Posted by
John Dendahl on Sunday, February 22, 2009 9:57:42 PM
Former Colorado State Senate president John Andrews warns in a recent commentary in The Denver Post that Colorado's constitutional Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, TABOR, may soon be under assault once again in the State Capitol. He also noted that TABOR is the envy of states all around the country.
He’s right. Well before I became a Colorado resident, I penned the commentary below as one of a series of newspapers syndicated in some New Mexico newspapers.
New Mexico Should Rein in Spending
January 23, 2005
By John Dendahl
Highlighted inset: With the occasional rare exception, politicians – once elected to office – cannot resist the pressure to spend whatever money is available.
Three hundred million dollars – $300,000,000 – is a lot of scratch.
One can easily imagine the glee with which a notorious spender like Gov. Bill Richardson heard the news that New Mexico’s oil and gas industry has presented this handsome, unexpected bonus on top of its usual huge contribution to the state’s coffers.
Gleeful, too, one can be sure, were public employee union bosses; city, county, school district and university officials and their lobbyists; and many hundreds of advocates for all manner of "unmet needs" whose hands are forever in taxpayers’ pockets.
If New Mexico had Colorado’s constitution, Richardson & Co. wouldn’t be spending this $300 million windfall from high international fuel prices. More on that below.
By noon on Jan. 18, when the Legislature convened to hear Richardson’s glowing report on how well our state (read he, himself) is doing, that $300 million had probably been spent three or four times!
Though New Mexico taxation was already comparatively high when he took office, Richardson has raised taxes some more.
He also got voters to help him raid a state endowment, the Land Grant Permanent Fund, to put at his disposal about $80 million more every year. Money from tobacco litigation has also been released by Richardson and the Legislature from "permanent fund" status, giving him another $40 million or so per year to sprinkle around.
Future governors will have less to spend, because these were robberies from Peter to pay Paul.
With the occasional rare exception, politicians – once elected to office – cannot resist the pressure to spend whatever money is available.
Gov. Gary Johnson was one of the exceptions, but some are still tending wounds inflicted by Republicans in the Legislature who didn’t like being cajoled to sustain his 750 vetoes. Substantially all those were directed at controlling government’s cost and reach into citizens’ liberties – solid Republican values that too many Republicans forget when the big bucks are there to put smiles on faces of the professional beggars mentioned above.
In 1992, Colorado voters recognized the sad truth about politicians’ love of spending and did something to help. They adopted TABOR, The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights – article X, section 20 of the state constitution – which limits public spending growth to a combination of inflation and population growth.
Politicians can propose larger increases, but those must be approved by voters in subsequent elections.
Coloradans now enjoy an economy with one of the nation’s fastest growth rates. Pre-TABOR, government jobs in Colorado were expanding faster than in the private sector. Post-TABOR, business job growth has been nearly double the rate in government.
Meanwhile, big-government advocates all over Colorado are wailing about pinches here and there, all blamed on TABOR – and music to the ears of anyone fed up with failed expectations that some government program or other is the answer to every perceived need.
The Rio Grande Foundation, New Mexico’s free market think tank, has calculated that the state’s general fund expenditures are more than 25 percent larger today than if growth had been limited like Colorado’s during the same period. That 25-percent-plus difference is about $1 billion, and it’s getting wider with each passing year – even without the $300 million fuel price windfall that will be blown in the next few months.
New Mexico needs a TABOR-like constitutional spending limit, but that is a long row to hoe.
For one thing, New Mexicans don’t enjoy Coloradans’ privilege of citizen-initiated amendments like TABOR. Our constitutional amendments must originate in the Legislature.
Further, Colorado is relatively uninfluenced by the culture of patronage running deep in New Mexico and doing so much to corrupt government.
Nonetheless, the time to begin is now. Can a cadre of legislators be found that is committed to accomplishing what some might believe impossible?