May 23, 2008 06:53 PM UTC

El Paso County Almost Done Drowning in Bathtub

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• by: Colorado Pols

As The Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

A sales tax increase that would raise $70 million a year to bail out law enforcement and health agencies will be proposed next month for the November ballot.

The ballot question being considered is a 1 percent sales tax on purchases anywhere in the county that would be shared among El Paso County, Colorado Springs and other towns.

The county government faces the most urgent financial needs, according to Citizens for Effective Government, a Colorado Springsbased coalition that is recommending the tax increase.

The county commissioners have said for several years that revenues aren’t keeping up with rising costs, warning that services would have to be slashed unless more money started coming in.

The county reached the breaking point this year, commissioners said Thursday. The county has already closed most offices on Fridays, and officials are exploring other options includ- ing selling county parks.

If you haven’t been following this story in El Paso County as it has grown over the last few months, it’s been interesting to watch. Remember, this is the heart of conservative Republican thought in Colorado, and years of “drown the government in the bathtub” thinking has damn near succeeded. You know things are bad when the county is considering SELLING parks just to raise money. You can’t just endlessly cut spending and never raise additional money that the same time you continue to grow in size.

What’s interesting about this from a statewide perspective is that we could be starting to see a shift in thinking away from the “government is bad” approach of many conservatives. El Paso County is in such bad financial shape that they have just a handful of Sheriff deputies on duty at any one time – backup can be 20 minutes away in some cases – and the county only has half the number of health inspectors they should have. Instead of inspecting restaurants twice a year, they aren’t able to inspect every restaurant once.

The money would be directed to areas such as the county jail and Health Department, freeing up money to keep providing other services, such as plowing county roads during winter, and restoring cuts. The jail is so badly crowded that Sheriff Terry Maketa has worried publicly over the safety of deputies watching inmates. The Health Department says it doesn’t have enough money to inspect restaurants and pools or fight disease outbreaks.

The Denver Post reported in March on the crisis, which is a very real threat to the safety of people in El Paso County:

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa can’t sleep at night.

On any given day, seven deputies patrol a county that spans 2,158 square miles – almost 50 miles from north to south, and 45 miles wide from east to west. Backup is 35 minutes away.

“Sometimes,” Maketa says, “there is no backup at all.”

In this county, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 2-to-1, where the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights was first approved by Colorado Springs voters, and where people value small government, the county is facing a fiscal crisis.

“I think it’s frankly an emergency situation,” said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark. “We’ve got lots of services that continue to be provided and need to be provided, but we have a budget that is not matching the needs that we have in the community.”