U.S. Senate See Full Big Line

(D) J. Hickenlooper*

(R) Somebody

80%

20%

Governor See Full Big Line
(D) Phil Weiser

(D) Joe Neguse

(D) Jena Griswold

60%

60%

40%↓

Att. General See Full Big Line

(D) M. Dougherty

(D) Alexis King

(D) Brian Mason

40%

40%

30%

Sec. of State See Full Big Line
(D) A. Gonzalez

(D) George Stern

(R) Sheri Davis

50%↑

40%

30%

State Treasurer See Full Big Line

(D) Brianna Titone

(R) Kevin Grantham

(D) Jerry DiTullio

60%

30%

20%

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) Somebody

90%

2%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Somebody

90%

2%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd*

(D) Somebody

80%

40%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert*

(D) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank*

(D) Somebody

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(R) Gabe Evans*

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(D) Joe Salazar

50%

40%

40%

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
November 18, 2009 08:25 PM UTC

Just Keep Cutting the Budget And...Oh, Wait

  • 58 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As The Denver Post reports, the conservative mantra that the government should just cut, cut, cut isn’t actually working out so well for the private industry in Colorado:

Colorado’s ability to increase incomes and create jobs for its citizens is lagging behind surrounding states it must compete with, a report released Tuesday by the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. warns.

“Our findings show that Colorado is not expanding its competitiveness,” the group notes in its report, “Toward a More Competitive Colorado.”

The report recommends reworking tax and spending limitations in the state constitution to free up more funds for higher education and infrastructure. The state also should be seeing a better payoff than it appears to be getting for all the dollars being redirected to K-12 education, said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the MDEDC.

“If you are an intelligence-based economy, it isn’t good to be ranked 47th in higher-education funding,” he said.

Clark said the state in the past has made investments in public projects such as Denver International Airport and the widening of Interstate 25, and that it must avoid complacency now.

The report, done annually since 2005, outlines areas in which the state is slipping:

  • Colorado has moved from the eighth-highest rate of per-capita personal income to the 13th-highest in the past three years.
  • The state’s per-capita gross domestic product, a measure of economic output per person, has fallen from eighth to 12th during the same period.
  • The export dollars the state is generating from the products it ships elsewhere is the fifth-worst in the country.

    • Even Chuck Berry of the conservative and Republican-leaning Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry (CACI) admits the problem:

    Berry said Colorado has lost ground in recent studies that rank the business climate and competitiveness of states, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Best to Worst State Legal Systems” survey. That report placed Colorado 13th, a drop from previous years…

    …”This slippage is noticed by business decisionmakers and site locators with national site-location companies that advise corporate executives on where to locate their facilities,” Berry said in his remarks.

    Paging Rep. Steve King: Reality is calling. Business leaders sort of like to set up shop in states that, you know, actually fund stuff like education.

    (More commentary from David Thielen)

    Tweet
    Share

    Comments

    58 thoughts on “Just Keep Cutting the Budget And…Oh, Wait”

    1. As long as there are limits on government growth and spending, companies will flock here. Right?

      …Right? I mean, that’s what John Caldera keeps telling us, so it must be true.

        1. Hey, they can always send their kids to conveniently located Wyoming, as conservative neighbors brag to me they do.  It’s cheaper for Colorado kids to pay out of state tuition there than in state tuition here. Of course new businesses could just move there instead and their employees could save even more paying in state tuition for their kids in Wyoming.    But they must be a bunch of commies up there, spending tax dollars to fund elitist quiche eating higher education, so who needs their kind, right?

        2. Business taxes and fees just keep going up.  The cost of doing business in CO is excessive compared to NEB, UT.

          This latest proposal to do away with certain tax “loopholes” is a perfect example of how some businesses are attacked.  When attacked they look elsewhere to place investment (such as UT or NEB).

          These states are cited in the report as a major competitors for CO.  The teaching moment here is that you can’t crush job creaters and expect they come here away.  Republic Airlines is a perfect example of that, they moved jobs to WI.

          Even the Union called out the political elites (MDEDC, Ritter, Hickenlooper, other well heeled interests).

          Face the facts.  Political leadership has known for years they wanted to spend more, they watched this “fiscal crisis” develop and have stood by as years have slipped away when they could have gone to the people as asked (under TABOR) to increase the taxes.

          Hey I love Hick too, Denver’s property taxes are a tiny fraction of those you’d pay in NE, TX, MN, UT or many other states.  Frankly they are a lot less then surrounding counties.

          Ask yourself why TX, WI, IL, UT, NE, and MN all have much stronger communities and are home to job creating multinationals …. they are business freindly.

          Lets tally the departures 1stData, Republic, Intel, all kinds of Oil/Gas firms…….

          1. It sucks when facts don’t equal statements…

            Try this 2009 report (PDF) comparing Colorado’s total tax burden to those of other states.  Colorado ranks as one of the lowest tax burdens per $1000 income (46th), and below average (26th) per capita.

            Nebraska ranks above us both per $1000 income (14th) and per capita (21st); Utah ranks above us per $1000 income (18th) but below us per capita (38th).

            We are, in otherwords, the fourth most stingy state in the country for our income level, and if competition were solely based on taxation, we’d be gaining ground instead of losing it.

              2. Relating statistics to per $1,000 of income is a totally misleading denominator.

                What is the effect of all those Aspen homes and the roads they use 2 weeks a year as they jet in from exotic locations like DC?  Is a proportionate amount of their income included (ps this drives your figures even worse).

                Second, the cost of doing business or business taxes have nothing to do with $taxes/per $1,000 of income.

                Third, if this is the basis of your case then you should support the increasing of colorado’s personal income tax from 5% to & or 10% and no deduction for federal taxes paid.

                ps Ritter was running for Governor in 2005, why hasn’t he corrected the problem?

                2. And I provided the per-capita numbers just in case you didn’t like your numbers based on personal income.  They still don’t help your case.

                  So you want to talk business taxes: Colorado ranks 38th in the nation on business income tax rate (per-capita, just for you…).  We beat, of your list, UT (21st), WI (19th), MN (13th), NE (28th), and IL (11th).  TX has no corporate income tax – they get their money through personal taxation and let the corporations off the hook.

                  Okay, how about property taxes?  It makes more sense to talk about property taxes in terms of income, because property values are largely based on income rates rather than on population.  Colorado ranks 20th in property taxes per-$1000 income.  We beat TX (9th), IL (8th), and WI (10th) in that measure.  UT (39th), MN (32nd) and NE (27th) are all states that get more money from income taxes (corporate and personal).

                  So, assuming you learn, what have we learned?  Colorado is more than competitive with the states listed by you as an example of lower business taxes.  And yet, precisely because we listen to the no-taxes folks, we’re not on top of the heap when it comes to being a good state in which to do business.

                  Second, quit shooting your mouth off when you know it’s going to be embarrassing.

          2. There you go again.

            Please compare the market factors contributing to the departures of 1stData and ‘all kinds of Oil/Gas firms.’  Yes, include comparisons with your favorites UT and NEB.

            You just throw them all together, make some remark about “loopholes” (since when do real conservatives favor tax subsidies for certain sectors of the market? -!-, that’s Adam’s Smith giving you the finger, I never learned my emoticons)  

            1. this is great. all we gotta do is look and see where 1st Data is moving and all the O&G production has shifted to and we’ll  have our tax answer.

              1st Data is moving the C-suite to Atlanta, GA. HIgher tax burden than Colorado. hmmm…. wha?

              O&G production is up in NY and PA- the most onerous O&G regulations in the country. Wha?

              Let me get this straight: all we gotta do if we really want to bring O&G production back is increase regulation.  And to retains 1st Data we gotta increase taxes.  

    2. With respect to per-capita personal income, per-capita gross domestic product, and export dollars. Wouldn’t all of those measures be heavily impacted by declining natural gas prices?

      Is there really a story here?

      1. Per-capita income changes would not be highly affected by natural gas price changes.  

        Similarly, natural gas only makes up a small portion of the state’s overall GDP (under 5%?), so even if you assume the report was generated using today’s NG export prices (it wasn’t), the difference is only a fraction of the state’s total shortfall.

        Most of the study’s results are based on 2008 data; some are based on 2007 data (the most recent available).  So the results don’t fully reflect the depth of our problems here in 2009, nor do they really reflect the current state of the natural gas industry; in fact, for much of 2008 natural gas prices were high and the average for the year was better than that in 2005 (their comparison point).

    3. We posted the following yesterday in a different diary, but we think it applies here.

      The bottom-line point is that, contrary to rhetoric suggesting otherwise, Colorado’s investment in itself — its residents, its colleges and universities, its roads and bridges and many other public structures — has not grown “exponentially” when “not contained.” In fact, it has remained relatively steady as a percentage of the state’s economy for almost three decades.

      And now it looks like that investment will decline in the next few years. We think this is going in the wrong direction. We agree with Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. that investment in our public systems is critical to our state’s competitiveness.

      Here’s our previous post:

      State General Fund revenues and expenditures equaled, on average, 4.2 percent of Colorado’s economy from 1981 to 1992, the year TABOR was passed. Spending reached a high of 4.4 percent in 1984, 1989 and 1992 and a low of 3.9 percent in 1983. In plain language: Without TABOR, state government did not grow relative to the overall state economy.

      In the years after TABOR’s adoption (1993-2008), General Fund spending averaged 4.2 percent of the economy, as measured by total state personal income. It reached a high of 4.7 percent in 1993, 1994 and 1995 and a low of 3.6 percent in 2002 and 2003.  It would have totaled 5 percent in 1998 and 4.9 percent in 1999 and 2000, except that TABOR required the state to rebate more than $2 billion in those years. That means that, even after TABOR’s adoption, the portion of the economy devoted to state government remained fairly constant, only growing with the boom of the late 1990s.  

      Looking ahead, in fiscal years 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12, state General Fund revenues are projected to equal 3.2, 3.4 and 3.5 percent of state’s economy.  These rates are more than 21 percent below the 4.2 percent average of the 1980s and 1990s.  

      State government did not grow unchecked in the years before TABOR, and not only is it not growing exponentially now, it is actually shrinking as a portion of the state’s economy.  

      1. Colorado’s state and local governments (there are over 2,000 of those) have a combined general fund of over $18 BILLION.

        Face it, we’ve known since early 2007 that sales taxs were declining.  The bond guys have been telling this to government leaders for years.

        Man up and ask the taxpayers … ps you should have done this Nov 3, 2009 … but alas the political will did not exist.  

    4. we already pay 7.4% tax in the Springs. How much more is enough? 8.4%? 9.4% 10.4%? 100%?

      Besides the state, you throw into the mix the fact that our counties are always crying that they don’t have enough money, our school districts complain that their schools are crumbling and their teachers need more money, our cities are making threats that dead babies will line the streets if they don’t get more money, and the feds will definately need more money to pay for all of Obama’s social programs, where does it end? Should we just throw in the towel and become like the USSR used to be and give it all to the powers to be?

      Oh wait, socialism doesn’t work. It has been tried and always fails.

      Hmmm. I guess I don’t know what to say except maybe our officials at ALL levels need to become more efficient and learn how to do more with less like the rest of us?

      2. By constraining government to the point where it cannot possibly provide services to our citizens, it’s caused wide-reaching eocnomic problems. All of the factors cited in the report are creating a climate in which businesses that were enticed with low state tax rates are now giving it a second thought when they see that basic services that they would expect to be there for their employees if they were to come to Colorado aren’t going to be there because of TABOR.

        The problems are far more complex and nuanced than simply decrying all forms of taxation and government spending as “socialism”.

        1. I keep forgeting its the low level of business taxes and rich man’s dominance over the poor man that result in a 50% highschool dropout rate, and everyother problem you see.

          The solution is to increase residential property tax, gas tax and consumer sales taxes while keeping government growing …. do you have the political will to do this?  Certainly business would fund this effort.

      3. you gotta get out more. 7.4% sales tax isn’t that high. There are a lot of places around the country where it is 9-10%.

        I pay about $1100 property tax on my $200-$225k house in Denver county. I remember my conservative Father in law, who lives in Centennial (one of Denver’s more conservative suburbs), being surprised at how low property taxes were. I know that Kendall County, Illinois (my wife’s hometown and the place Dennis Hastert represented in the House), has homes in the same range as mine but property taxes up to $5000 annually.

        We have it pretty good here. If you make that move to Wisconsin you may be in for a shock.

        1. my house is on the market for roughly 250K but I am not sure what my tax is as the only time I pay attention is at the end of the year……..

          That said I do know Wisconsin has a high property tax rate. Very high. BUT…

          My brother in law bought a brand new Harley last year and I bought one similar this year. His license plates cost him about $65.00. Mine cost about $1400.00. When he renews his plates it will cost him about $65.00. Mine will cost about $850.00 if I’m lucky.

          Same goes with all vehicles out there. So I’ll take the higher property taxes in lieu of the vehicle registration costs.

          And thank you for being civil to me. I’ll miss this place when I go. My wife is already out there and working so when my house sells I’ll follow.

          1. It’s a matter of give and take, I suppose. I have a problem with artificially low plate fees like that since tabs go toward road maintenance while property taxes go toward the general fund (someone correct me if I’m wrong, please). I find tying plate/tabs to vehicle value to be eminently fair, although the actual percentages can certainly be high. The fees basically collect from drivers to pay for roads, while I would bet that Wisconsin has to pay more for roads from the general fund, something that burdens those who don’t drive (a small but usually far from insignificant number of taxpayers).

            Yes, I want to be more civil, here and elsewhere. I can be a real asshole sometimes. Sorry.

            Remember, moving out of state doesn’t mean you can’t keep posting here. How long has parsing been in Florida now? Two years I think.

            1. I don’t know about Wisconsin, but in Colorado property taxes do not go to the General Fund. In fact, property taxes are a local tax, i.e. city/county, and typically go towards that municipality’s public schools.

              The general fund also does not pay for transportation. That is funded, as you said, by vehicle registration fees and the gas tax.

              Registration fees were much higher this year after the passage of FASTER last Spring.  

            1. thus driving up the cost of doing business here in CO and lowering the amount of jobs, manufacturing plants, inventories, etc… that  businesses want to place here in CO.

              The purported study is a joke, CO is #4 in business environment …. just like that Ritter ad his 527 was running 2 weeks ago.

          3. Our Gallagher Amendment causes these reported numbers to be lower than reality.  Tax foundation stats quoted here are for individual taxes — when I write a check to the tax man or when I pay sales tax or state gas tax…

            These stats do not include property and other taxes paid by businesses.

            While our residential property taxes are very low as discussed in above comments, the Gallagher amendment makes commercial taxes very high — currently about 3.6X the residential assessment rate.

            We should account for the fact that these commercial taxes are largely passed onto the consumers, but hidden in prices.  If i buy groceries or a shovel or hire a lawyer, some of the price I pay is really more property taxes.  This property tax I pay from my income does not show up in individual tax burden statistics.

            For states where commercial tax rates are vastly greater than residential, reported data is misleading.

            As an aside, the Gallagher Amendment is a horrible burden to CO businesses which want to sell things out of state — then they compete with businesses from states with reasonable property tax schemes and it is harder to pass along this tax as price.  Fixing this is a far more urgent need for the CO business environment than even education reform.  

            1. You have some very valid points. I wish I had the time to dig that type of thing and analyze it, but alas.

              My suspicion is that these rankings of tax rates aren’t going to change too much, regardless of which slice of the pie you look at. But, I could be wrong, too (Lord know it wouldn’t be the first time, just ask my wife.)

              1. And to compare state ranks, we’d have to do it for every state, adjust for cross state sales, throw in corporate income tax…

                But I think that the rankings could change very quickly.  A few hundred bucks moves CO up the rankings curve a lot.  Having not heard of others states with such an out of balance assessment,  I think it is likely CO could net few % in this calculation.

                I think this is very, very important when presenting state rank data.

                [Amusingly, everything I find from google about state assessment rates is an article pointing out haw bad it is in Colorado!]

            2. According to the state, we rank 38th in corporate income taxes.  They don’t break out corporate property taxes vs. individual…

              The state numbers place us 48th in overall tax burden, combining pretty much every tax and fee mechanism used in the state and at the local level.

              So your guess might be off – the Tax Foundations numbers paint us in better shape than the “complete” picture painted by the State.

    5. When I considered jobs elsewhere (before moving back to Boulder) one absolute essential for any location was strong K-12 schools. Lousy schools means anyone in high-tech with school age kids won’t move there.

      In addition, high tech companies are not looking for low tax havens, they’re looking for places with a critical mass of additional companies in their industry. Silicon Valley is in California and has some of the highest taxes in the nation – not driving businesses out.

    6. If TABOR didn’t exist, there could be a statutory increase in something like the sales tax rate of between 1% and 2%, which would sunset when the economic climate began to turn around. Such a small increase in the tax rate would be almost imperceptible to most consumers, but the benefits to the state’s budget would begin to be felt immediately. The painful cuts and band-aid budgets would be go away, and we could start working on getting the state on the right track.

      Because of TABOR, there are at least two things in the state constitution stopping this from happening: spending limits based on inflation and populations growth, and the fact that voters need to approve all tax increases in an election.

      Fluid tax rates are commonplace in other states, and would be an easy fix to the budget woes we’re facing now. Unfortunately, there is a political climate in this state that says the government can’t be trusted–even as people on the right as well as the left cry out for fewer cuts and more access to basic services.

      The status quo is simply unsustainable, but our legislators’ hands are being tied by that very same status quo. The fact that this catch-22 eludes people like John Caldera and his Independence Institute cronies is wholly unsurprising, but even though they miss the point entirely, they are the ones who continue to trumpet the idea that “TABOR has saved us.”

      1. We have the fiscal discipline – and more – already present in the state.  We have a balanced budget requirement and some pretty strong restrictions against “faking it”.

        If the Legislature and Governor were able to add tax revenue to the equation, they would find it easy to balance the budget with a full complement of options.  Sales tax changes produce immediate results.  Quarterly tax returns from businesses also provide rapid relief.  Yearly income and property taxes aren’t very responsive, but they’re even slower when you have to get voter approval first – two years isn’t exactly turning on a dime…

        1. Precisely. The hard-core TABOR supporters know full well that the ballot initiative process in this state is costly, and that having special elections to address problems like these is even more expensive. Their job is simple: berate Democrats who are trying to find new revenue sources for not “taking it to the taxpayers” and then when the election comes around, spend as much money as possible fighting the ballot initiative.

          If elections took place every week or two, then it wouldn’t be that bad of a plan. It would be expensive, but at least it would be a solution. Under the current system, you have to start moving on a tax increase, as you said, nearly two years before the election. For people who constantly complain about efficiency in government, they certainly support an extremely inefficient system for making it more efficient.

          1. Can you imagine what it would have cost (in dollars and  hours) to have this kind of collected writings even 30 years ago?

            I gotta believe we could do elections wayyyy cheaper.

            David?  

            1. We would have been passing out handbills on streetcorners.

              But we would still be getting our points out to the public.

              Nothing has changed except the technology.

              Hell, I’m not sure I would have even printed handbills.  I’d be a bag lady shouting at passers-by.  I still do that, sort of.

              1. You and I would still be involved – but people like the rest of my family would know a lot less. Google lets them learn a lot, very quickly, when it’s time to fill out their ballot.

                What’s really interesting about this is it’s no longer what the Denver Post or TV News decides to run. Nor is it what the politicians decide to push. It’s what Google brings up in the first page of organic search results.

                The elimination of gatekeepers to what is presented to voters is a gigantic change. And we’re just seeing the begining of it.

    7. The bottom line with all this is that the State itself needs revenue through taxation.

      The people (those of us who don’t have cushy government or lobbying gigs and have to make pastries all day and can’t unionize), want (and need) jobs, wages that aren’t stagnant, unions to represent worker rights, health care that doesn’t make you choose between rent or getting a need met, and freedom to start new business ventures.

      You have to give a damn in order to take action.

      Things may be taking place behind the scenes, but the fruit isn’t falling from the trees yet, either.

      Denver needs jobs, plain and simple. What is Ritter doing, what is Hick doing, to create jobs? They’re cutting anything that moves, (and you can talk about the horrible moral toll it takes on our deeply-caring officials until Sarah Palin grows a brain) but it digs the hole we’re in even deeper. More cuts, more people trying to get unemployment and losing their homes, NOT generating revenue for the State.

      Creating jobs takes talking to small business owners, meeting with commissions to get input and take action, daring to step out from behind the “center” lobbyist-love-land of inaction. It takes what so many just don’t have, empathy for working people and the will.

      All the attempts at clever witticisms and people defending their employers or saying there is no problem or blowing me off because I’m just a lowly pastry chef, don’t do jack to solve anything–if that’s even a priority.

      1. Is look to local companies for their needs. I talked to a company today that has a system that they think could save the state 50m/year and would replace a multi-national.

        So the state saves money, the jobs move to residents of this state, what’s not to like? Well apparently something as the state won’t even listen to their proposal.

        1. There’s little will to do the work that to so many affluent elected officials is simply unnecessary. We can wait. Things will turn around eventually, so what’s the rush. We can swing in the wind while they attend swanky parties and thumb their noses at us. If this keeps up and Obama keeps smiling and waving and  letting Geitner pad their retirement funds, ignoring the middle-class crush, it’s gonna be ugly in 2010 for Dems. We’ll see.  

        2. Can you share some of their information, and maybe we can learn more about what they’re doing, even if Ritter/Hick are playing golf while unemployment continues to rise?

    Leave a Comment

    Recent Comments


    Posts about

    Donald Trump
    SEE MORE

    Posts about

    Rep. Lauren Boebert
    SEE MORE

    Posts about

    Rep. Gabe Evans
    SEE MORE

    Posts about

    Colorado House
    SEE MORE

    Posts about

    Colorado Senate
    SEE MORE

    112 readers online now

    Newsletter

    Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!