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February 11, 2010 06:29 PM UTC

Connecting the Dots

  • 22 Comments
  • by: colorado76

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

In today’s Denver Post, we see one of the stories that has received a lot of attention from the political class moving toward its completion:

The Colorado Senate narrowly passed bills taxing candy and soda and energy used in manufacturing despite fears that the taxes could cause layoffs.

Evraz Rocky Mountain Steel in Pueblo, the state’s largest energy user aside from utilities, said it may have to cut 30 to 120 jobs because of the energy tax.

That hike passed by a vote of 18-16 Wednesday.

. . .

Republicans wanted the governor to cut more from the budget instead – $17.8 million from the rest of this budget year and $306.5 million from next year.

What this article doesn’t tell you, is what exactly those additional $300 million in cuts look like.  For that, we have to turn the page:

From the same Denver Post, we see just what cutting the budget means in our communities:

School districts girding for draconian cuts in state funding are sending out surveys to parents, querying staff and asking community members to help figure out where to cut and how deeply.

Colorado districts have not yet finalized their 2010-11 budgets, which are being pared to close a state funding gap of at least $260 million.

But they have begun to indicate dramatic cuts are approaching – fewer teachers, reduced class offerings and larger class sizes.

Some districts are mulling eliminating middle school sports, making families pay for children to ride the bus or reducing high school credit requirements.

. . . .

“This isn’t going to be shaving here or there,” said Briggs Gamblin, spokesman for Boulder Valley schools. “There are going to be significant cuts all through the district – every operational level and into every school.”

. . . .  

“There is nothing good here,” Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said.

For most districts, large cuts will translate into layoffs, furloughs or pay reductions.

“For us, 83 percent is salary and benefits,” Aurora Superintendent John Barry said. “This is the worst fiscal crisis that Aurora Public Schools has faced in modern memory. The cuts will be evident. We are trying to stay away from the classroom as much as we possibly can.”

. . . .

“Each school will decide on their priorities, based on the particular student needs,” Superintendent Tom Boasberg said. “Some schools, it will be an issue of a class size. Some schools it may be an issue of an interventionist for a struggling learner.”

The article concludes with a chart showing the ten major school districts in the state and the cuts required of each, all over $10 million.

And that’s the situation right now.  That’s the situation without any additional cuts.  The truth is, the time for talking about “cutting government spending” in the abstract is over.  The budget decisions being made now are about to hit Colorado families very, very hard.  If Senator Penry and Senate Republicans look at this situation and think that even higher class sizes are better than ending the tax exemptions, they are certainly entitled to hold that view.  But to continue to act as if more large cuts can be made to the budget without doing real damage to our communities is a pure dereliction of duty as public officials.  The problems are real, and if you continue to convince others to ignore them as you ignore them yourself, you are simply not fit to lead.

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22 thoughts on “Connecting the Dots”

  2. I think I get it:

    Job at candy factory: must be protected at all costs, even at the expense of public schools

    Job as public school teacher: big gov’t bloat that must be cut

  3. Ed Sealover, Denver Business Journal reporter, said on “Colorado Inside Out” that eliminating tax exemptions for businesses would cost the state 15,000 jobs.

    Hmm.  My study concludes that 34,300 jobs will be lost if we cut our education system, instead.  Wait, I forgot to carry a zero.  I mean that 66,247 jobs will be lost.

    The point is that quantifying the number of lost jobs because we eliminate a special interest tax break is bogus.  But, this is politics.  So, a study only slightly more detailed than mine should be done to point out that businesses will leave the state, or won’t come in the first place, because we rank about 49th in funding our K – college education system.

    1. …but I wonder what the average salary is at a candy factory (I thought Jolly Rancher was long gone) vs. a teacher or administrator.

      All these tax breaks are a perfect example of “What a wicked web we weave….”

      1. Soda and candy have gone up in price how much in the past couple of years?  Has it hurt sales?

        And do we care, when all of the major candy manufacturers are out-of-state?

        On the other hand, having the tax revenue will save state budget cuts that would cost jobs.  No-brainer to me.

  4. I’m no union basher. At some point in a bad economy, though, teachers have to buck up, and, like people in private business, accept some kind of across-the-board cuts. Better for everyone to take a 5 percent pay haircut than to dramatically increase class sizes.

    1. …but shouldn’t those making, oh, $100K or close take a bigger hit than the $28K first year teacher?  

      The teacher’s union in just-to-the-north Manatee county wasn’t willing to take a 1% cut, telling the school board to cut bus driver’s salaries instead.

      As the son of a teacher, and an ex-teacher, my reaction was, “Fuck you!”

      1. If anyone should be taking a pay cut, it should be administration and school board members before barely above the poverty line public school teachers.

          1. State school board members serve 6-year unpaid terms. If JeffCO’s board members are unpaid, it would stand to reason that the other districts’ board members are also unpaid. I couldn’t find the information on individual districts’ board members though.

            My point wasn’t so much that people need a salary cut, but that it should come from administrators’ pockets rather than teachers who are barely making ends meet as it is.

            1. But I wanted to make sure that credit was given where credit is due. There’s already a terribly exaggerated and robust meme infecting our cultural “meme-pool” which equates holding positions of responsibility and authority with self-serving elitism. People on the (Jeffco) school board, including those I disagree with, are there because they are committed to advancing the general welfare, as they see it. And they deserve to be appreciated rather than villified (again, RSB, I’m not accusing you of villifying them). And I think this is more true in general, even in more prestigious and better renumerated positions, than we often recognize.

              1. And it’s a good one. But if these cuts are going to come, I have a lot more sympathy for the teachers–whose only hope for not being totally screwed over is a fairly inept union–than I do for the bureaucrats.  

              2. Here in FL, almost all school board members receive some sort of compensation. It’s a perpetual source of foaming mouth syndrome among the conservatives who see such things as a waste of tax monies.

                Of course, none of them are stepping up to the plate and taking what is essentially a FT job for nothing.  Or giving the stipend back if they are serving.

    2. Paltry teacher salaries aside, do you have any reason to believe a five percent salary cut would solve the problem? Or have an idea of what to do with those who can’t afford to take that type of cut and pay their bills?

      Again, the fantasy that there’s a way to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from education without affecting the quality of education is just that, a fantasy.  The time has come for responsibility to replace rationalization.

      1. Let’s try it this way: No matter what you think of your kid’s school this year, it will be worse next year. Colorado is looking at $500 per student cuts in K-12 education next year. That’s a cut of $15,000 per classroom. You can’t save that kind of money by just lopping administration.

        In lousy economic times, everybody bucks up. Would you rather be a teacher who got a regular cost of living raise, but had class size go up 25%, or would you rather be a teacher who gave up a COLA, or even took a cut, to keep classroom size roughly the same?

        I know which way parents would answer.

        1. I don’t think there are many teachers who can pay their bills taking a $15,000 pay cut either, but you are right in that the point is no matter what its going to be bad, there is no way to make it good with the money available.

          Which goes back to my original point, that nonchalantly “solving” problems by calling for another $300 million in unspecified cuts without paying any attention to the consequences is truly irresponsible.

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