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.
Through all of those years and different stages in the economic cycle — under Republican and Democrat governors alike; under Democrat- 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 Democrat 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 this Legislature do the same in 2009?
The answer still isn’t at all clear, but that hasn’t slowed the governor’s and ruling Democrats’ headlong push to repeal this prudent policy. In a year when the General Assembly has enacted nearly $1 billion in additional taxes and fees, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this fiscal safeguard has been targeted, too....
Read full column: http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/05/04/editorial2.html