Thanks to sensible budget restraints enacted by both political parties over the years, Colorado has been spared the binge-and-purge budget calamities that have made national headlines in places like New York and California of late. You know the routine: big budget increases during good economic times, followed by a budget free fall and fiscal crisis when the economy and government revenue turn south.

Budget times have been tough in Colorado, to be sure, but nothing like in those states. Regrettably, that is about to change.

Gov. Bill Ritter's decision last week to sign a bill that blows away a long-standing cap on growth of Colorado's operating budget is an open invitation to rapid growth in the state's operating budget. It also paves the way for the Legislature to divert vital funding away from highways, spending those infrastructure dollars instead on more and expanded programs.

You read that right: in the same year the governor signed a $250 million hike in car taxes as a means of increasing funding for roads and bridges, he also signed what amounts to the largest cut to transportation funding in the history of Colorado. Hiking fees to fund roads and bridges while jerking existing funding from those same transportation systems is disingenuous - especially during a recession.

Commentary in the June 7 Denver Post

By State Sen. Nancy Spence

Of all the groundbreaking education reforms embraced by lawmakers over the years, charter schools may be the most remarkable. Independently developed and operated, these novel public schools represent the very cutting edge of reform, where parental choice meets educational innovation.

Charter schools offer wide-ranging learning methods and course work aimed at those students — from at-risk and special-needs kids to the gifted and talented — who too often are shortchanged by neighborhood public schools.

It's no wonder charters' popularity has surged, with growth off the charts in Colorado and other states. The 160 charters in Colorado now serve some 62,000 students — almost 8 percent of all students enrolled in public schools statewide.

But that meteoric growth also poses a big challenge to the charter-school movement: how to accommodate more students with limited resources. Indeed, charter schools took a big funding hit in the legislature this year, losing half of their total facilities budget. And there is no surer way to smother this important educational opportunity than to limit capacity, especially when there are 40,000 kids in Colorado on waiting lists to enter these schools.

Gov. Bill Ritter has an opportunity to turn things around and inject new hope into Colorado's charter-school movement. The governor and the state Department of Education can pursue millions of dollars in federal matching funds under the Charter School Facilities Incentive grant program.

LEGISLATIVE WRAP-UP

 Published in the Pueblo Chieftain

By JOSH PENRY

Commentary in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

By Sen. Josh Penry

For more than 30 years — through boom and bust, inflation, deflation and stagflation — Colorado’s state operating budget has been subject to a meaningful spending limit. Since 1991, that cap on year-to-year budget growth has stood at 6 percent. Through all of those years and different stages in the economic cycle — under Republican and Democratic governors alike; under Democratic and Republican-controlled Legislatures — Colorado’s political leaders have met the obligations of government under strong laws that limit the growth of our operating budget.

All of which raises this question: If governors named Lamm, Romer and Owens as well as Republican and Democratic Legislatures could live with a meaningful spending limit as they crafted the budget from one year to the next, why in the world can’t Gov. Bill Ritter and the current Legislature do the same in 2009?

During difficult times like these, leadership is about confronting reality and making the tough choices today that are necessary for a better tomorrow.

Since the Democrats' historic sweep in 2008, tough choices have been badly missing from the political landscape. In Washington, congressional Democrats and President Obama have racked up mountains of new debt, even one-upping the Bush administration and congressional Republicans whose irresponsible spending policies earlier this decade helped lead Republicans into the electoral wilderness.

Unfortunately, congressional Democrats aren't alone in dodging the tough but necessary choices, as the just-completed session of the General Assembly showed in powerful ways. During the last 120 days, Gov. Bill Ritter and legislative Democrats enacted nearly $1 billion in new taxes and new fees, raided hundreds of millions in cash funds and trust funds rather than scrutinizing government budgets, and even pushed legislation that proposed to seize the private cash reserves of Colorado's worker's compensation insurer of last resort. Ignoring continued warning signs of plummeting tax revenue, the governor just signed a $17.9 billion budget for next year that is likely to dip back into the red as soon as the next quarterly economic forecast is issued by legislative staff....

Read full commentary at: http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_12310699

Published in the Pueblo Chieftain

CAPITOL AGENDAS

By JOSH PENRY

Coloradans dodged a bullet the other day in their fight against crime. The shot was fired by some misguided members of the ruling party in the Legislature - right at the heart of our state’s justice system.

It came in the form of a bill Democrats had introduced late in the session to slash criminal sentences on a wide range of crimes; it lowered penalties on felonies and misdemeanors including theft, burglary and drug crimes. The result would have been to let countless criminals loose on our streets.

It was no wonder our state’s top law enforcers were alarmed. District attorneys from across Colorado held a rare press conference at which they pleaded with lawmakers not to enact the legislation. Fortunately, the outcry forced the sponsors to back down late last month and scuttle this bad idea.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only attempt during the 2009 legislative session to undermine law and order. A perennial push to ban capital punishment is back. It passed the House of Representatives and was sent to the Senate. And an attempt to limit capacity in the state’s prisons is making its way through the General Assembly as well. Both pending proposals are touted as a way of cutting costs amid the state’s budget straits. Yet, they serve to broadcast a very troubling message to the criminal element everywhere: Welcome to Colorado; we’ll go easy on you.

Published in the Denver Business Journal

By Josh Penry

For more than 30 years — through boom and bust, inflation, deflation and stagflation — Colorado’s state operating budget has been subject to a meaningful spending limit. Since 1991, that cap on year-to-year budget growth has stood at 6 percent.

CAPITOL AGENDA

By JOSH PENRY

Sen. Josh Penry of Grand Junction is Republican leader in the Colorado Senate.

If ever there was a need for both parties at the Legislature to set aside their usual political differences and work together, it is now, amid the extraordinary challenges facing our state’s budget and our entire economy.

The nation is mired in the worst recession in decades, and our state is suffering the ill-effects as well. Colorado’s unemployment rate just hit 7.2 percent, which is the highest it has been in over 20 years, and home foreclosures have been soaring.

Probably everyone has family or friends who have lost jobs, maybe even their homes, to the slumping economy. With breadwinners at risk and many, many households forced to tighten their belts, almost all economic activity has hit a wall.

Pueblo Chieftain opinion page 

By JOSH PENRY

Last year’s bruising presidential race underscored many of the fundamental distinctions between our two political parties.

Yet, the victor who emerged from that partisan slugfest and won the Oval Office is now staking out some common ground in an area that should encourage Republicans and Democrats alike: He is calling for much-needed and long-overdue reforms in public education.

President Barack Obama deserves a lot of credit for bucking some of his own party establishment and rejecting its hidebound defense of the unsustainable status quo in our nation’s schools.

Our new president has taken a bold stance in favor of policies such as more rigorous academic standards, merit pay, a longer school year, more meaningful testing and swifter dismissal of ineffective teachers. These reforms, though long-standing tenets within my party, represent a clear departure from conventional thinking among many of the president’s own political allies. And they are the bane of the powerful teachers unions that carry so much clout in his party.