More Proof You Can’t Trust Republicans with Your Money…
(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at: www.DemNotes.com)
I’ll write about the last bit of our county chair summit weekend below, but I can’t let this story in today’s Post go un-noticed.
As many of you have heard, the Colorado Legislature and the Governor are working on ways to ensure that local school districts can avoid automatic tax cuts, especially when the voters of all but three of Colorado’s school districts have lifted TABOR limits. Through a quirk in the law, even though the voters have said in these districts that schools deserve priority in funding, revenue from local taxes continues to decrease.
It’s a common-sense proposal to eliminate a loophole in the law. But Dick Wadhams sees blood, and an election issue, so our children pay the price for his games.
This is such a common-sense proposal that even the Republicans in the Legislature thought so in 2004. Even uber-right-winger John Andrews supported the idea.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Four current State Senators supported the idea. Sens. Johnson, Kester, May and Taylor all happily voted for the idea then. But times have changed, and the re-taking the majority is more important now to the GOP than good public policy. I’ll let the Denver Post set the stage for the official line of the Republican Party on this flip-flop:
In 2004, Sens. Johnson, Ken Kester of Las Animas, Ron May of Colorado Springs and Jack Taylor of Steamboat Springs voted for a school finance act that included a similar provision. All were no votes Tuesday.
Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, dismissed those concerns.
“The worst they can be accused of is that they voted for a bill they didn’t understand,” he said.
That’s right: he just called four members of his caucus too slow to understand an education finance measure. (Caveat: I ran against Sen. Kester in 2002; he kicked my butt. Needless to say, I don’t share the Minority Leader’s sentiment that Sen. Kester is too dim-witted to understand things.)
We elect people to serve in the Legislature to make hard decisions and to deal with complicated issues like school finance. If even the leader of the Republican Party doesn’t have faith in the abilities of his own members to do those things, what does that say about the Republican Party? Howard Dean has it right: The Republicans have proven that you can’t trust them with your money! Fiscal responsibility? That’s been left to the sole purview of the Democrats.
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Sunday afternoon, the State Executive Committee met in Georgetown. We adopted some changes to the 2007 budget; more important, we adopted the 2008 Delegate Selection Plan.
There was a lot of debate on a few issues. It seems like every time we adopt a Delegate Selection Plan (every 4 years), we have a debate about some of the “goals” for delegate diversity. In this case, there was a debate about the goals for delegates with disabilities. A motion to increase the goal for the number of delegates with disabilities by 700% failed, but there was a fair and decent discussion about what the goals mean and how important it was to meet — and exceed — those goals. In 2004, Colorado sent the most diverse delegation in the Nation to the National Convention, and we hope to repeat that feat in 2008.
In addition to diversity, we tweaked a few numbers and typos in the Plan — the Plan was approved overwhelmingly.
The Delegate Selection Plan is, as of yesterday, in the hands of the DNC. The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will go through it with a fine-toothed comb and tell us what changes we need to make to the Plan. However, it is likely that the main substance of the Plan will stay the same. I understand that the Delegate Selection Plan, as submitted to the DNC, will soon be available online at the State Party website:
http://www.coloradodems.org