View From a Height

The Governor, the Tsar, and the King

And then there were three. In addition to the Governor's plan and Speaker Romanoff's plan, Republican representative King has entered a plan into the TABOR Sweepstakes.

Jim Tankersley, as usual, has a good summary of the three plans.

Both the Governor and Speaker Romanoff would lower the tax rate to 4.5%, but they would calculate spending limits differently. The Governor would ask for a one-time bump in the TABOR baseline, effectively to allow the state to meet its current obligation. Romanoff would tie spending to the government's 2000 share of the state's economy.

Of these two, Romanoff's plan is the more generous to the state, and so the more dangerous. Romanoff makes room for more permanent programs and long-term obligations, while ignoring the other two parts of the vise - Amendment 23 and Gallagher. Owens's plan doesn't address these immediately, either, but by using current programs as the baseline, he makes it more likely that the legislature will have to deal with Amendment 23 next year.

The King-Teck proposal is a little different. It lowers taxes to 4.45%, and cuts the maximum state growth rate to 5% for three years, while also giving a one-year bump to the baseline. King-Teck also basically keeps a tight lid on discretionary spending, which would mean dealing with Amendment 23 sooner rather than never.

Naturally, the Tsar is displeased:

Romanoff said he welcomed the plan but questioned parts of it.

"We can't wish those needs away," he said. "We have to close the gap between the revenues we've got and the services we want, or tell voters which campuses we'll close, which roads we're going to ravage, which prisoners we're going to set free."

Or, we have to go to the people and actually ask them for their money for these things. Or, we have to decide that we're not going to build automatic raises into one part of the budget. Meaning we'll have to make choices. Gee, what a novel idea.

Naturally, business leaders (who always follow the majority) and Democrats, think it's a PR problem:

The business leaders chatting with Democrats Tuesday saw some lessons there. They strongly supported a long-term budget fix that includes increased state spending, and several said to pass it in November, proponents need to control the campaign war of words.

They suggested replacing "TABOR refund" with "TABOR throwaway" and "money in your pocket" with "investing in the state."

"This is more marketing than it is politics," said powerful attorney Steve Farber. "It's going to have to be marketed smarter than we've ever marketed before."

Steve, politics is largely marketing. And anyone who's going to tell people that letting them keep more of their own money is "throwing it away" must not like being in the majority that much, after all.