Pueblo Chieftain Editorial 

While the Colorado Commission on Higher Education has proposed an 8 percent increase in state support for higher education next year - a proposal we have endorsed - there are still gaps in funding for the state’s colleges and universities.

Recently, Senate Republican leaders unveiled a wide-ranging plan to shore up higher education, including a proposal for a permanent trust fund that would tap into the state’s surging oil and gas revenue to fund Colorado’s colleges and universities.

The funding proposal by Sen. Josh Penry, R-Fruita, and Rep. Al White, R-Winter Park, would generate an estimated $500 million to $1 billion in leasing fees to Colorado’s state government and another $100 million or more annually for the next 20 to 30 years in mineral royalties and state and local energy taxes.

While we’re not keen on earmarking tax revenues, the fact that higher ed funding has been the budgeting pinata for the past 30 years leads us to conclude this proposal has merit. Whenever new demands for General Fund money have come up, higher ed has taken a hit.

The beauty of a permanent trust fund is that it would guard against the ups and downs of the energy extraction industry. Colorado saw the energy bust of the 1970s.

The GOP plan would dedicate half of the revenue derived from natural gas production on the West Slope’s Roan Plateau to a permanent trust fund for Colorado’s colleges and universities. The legislators would dedicate the other half of the revenue to a trust fund for energy-impacted communities, tapping only the interest, not the principal, to provide a revenue stream for West Slope roads and bridges in perpetuity.

With revenue from oil and gas production soaring statewide, Republican lawmakers are saying the Penry-White plan’s formula could be applied to all the state’s oil and gas revenue, including from the Roan, to help establish a permanent trust for higher ed. Already, the Roan proposal has sparked bipartisan negotiations within an interim committee formed last year to explore a new approach to spending the state’s energy funds.

Various West Slope local governments and the West Slope advocacy group Club 20 have endorsed this proposal. Count us in as well.