A Face The State Analysis of Ritter's "Colorado Promise"
Face The State Staff Report
DENVER – During his 2006 campaign, Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, touted his "Colorado Promise," a 54-page document containing dozens of pledges to Colorado voters. Fifteen months into his administration, Ritter has focused heavily on studying issues, achieving few of his pledges beyond establishing boards and commissions that have almost exclusively served to advocate higher taxes.
While Ritter's campaign promises focused on nine key issue areas, Face The State has limited its analysis to the four areas most debated in this year's legislation session - health care, education, energy, and transportation. Ritter has taken action in all of these key arenas, creating opportunities to evaluate his actions and strategies.
Ritter has created five of the seven commissions and councils he promised and tacked on one more than expected – a panel to study the Pine Beetle epidemic. These panels have recommended reforms that could cost taxpayers billions. As previously reported by Face The State, he has placed heavy reliance on these bodies to do the work of hashing out proposals addressing aspects of his campaign platform.
He is then free to either embrace or distance himself from those recommendations based on their reception in the media and by the public.
HEALTH CARE
After analyzing the state’s current healthcare crisis, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform, also known as the "208 Commission," proposed a plan to provide insurance for roughly 800,000 Coloradans who are currently without coverage. The commission’s proposals could cost up to $1.5 billion a year and Ritter’s response was to borrow some elements of the proposal to create his own healthcare reform plan with a $25 million price tag.
While the commission was appointed in the closing months of Gov. Bill Owens' tenure, critics on both sides of the aisle have panned its report and Ritter’s follow-up proposal as being too costly. According to Brian Schwartz, a healthcare policy expert who testified before the 208 Commission, Ritter’s plan to increase enrollment in state sponsored insurance programs is only going to grow government unnecessarily and hurt Coloradans in the long run. “The children’s health plan is like the kiddie version of Medicaid,” said Schwartz. “Instead of passing more laws that unfairly compete with private companies and put people on crappy plans, why doesn’t the government look at what it is already doing make insurance so expensive?”
THE ECONOMY
Ritter’s most recently kept promise was the creation of his "Jobs Cabinet," advertised as a way to unite the education, business and workforce development spheres to keep the state’s economy competitive. Translation: the Jobs Cabinet is going to study the causes of unemployment in Colorado, which has been on the rise – up from 4.1 percent at the beginning of January to 4.5 percent in February. The governor did keep his promise; though, it is unclear how this policy will serve the public.
ENERGY
The "Colorado Promise" also focused on the “new energy economy," with Ritter fulfilling pledges to change the composition of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Republicans say new rules and regulations threaten to derail the state's energy industry and harm a multitude of state programs that depend on oil and gas revenues. Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, worries that Ritter’s energy policy will drive up utility rates in rural Colorado. “The administration’s energy mandate benefits some and hurts others,” Brophy said. “It is important to offer incentives for new technologies that won’t result in a hidden tax increase on utility costs.”
Brophy’s concern is compounded by Ritter’s selection of Matt Baker to serve on the three-member Public Utilities Commission. Baker is the former executive director of Environment Colorado, and has vociferously opposed the use of coal-generated power. Roughly 80 percent of Colorado’s electricity comes from coal as it remains the most cost-effective resource for power generation.
EDUCATION
As a candidate, Ritter promised to improve higher education, making it “an available reality for any young person with the ability and determination to pursue it.” Nearly halfway through his first term, tuition and fees at the University of Colorado and Colorado State University have continued to rise – with an increase of 25.1 percent for CU’s engineering students and as much as 16.6 percent for students at CSU-Fort Collins.
This week, Ritter lobbied the Joint Budget Committee for a $65 million increase in higher education funding, leaving it up to legislators to handle the details of where to find the new funds. Ritter is also supportive of a severance tax increase that would feed dollars to higher education. These proposals come on the heels of a property tax hike that Ritter inserted into the annual School Finance Act and will cost the public up to $3.8 billion over the next 10 years. The tax, which is intended to take up Colorado’s school funding needs, is being challenged in court.
Ritter also established the P-20 Council, tasked with studying educational issues and making reform suggestions, with a guiding philosophy focused on establishing a statewide coordinated effort from preschool through the “20th grade," graduate school. According to Ben DeGrow, an education policy analyst with the Independence Institute, the council is not very effective or results-oriented. DeGrow says he would like to see the council show more support for issues like school choice.
As a candidate, Ritter pledged to support "pay-for-performance" education reform. He has fulfilled this promise, supporting legislation championed by state Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial, who ran a similar bill last session that was defeated by Democrats. “This is a small down payment on the governor’s promise to bring meaningful performance pay to teachers in Colorado,” said DeGrow.
TRANSPORTATION
Ritter recently embraced a recommendation from the Transportation, Finance and Implementation Panel proposing a $100 fee increase on vehicle registration that would raise $500 million for road maintenance and construction. Ritter is able to support this levy on Colorado wallets while bypassing the state's Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights because fee increases are not technically considered taxes. TABOR requires that any tax increase be approved by a vote of the people.
Republican lawmakers and media outlets around the state editorialized against the measure saying that its burden will fall most heavily on those who are already struggling.
State Rep. Glen Vaad, R-Mead, served on the commission and was irritated with the panel’s recommendations and its decision-making process.
“The commission was set on deciding how much money we needed and completely neglected to assess the responsibility of individual regions in road maintenance,” said Vaad.
Vaad opposes the commission's $500 million tax increase because he says that people could end up funding the upkeep of roads they don’t even use. He cited Colorado Springs as a great example of a municipality taking responsibility for road maintenance. Colorado Springs uses a portion of their sales tax to finance local road repairs since the majority of usage comes from the cities residents.
GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams criticized Ritter for making too many promises. He cites a stark contrast with Ritter's predecessor, Bill Owens, who had only three goals: cutting taxes, improving transportation and education reform.
“The most glaring thing about the Ritter administration is their two major achievements – if you want to call them that – were not even mentioned in the Colorado Promise,” said Wadhams, who points out that neither the property tax hike or executive order mandating collective bargaining for state employs are mentioned during Ritter’s campaign or his State of the State address.