View From a Height

The Budget Positioning Starts

The calendar says 2005, but for those of us old with memories, it feels a little like 1995. The opposition party has taken over the legislature, and the governor now has to deal with leadership from the other party in both houses, for the first time in 40 years. And one of the lingering questions is whether or not this party, out of power for so long, can resist its more partisan and polarizing instincts. Then, as now, the budget moves to the center of this question.

In 1995, it was the Republicans led by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole. Today, it's Ken Gordon and Tsar Andrew Romanoff. Initial signs are mixed.

Romanoff is floating a proposal to use the high-water mark of 2000, rather than the ratcheted-down level of 2002 or so, as the baseline for permissible TABOR expenditures. It completely ignores that third-rail of state-level politics: education spending, in this case, as mandated by Amendment 23.

The Democrats ran as compromisers, understanding all three elements of the problem, but are now apparently proposing to "fix" only one side of the triangle, as a sop to their primary constituency.

The AARP can run all the bogus polls it wants. If they, and the League of Women Voters, and Bell, and Bighorn thing that Coloradoans are going to vote to raise their taxes without controlling spending, they're going to get a big surprise in November. A strong response by the minority, led by a strong response by a still-popular governor with nothing to lose, is exactly the formula that led Clinton back from the abyss in 1995-96. The same instincts that led Coloradoans to kill Amendment A can work in our favor this time.