fight in motion.

If Democrats in general will be in an “awkward position” with this political fight going on in their national convention’s backyard, then no one will be in a more “awkward position” than the state’s chief executive: Bill Ritter.

The Dead Governors couldn’t even bring themselves to defend their majority Democrat Party for accomplishing so little. So they tried to make fun of the minority Republicans for not getting much done themselves either:

How do you write a critical op-ed about how Democrats talked and Republicans acted without bothering to mention anything that you actually accomplished yourself?

For example: “On health care, we tried to clear away regulatory hurdles…” Good job on trying!

Do Colorado’s Left-leaning online apologists get the irony here? “You Republicans are going to criticize our Democrats for not fixing the state’s problems? Well, I know we were in charge, and there were only 60 of us compared to 40 of you, but you didn’t get anything done either! So take that!”

(Hmm… 60 vs. 40. There must be some connection here to the Democrats’ opposition to education standards for math - I’m not sure where the sex education mandate fits in, though.)

The Dead Governors exemplify the Left’s inability to take responsibility, even when they’re in power. They must be taking cues (here and here and here and here) from their leader: Gov. Bill Ritter.

There’s no need to recount the many woes and difficulties Colorado Republicans have faced in recent years, dethroned and demoralized by a well-funded and well-planned onslaught from the Left in the 2004 and 2006 elections.

Thanks especially to the principled and savvy work of several key lawmakers in the caucus, the Republicans finally held their own this year. They have set the table for a comeback in Colorado, but the road is still arduous and uphill.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel shines the light on one of the most prominent - if not the most prominent - GOP rising stars: Senator Josh Penry. The Sentinel reports on the growing speculation that their 32-year-old hometown hero will lead the Senate Republicans next year:

Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, said Penry’s political prowess and ability to negotiate from a position of strength, even as a member of the minority party, makes him a prime candidate to lead the Republican caucus.

“He’s definitely the future of the Republican Party in Colorado, particularly in the Senate,” Brophy said.

Senate Minority Leader Andrew McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, who has served as the Senate’s top Republican since mid-2005, is term-limited this year after serving six years in the House and eight years in the Senate.

“(Penry) has a nose for what’s important,” Brophy said. “And it seems like he finds a way to be involved in those things that are really important.”

Meanwhile, Sentinel reporter Mike Saccone surveys readers on his blog as to Penry’s next destination. (I voted for “The governor’s mansion.” To me, the only question is when. But maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part.)

Politically speaking, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for some semblance of limited government and fiscal conservatism.

I about fell out of my chair when I read this local CBS4 TV news story (video also available):

An out-of-state architectural firm has billed an Adams County School District nearly $60,000, for hotels, meals and travel expenses in the last year but the district hasn’t bothered to ask for, or review, a single receipt.

“It’s negligence,” said Kevin O’Brien, a former IRS agent, CPA and business ethics professor at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. “The public has a right to expect there will be some minimum checking on those receipts because its really the public’s money.”

Adams County School District 50 hired Healy, Bender and Associates of Naperville, Ill., last year. The school district enlisted the company to help design a new high school and elementary school and renovate Westminster High School and Ranum Middle School. [emphasis added]

This development is only going to fuel citizens’ distrust of school district management, especially in light of the the Denver Post report that plenty of turmoil already exists over how to spend the $98.6 million bond money approved by local voters in 2006.

Watch the CBS4 news video, if you get a few minutes. Reporter Brian Maass closes with a remark that should inspire gift ideas for School District 50 administrators.
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It’s a classic trick to try to extort taxpayers, yet Bill Ritter and Colorado Democrats are acting as if we’re too naive to see it.

Mr. DNA at Rocky Mountain Right yesterday highlighted a story in the Denver Post where Ritter and other Democrat leaders made an absurd and startling revelation - blaming the Republicans (who are in the minority across the board) for the inability to move forward a transportation agenda:

“I feel like this conversation broke down around politics, that we tried to get the Republicans interested in looking at how we would put together different pots of money,” Ritter said. “We began our conversation very early in the session and could not get the Republican leadership to act on it at all.”

Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, said Democrats could never get Republicans to sign on to a plan.

“So, we are now just crossing our fingers and hoping a bridge doesn’t fall down between now” and January, when lawmakers can try again, he said.

What’s the problem? Well, if you go on to read the rest of the story, you’ll see the problem really is that some Democrat legislators (whose party has a 40-25 advantage in the House, and a 20-15 majority in the Senate) wouldn’t go along with Ritter’s plan, because it would have involved voting for a tax increase in an election year. So that’s the Republicans’ fault?
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A busy day, not much time to blog. For those of you following Bill Ritter’s property tax hike on trial, Jon Caldara reports that closing arguments are set for tomorrow morning at 10:00.

With Gov. Bill Ritter’s property tax hike still on trial, the Rocky Mountain News reports that state treasurer Cary Kennedy - who thought up the mill levy “freeze” idea - made a remarkable concession on the witness stand:

State treasurer Cary Kennedy conceded today on the witness stand that a bill passed last year by the legislature alters the way taxes are calculated with the net result that many property owners pay more.

But Kennedy continued to insist the 2007 law, SB 199, does not violate Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

O-k….
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From this morning’s Rocky Mountain News:

As Democrats raced Tuesday to write what were the final chapters of the 2008 legislative session, Republicans passed around a playbook for taking back the House and Senate this fall.

Not exactly big news, but a fun story nonetheless. Take for example the response of the Democratic Speaker of the House, who must still be feeling the stinging blow of not finding enough support for his plan to gut TABOR:

“I think that’s disappointing but not surprising,” said House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver. “When you’re in the minority, you can either take pot shots at the party in charge or you can actually work together and solve problems.”

The legislative session is behind us. And maybe, just maybe, the people of Colorado are looking for solutions to problems that don’t involve more raids on their pocketbooks or sops to labor leaders and other special interests.

But then there’s the response from Gov. Bill Ritter:

“What is interesting and a little disappointing is that spending taxpayer dollars on that kind of rhetoric only feeds the cynicism that people already have when it comes to politics and government,” Ritter’s spokesman Evan Dreyer said, responding to the Republicans’ criticism.

Translation: Criticize Ritter, and be guilty of feeding public cynicism in the political process. Clever.

In its “playbook fact check,” the Rocky apparently found two questionable points in the Republican message. And on one of the two points (”Gov. Ritter has disrupted the 100-year peace between business and labor in the state, setting off a ballot war that could have disastrous consequences for our state’s business climate and its economy.”), the Rocky itself needs a fact check (Ritter started the labor-business battle even before his Nov. 2 executive order).

So altogether, not bad. One might even say Bill Ritter and the Democrats running the state legislature have made it easy for Republicans to do the job of criticizing them with an unusually small amount of spin. Meanwhile, the Democrats and the Ritter administration are closer to spinning out of control.

Yesterday was the first day of the court hearing on the lawsuit by the Independence Institute (where I work) and Colorado taxpayers against Gov. Bill Ritter’s unconstitutional property tax increase.

Today’s Denver Post explains a key issue behind the plaintiffs’ argument:

They noted that in 1993, the General Assembly amended the School Finance Act to ensure that the property taxes raised for the local share of total program funding for public-school education in each school not violate the revenue cap of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

But with passage of the 2007 amendment, Ritter used it to freeze mill-levies, the opponents charged. The freeze holds mill levies — the rate at which taxes are charged — in place when they normally would fall, allowing local school districts to collect more tax money. The state, in return, can use the money it saves for other purposes.

“These are property taxes,” said lawyer Richard Westfall in his opening statement Monday in the weeklong trial. “Evidence will show the purpose of the amendment was to shift the tax burden from state to local citizens.”

Over in his account of the first day’s proceedings, Jon Caldara has a great analogy for this transfer:

…[L]et’s say your employer starts paying your personal home mortgage for you so you don’t have to, did he just give you a pay raise? The state lawyers in court today would argue no, because your boss didn’t give you a larger paycheck. The rest of us would recognize it as a raise because one of your big expenses is now being paid by someone else, giving you more cash to spend on other things. The mill levy freeze is helping pay the state’s bill to local school districts - money the state now doesn’t need to pay them.

And our state constitution is very clear. If the state gets more money to spend, it has to the voters for permission first. Our constitution simply says Ask First!

The Post also picks up the solitary argument from the other side’s team of lawyers:

But lawyers for Ritter and the Colorado Department of Education told Habas that TABOR’s revenue and spending limitations are not absolute and that the mill-levy freeze is proper. The TABOR limitations can be changed, weakened or done away with entirely, if voters approve, argued lawyers John Mill and Mark Grueskin. And that is exactly what happened, they told Habas.

The fundamental flaw in the taxpayer-funded government attorneys’ argument is that the de-Brucing elections voters faced in many school districts were not advertised as authorizing tax increases. Caldara highlights an example in the testimony from an elected school board official in El Paso County’s Cheyenne Mountain School District:

He is on a small school board and helped campaign for his school district’s successful de-brucing. He held himself out to his small community and promised that if they voted to pass the de-brucing it would allow the district to keep an extra $120,000 or so in extra revenue. He promised his community it WOULDN’T RAISE TAXES. Bill Ritter’s mill levy freeze has made him into a liar.

Bill Ritter’s mill levy “freeze” made this school board member into a liar, and many other Colorado voters into fools. Stay tuned here and at Jon Caldara’s blog for updates on Day 2 of Bill Ritter’s tax hike on trial.

Liberal Denver Post columnist Susan Greene expresses her frustrations with the Democratically-led state legislature:

After citing budget reform as a top priority, House Speaker Andrew Romanoff has tabled the issue without even a vote in committee. Better to let voters decide than force lawmakers to get their hands dirty, especially in an election year.

After working to raise severance taxes on oil and gas drilling, the legislature has dropped the effort without explanation.

After a blue-ribbon panel met for eight months on transportation funding, lawmakers passed none of its major recommendations.

And after promising voting reform before November’s election, they rubber-stamped a bill to recertify voting machines that the state recently decertified, then called it a day.

The Democratic majority ends its session tomorrow having punted on most of its priorities.

All I can say is, were the legislature quite as unproductive as Greene describes. The only good news is that the last 120 days could have been worse for the Colorado taxpayer. In addition to the wasted time spent debating trivial issues, we could actually be paying a higher car registration tax or even more costly nannyist regulations.

Dare we say the Democrat majority has been afraid of drifting too far Left and losing its power? Well, they still have the massive unconstitutional property tax hike hanging around their collective neck.

At long last, court hearings begin today in the case of Gov. Bill Ritter raising Coloradans’ property taxes without a constitutional vote of the people.

From the Denver Post:

The freeze is estimated to bring in $117 million this year and $3.8 billion over a decade, up from an initial estimate of $1.7 billion when it was passed.

Richard Westfall, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the two sides will call about 10 witnesses, likely including school finance experts, the state treasurer and school board members. Dreyer said Ritter is not expected to testify.

“A lot of the discussion is going to be about addressing pretty esoteric points in the school finance act,” Westfall said.

The trial is scheduled to last a week. It will be heard by Judge Christina Habas, who was appointed by Gov. Bill Owens in 2003.

If the judge rules against the freeze, the state could have to somehow refund the freeze money it has already collected.

“We think the evidence is very clear,” Westfall said. “The voters didn’t approve it.”

Reminding readers that “it’s not the cash, it’s the constitution,” Jon Caldara’s blog offers updates on this week’s legal proceedings to see who will win Round 1: the Governor or the taxpayers. Regardless, the case will end up being appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Nancy Mitchell in the Rocky Mountain News reports today about the Colorado Student Assessment Program:

Colorado’s $22 million testing program appears headed for replacement after more than a dozen years and scant evidence of improvement in recent results.

In other words: Not enough kids are learning fundamental reading skills at the critical junction of 3rd grade. Therefore, some people say it’s time to modernize and improve the CSAP, and others want to scrap testing and accountability altogether.

The first group has the right idea, provided updating the state’s assessment system is done correctly. The second group makes an absurd flight from logic. Imagine if the news story were about a state-funded auto emissions testing program in which the same percentage of cars were failing after 12 years. Who would use the flat results to argue that the solution is to scrap the testing program?

Maybe some change in the testing procedure would be helpful, but if the goal were to reduce emissions then other policies or incentives would be promoted. Not getting rid of the test. How then would we know the results?

The problem here is that some people want to get rid of the CSAP because having kids learn to read is not exactly their primary goal for schooling. Others don’t like the fact that it highlights the failures of some schools in the public education system. While updating the CSAP may yield some measure of success, don’t think that getting rid of the test will make Colorado’s education problems go away.

Meanwhile, Michael at Best Destiny has his typically keen insights about the announcement of preliminary CSAP results.

The Denver Post has put up my exclusive commentary on Gov. Bill Ritter’s November executive order, which may soon end up unionizing two-thirds of state government. Here’s a taste:

Thanks to Gov. Bill Ritter’s gold-plated invitation, union leaders are on the verge of taking a major role in state government. Taxpayers and dissenting workers should pay attention.

Under the terms of Ritter’s November 2 executive order, 30 percent of the affected workers in an occupational group have to express formal interest in a union “partnership” election. The Colorado WINS union coalition that formed four days after the order has collected enough signatures to hold five separate elections that could make it the “exclusive representative” of more than 21,000 state employees.

On March 19, the Association of Colorado State Patrol Professionals (ACSPP) won the first union “partnership” election with roughly three-fourths of ballots cast, even though less than a true majority of state troopers actually voted for it.

The upcoming Colorado WINS elections could yield similar results.

If you’re looking for more details and footnotes behind the arguments in the column, check out my new issue paper. For those with less time, the two-page backgrounder is here. Auditory learners can catch the podcast. All compliments of the Independence Institute.

Jessica Corry, the new executive director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, has a Speakout column in today’s Rocky Mountain News that clears up many of the charges made against the effort to eliminate government-sponsored discrimination:

In 2007, when we first proposed our initiative language, our opponents challenged us all the way up to the Colorado Supreme Court. We won.

In February, our opponents attempted to get a competing amendment onto the ballot. We won again after the state’s Initiative Title Setting Review Board struck down their misleading and confusing language.

On April Fool’s Day, our opponents staged a widely covered press conference where dozens of activists falsely alleged that our signature gatherers had engaged in voter fraud. Just three of these individuals actually filed complaints.

And now our opponents are again trying to present a competing amendment - a move we are challenging. We are confident that we will prevail once again.

Few, if any, of these facts have been reported in the mainstream media. As the multipronged attack continues against COCRI, only our opposition’s allegations are reported. Recently, a group called Vote No on 46 filed a lawsuit alleging that Secretary of State Mike Coffman made a mistake when he ruled that we had enough valid signatures to appear on this November’s ballot.

While the allegations may be tantalizing, such accusations should be subject to serious skepticism, having been merely recycled from other failed opposition campaigns.

At the outset of this campaign, we knew our opposition would be tenacious. While we accept that we are attempting to tackle a controversial problem, only our side has remained steadfastly committed to running an honest campaign. We can only hope that the media will now allow voters to hear both sides.

The honest campaign for Amendment 46 (Colorado Civil Rights Initiative) merits support. To find out how you can get involved, go here.