Mount Virtus

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.

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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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.

If you’re a limited government conservative and you want to stay informed, you really ought to be reading Jon Henke and company over at Q and O. I met Jon at Samsphere in Chicago: he has a wealth of blogging experience, key insights into strategic roles of new media, and a realistic, no-holds-barred view of the political landscape.

Today, following off a Robert Novak column, he makes a point about the chronic, compulsive inability of many Congressional Republicans to get their act together on spending and fiscal issues, a point that is difficult to refute:

Reelecting these guys is like sending Norm Peterson to lead an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They’re whipped by Democrats and by the public choice incentives. There’s just no significant ambition to limit government. More importantly, they have no ideas for how to limit the size of government.

To some extent, that’s a failure of the existing Republican leadership. But it’s more of a failure of the larger Limited Government movement that has been captured by Washington, DC. We’ve developed an entrenched bureaucracy devoted more to sustaining and propagating itself than to actually limiting government.

First, many of the GOP members of Congress need to admit they have a problem. Second, members of the Limited Government movement need to decide to stop enabling them. (And not necessarily in that order….)

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.

In a story about the new $18 billion state budget signed by Gov. Bill Ritter, a local Fox TV news station reporter stated:

In education spending, the State of Colorado ranks 49th.

Of course, this sentence is suspect from the start, because it doesn’t tell us whether it’s measuring higher education or K-12 education.

If the article is referring to K-12 education, then it wasn’t true two years ago, it wasn’t true last year, and it isn’t true this year, either.

There are two reliable sources for K-12 education funding data. First, Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show Colorado ranks 36th in “current” per-pupil spending. The lowest possible ranking that could be devised shows Colorado at 47th in spending per $1,000 of personal income. Yet this comparison presumes the richer a state is the more it needs to spend.

The U.S. Department of Education ranks Colorado 35th in “current” per-pupil spending, and 26th in “total” per-pupil spending.

Other sources, like Governing magazine and the National Education Association, consistently have ranked Colorado near the middle in per-pupil K-12 education spending.

My guess is that the reporter was trying to refer to K-12 education, because the scaremongers typically say Colorado ranks 48th in higher education spending, not 49th. Even so, Mark Hillman debunked that claim last year:

Harmonizing with the choir crying poverty for colleges and universities, CFPI ranks Colorado 48th in higher education spending. Governing places us 26th, again right at the middle and just behind California. Moreover, the share of Colorado’s population enrolled in higher ed is well above average, suggesting that we’re getting good value and that affordability isn’t a significant barrier.

The reporter should have listed her source for the 49th claim.

Live in Colorado and getting ready for your federal rebate stimulus check to arrive? Don’t get too excited yet.

Republican leaders in the state legislature have taken a Letterman-esque stab at letting you know what the Democrat majority has already done with your money:

10. Higher auto premiums

9. Higher energy premiums

8. $25 marriage tax

7. Higher fees on everything from birth certificates to tire recycling

6. College tuition hikes for everyone!

5. Up to a $100 dollar car tax

4. Gov. Bill Ritter to an aide: “Recession? Hey, let’s go out and hire another 1,300 state employees!”

3. “…and let’s make sure they all have collective-bargaining rights, too!”

2. Gov. Bill Ritter’s legal bill for defending his unconstitutional property-tax hike

1. Gov. Bill Ritter’s unconstitutional property-tax hike

Raising taxes and fees … It’s the modus operandi for Democrats in Colorado and elsewhere.

Face The State reports:

A bipartisan state legislative coalition killed an amendment late Tuesday to this year’s School Finance Act that would have taken millions away from the state’s charter schools.

The amendment, proposed during House debate by Rep. Debbie Benefield, D-Arvada, would have cut funding for at-risk students by approximately $4.5 million.

Benefield justified her amendment, telling the House she ran it “because I can,” with her backers saying the amendment addressed concerns that the state’s current funding formula does not properly define “at-risk.” Benefield maintains that the current formula awards schools money disproportionate to the actual number of at-risk students they serve.

It’s at least good to see that sensible members on both sides of the statehouse aisle thwarted the attempt to take money from public charter schools by changing labels of which students are “at-risk” and which are not.

However, like many of her Democratic colleagues, Rep. Debbie Benefield has been a consistent opponent of true parental choice in public education - though her remarks haven’t been as strident or as infernal as some.

A ballot initiative proposed for the November 2008 Colorado ballot (and supported by the Independence Institute, where I work) has earned its third major newspaper endorsement, still more than six months out from the election.

From the Pueblo Chieftain today:

THE INDEPENDENCE Institute, a Golden-based think tank, is circulating petitions for a ballot initiative that would stop governmental agencies from collecting union dues from their employees.

In 2001, then-Gov. Bill Owens signed an executive order that stopped the payroll deduction for unionized state employees. Soon after Bill Ritter’s election, the new governor issued a new executive order to resume the automatic deductions.

Jon Caldera, president of Independence, says the organization doesn’t believe governments should be collectors and distributors of dues for unions that turn around and spend that money to lobby the same governments. Independence believes that taxpayers should not be subsidizing unions that often work counter to the taxpayers’ general interest.

We agree. [emphasis added]

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From today’s Denver Post:

Gov. Bill Ritter celebrated Earth Day beneath an unblemished blue sky this morning by enacting several major pieces of his Climate Action Plan, including a statewide greenhouse gas emissions reduction standard.

I’m curious to know why the phrase “an unblemished blue sky” was included in the lead sentence. It would have been a lot more compelling to read that Ritter was standing beneath “a smog-filled sky,” or that he was “drenched in sweat from the Climate Change-induced heat wave.”

But then again, Steven Hayward at Human Events explains how the radical environmental agenda has been a victim of its own success:

Time magazine this week is running its sixth cover story about global warming, but one of these days the editors of Time and other publications are going to grow bored with yet another “green” issue, just as the media grew bored with the AIDS crisis, civil rights, the NASA space program, and other once front-burner issues. No doubt something else will come along (the threat of asteroids perhaps?), because it is the nature of the media and activist groups to find some new panic to ride. For the time being, ruin an environmentalist’s day by celebrating Earth Day for the enormous progress it represents, not the panic they want you to feel.

Sounds like a great idea to me. I’m going to celebrate the “unblemished blue sky,” while Gov. Ritter seeks to burden the state’s businesses and consumers with new and costly regulations.