Think you can cut Colorado’s budget? Give it a try online
| September 2, 2009 | 3:34 PM
More journal entries from Cindy House »
In the face of declining revenue and looming deficits, Colorado’s elected officials have been scrambling this year to find ways to cut the state’s budget. As one would expect, tough decisions have to be made, such as Gov. Bill Ritter’s plan to pull funding from holiday DUI enforcement to help ease the shortfall.
Think you can do better? Give it a try with Colorado State University’s Backseat Budgeter, which was created by the Bighorn Leadership Development Program.
You’ll start with a substantial deficit and can adjust spending and revenue in a variety of categories, including health care and higher education. Your goal is to balance the budget without violating the state constitution.
Each category comes with several predetermined options that you can select, including staying with the status quo. I found this feature a little frustrating, since I’d prefer not to be locked in to specific percentages of cuts and tax hikes. But, for the sake of ease of calculation, I can understand why they developed it this way.
I started by reducing the Human Services budget by $35 million, reducing funding for early childhood education (preschool and full-day kindergarten) by $75 million and reducing re-entry of parole violators into the corrections system by 15 percent, for a savings of $30 million. That still leaves me with a deficit of $600 million. Yikes!
Let’s take a look at revenue. We’ll start by assuming that individual and corporate income tax hikes are off the table since there is a pretty low likelihood they’d be approved by voters, as per TABOR. So, we’ll raise insurance premium taxes by 10 percent ($19 million), raise taxes on tobacco and liquor by $142 million, and temporarily eliminate “certain tax exemptions” for a $160 million gain. These exemptions, though, are not going to be wildly popular, as they include property taxes for senior citizens and cigarette sales taxes — on top of the tobacco hike I just imposed.
Even with all that, I still have a deficit of $300 million. And, drat, I’ve triggered a Constitutional Warning. Looks like I’ve got to ask voters to approve the tax hikes on tobacco and liquor. I’m sure that’ll go over well.
Give the Backseat Budgeter a try yourself, and post a comment below with your results.
backseat budgeter, bill ritter, colorado state budget, colorado state university, deficit
