View From a Height

Academia Taps Business to Help Government

A few weeks ago, outgoing DU Chancellor Daniel Ritchie announced a panel to examine Colorado's budget crunch:

University of Denver Chancellor Daniel Ritchie on Tuesday announced a panel of 16 civic and business leaders who he said will take a fresh, nonpartisan look at how to unsnarl the state's fiscal problems.

Initially, the panel will try to find a solution to the budget squeeze created by tax limits of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights and the K-12 education spending mandates of Amendment 23.

...

People on several sides of the -debate welcomed the effort proposed by Ritchie. A spokesman for Gov. Bill Owens said he is open to the panel's work.

"The governor will look forward to whatever advice and comments this group comes up with," spokesman Dan Hopkins said.

Carrie Harmon, a spokeswoman for the Bell Policy Center - a think tank critical of TABOR - also said she thinks the panel is a good idea. "We think the DU panel will be very helpful to the ongoing effort to understand and solve the state's fiscal problems," she said.

No kidding. The governor has to say that, Bell has a freer hand, but has every reason to be optimistic that the panel will try to make long-term changes to TABOR. While Ritchie himself is a pretty staunch Republican, his committee members seem to lean the other way.

Of the 13 committee members who have given to political campaigns, 5 have given primarily to Republicans, while 8 have favored Democrats. Of these, 2 of the Republicans (Tointon and Robinson) have given substantial amounts, while three have given small donations over time.

However, one of the Democrats is a former officeholder, Richard Celeste, former governor of Ohio, and responsible for inviting Hanan Ashrawi to come speak at Colorado College on September 11, 2002. Kim Patmore has spread money all over the Democratic map, including contributions to Maxine Waters and to Ernest Hollings in 2002. Salazar has given money to both John and Ken (I've been unable to determine so far if they're related, but Marguerite is also from the San Luis Valley.) She also signed a press release that suggests fairly strong political leanings.

Academic committees, like academia itself, clothes itself in an air of intellectual purity that doesn't apply, and doesn't obtain. Their findings are reported with an air of reverence and respect all out of proportion to what they deserve. Businessmen, like academic and intellectuals, bring certain biases and attitudes to their work. Effectiveness in the committees isn't measured merely by numbers, but also by the strength of conviction, and the willingness to defend an ideology. The balance of power here clearly favors the left.

One of the most widely-held misconceptions about business is that businessmen by definition favor Republicans. Business favors business. Small business tends to favor Republicans, but big business is decidedly bi-partisan. This is partly out of misguided attempts to cover their bets, but also partly out of a desire to raise barriers to competition. If new regulations don't apply to small business, they do kick in at some number of employees - frequently 50 - making the transition from small annoyance to serious conpetitor that much harder.

All that adds up to a committee that, in the popular mind, would be expected to defend TABOR. When it doesn't, that will be cited as evidence of TABOR's failings, rather than the committee's.