Facing $1 billion budget gap, Colorado House leader says state may need TABOR reform
Speaker Julie McCluskie invokes Referendum C, successful 2005 measure that reset spending limit
RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post
As Colorado’s budget faces a $1 billion gap for the upcoming fiscal year and with no end to the deficit in sight, now may be the time to reset the state’s spending cap, Speaker Julie McCluskie said Tuesday.
The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, restricts growth in state spending using a formula based on population growth and inflation. However, spending has outpaced the constitutional spending cap, particularly as mandatory costs — chiefly Medicaid — have skyrocketed past earlier projections.
McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat and one of the most influential voices in the state, said the cap doesn’t reflect the higher rates of inflation in areas where the state spends the most, such as education and health care. Those costlier obligations, in effect, eat away at the state’s ability to pay for other things because it’s all competing for the same TABOR-restricted pot of money.
Meanwhile, the flood of pandemic-era stimulus money, which kept the state flush the past few years, has dried up. Inflation and population growth have slowed. That has left state lawmakers grappling with a $1 billion shortfall in the $16 billion general fund for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
And it has nonpartisan budget analysts warning in bolded letters in a recent memo: “The budget appears to be on an unsustainable path.”
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