“Gov. Bill Ritter and lawmakers Wednesday unveiled a deal to remove a key restraint on future state budgets…”

That “key restraint”, otherwise known as the Arveshoug-Bird provision, limits growth in the state’s general fund to 6% per year.  Any funds collected in excess of that limit are allocated to transportation and other construction or maintenance needs.  Arveschoug-Bird is statutory law - CRS 24-75-201.1(a)(II) through (VII) - which would normally leave it open to modification or outright revocation by the legislature (which clearly doesn’t like limits on its ability to spend, spend, spend).  Ritter, also no fan of spending restraint, welcomed the deal to eliminate “restrictive fiscal handcuffs” on the state budget.

HOWEVER - the passage of TABOR (the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights) in 1992 “constitutionalized” existing spending limits (including Arveschoug-Bird), explicitly incorporating them into the state constitution:

Article X, Section 20(1) of the Colorado Constitution explicitly states that  “Other limits on district revenue, spending, and debt may be weakened only by future voter approval” and “Its preferred interpretation shall reasonably restrain most the growth of government.”  This directive is clear: weakening spending limits must be submitted to a vote of the people.

Despite recent attempts led by notoriously partisan ex-justice Jean Dubofsky to take a “new look” at the Arveschoug-Bird limits (with the attempt of undermining or circumventing the clear letter of the law), the “constitutionalization” of the limit under TABOR has been a long-established legal interpretation.  In fact, a November 2004 Memorandum from the General Assembly’s own non-partisan Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS) laid out the “general rules” for interpreting the application of Arveschoug-Bird and incorporation under TABOR, and found that it IS a limit on spending:

Question #9.  Is the Arveschoug-Bird limit a limit “on district revenue, spending, [or] debt” which is referred to in [TABOR]?

Answer: Technically, the Arveschoug-Bird limit is a limit on increases in general fund appropriations, not on revenue or spending. However, a court would probably conclude that, for purposes of [TABOR], the Arveschoug-Bird limit is a limit on spending for the following reasons:

- Spending and appropriations are closely related concepts. Agencies normally cannot make expenditures unless they have an appropriation, and placing limits on appropriations indirectly limits spending.

- The General Assembly defined “expenditure” in S.B. 93-74 as “the appropriation or disbursement of any state general fund or cash fund moneys for any expense incurred by the state”. Section 24-77-102 (4), C.R.S.

- The proponent of [TABOR] stated, prior to the 1992 election, that the statutory 7% limit then in effect was the kind of limit that could not be weakened except with voter approval.

- Courts will construe constitutional language to give it a natural and obvious significance, as opposed to a narrow, literal, or technical meaning.

Question 10. Would a modification of the Arveschoug-Bird limit “weaken” the limit, thus requiring submission to the voters?

Yes. The plain meaning of the verb “to weaken” is to lessen the strength of something, or to reduce it in intensity or effectiveness. Therefore, while we have certainly not foreseen all the possible ways of modifying the Arveschoug-Bird limit, an amendment to Arveschoug-Bird which permits greater expenditures of funds than would have been allowed under the current limit appears to weaken the limit.

“Supporters and opponents of the deal announced Wednesday all agree on one thing: The bill is likely to end up in court.”

Gov. Bill Ritter and his accomplices in the legislature (including Don Marostica, R-Loveland) are trying to pull a fast one on the citizens of Colorado, flouting their duty to the people and to the people’s law, the Colorado Constitution.  Ritter, Marostica, and their ilk are clearly counting on the current majority on the Colorado Supreme Court  to back their play, as they did by upholding Ritter’s Mill Levy Tax Freeze. 

For them, “the end justifies the means, and that the supporters are placing more faith in the Colorado Supreme Court to ignore constitutional mandates than they are placing in the voters to make their own decisions. The recent mill-levy decision by the court indicates that such faith may indeed be well placed.

Don’t allow this court to continue to be accomplices after the fact in taking away more of your rights.  Vote “NO” on retaining the 4 unjust justices - Mullarkey, Bender, Martinez, and Rice - in power in 2010.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,