GOP: 'Terribly misguided' bid to scrap budget cap could doom transportation

Senate Republican leaders expressed their astonishment today at new legislation that would roll back what one called the "last line of defense" for funding the state's already-imperiled highway system--amounting to the largest cut to transportation in the history of the Centennial State.

The pending proposal to scrap a growth cap on the state's operating budget--sometimes called the Arveschoug-Bird limit--would scuttle a formula that for years has provided a crucial revenue source for highways. According to a new analysis by the legislature's nonpartisan Legislative Council office, such a dramatic policy

shift--had it been implemented just five years ago--would have shortchanged the state's transportation system and other critical infrastructure by a whopping $1.6 billion by now.

"It's hard to imagine why we would want to go down this road, even in the best of times," said Senate Republican Whip Nancy Spence, a longtime Senate Transportation Committee member. "Especially now, when we are desperate to fund so many backlogged highway projects, eliminating our last line of defense for transportation is unthinkable."

Spence added, "As the Legislative Council analysis makes clear, the backers of this proposal would have us make the biggest cutback, ever, to transportation."

Spence was referring to a legislative formula  that has protected and shored up highway funding for years. It effectively assures that transportation garners most of the revenue that  the state collects in excess of  the 6 percent annual growth limit imposed by Arveschoug-Bird on the operating budget. Removing that limit would moot the transportation-funding formula, siphoning potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year away from the state's overburdened highways in order to grow other spending programs.

Senate Republican caucus Chair Mike Kopp, of Littleton, said that approach is "nothing short of reckless," especially given the ongoing legislative debate over a Democrat bill that would impose sweeping fee hikes and tolling on motorists to fund transportation.

"Motorists are being told to fork over $200 million a year in new fees to upgrade our transportation grid, yet some of the same folks behind that problematic policy also would have us kiss off untold billions in the next decade under the current formula? Make sense of that," Kopp said. "This idea is terribly misguided, at best."

The Republican senators say the controversial proposal is all the more astounding given the Colorado Department of Transportation's long-term projection of how far short of the mark transportation funding already is. The department says $500 million a year more is needed just to attend to a short list of the most urgently needed upgrades, including repairs to aging, unsafe bridges. Transportation officials say fully $1.5 billion is needed to get the state's transportation plan back on track.

"We're already in a hole," Kopp said. "Instead of helping us climb out, this scheme digs it much, much deeper."