Budget cuts unfairly target mining areas

When Gov. Bill Ritter announced his 2010 budget cuts Aug. 23, the big news was his $9 million draw from a cash fund established for medical marijuana. But behind that headline was a bigger story: ongoing neglect of Colorado's resources and the communities near them.

Ritter made the cuts because Colorado faces a $60 million budget shortfall for the current year.

Most of the cuts come from grants for local communities—$15 million intended for communities affected by gas and oil drilling and $11.4 million for those affected by mineral mining. Another $9.4 million, meant for a higher education fund, was generated by mineral leases, according to Tim Hoover in an Aug. 24 Denver Post story.

Colorado is filling budget holes by taking money meant for the northern and western parts of the state. Ritter said in a statement that the cuts represent "shared sacrifices and shared solutions from everyone." But more than half of his cuts directly affect only mining communities.

Ritter is quoted in the Post article saying this is part of "a healthy and sustainable recovery." There's nothing sustainable about keeping money from towns that need it to recover from oil or mineral drilling. We're already too dependent on oil. The least we could do is help those communities prepare for the day we aren't using it any more.

But what can Ritter do? It's not within his power to raise taxes—and with Colorado's ludicrously restrictive TABOR Amendment, it's not really within anybody's power. State revenues are difficult to raise, so state spending has to go down. And down. And down.

The result is annual budgets that chop away at state funds. Ritter will save about $5 million by not filling some state jobs. After that, almost all the money is being drawn from various funds the state has established. Budget shortfalls are slowly sucking the state dry.

Ritter can claim he's preserving "essential services," and he can call the budget cuts "surgical," but writing budgets with TABOR is like doing surgery without transfusions. At some point, you've done so much surgery you're cutting up a corpse.

With the next gubernatorial election only two months away, candidates John Hickenlooper, Dan Maes, and Tom Tancredo will likely be carefully explaining their visions for Colorado's future budgets. Voters should take note. Considering our state's tight restrictions, candidates' abilities to deal with budget shortfalls will be tested often.