Today I sat down with Jeffrey Roberts the author of the article I referenced in my last post about the Colorado state budget crisis (or as Roberts would like it to be known, the impending tsunami). Roberts is a part of the Center for Colorado’s Economic Future at DU.
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Roberts primarily stressed what the report laid out; because of the many entangling constitutional amendments and laws, we as a state have committed ourselves to ever increasing funding whilst simultaneously limiting the amount of revenue we can take in (spending is dramatically outpacing income).
The report as filled didn’t delve into scrupulousness information on corrections, which is according to the report one of the top three sources of costs coming from the General Fund.
When asked about the impact of corrections, and ever rising incarceration rates, Roberts responded with a surprising answer (I think to both of us). According to the most recent Legislative Council projections, the rate at which incarcerations are increasing has slowed down. The opposite of what I had expected. While this report was filled before the economic downturn has taken full effect, it is nonetheless shocking .
Roberts “was a little surprised to see that they have cut their growth rate projection” but it is “still costly, and that’s something they [legislators] have been dealing with”.
When asked about the effect that cessation of the rhetoric of the “war on drugs” has had, and thus a hopefully fundamental shift in the way in which we deal with drugs in America, Roberts was vague. “I can’t really speak to that, and I don’t know that we would see any of that quite yet anyway.”.
One of the most striking sentiments expressed was Robert’s thoughts on the rising costs of education in relation to the budget crisis.
When asked about TABOR Roberts of course stayed away from partisanship, “our center is a non-partisan center, we don’t really advocate for or against [policy]”.
Interestingly I tried to clarify thoughts on education spending (Amendment 23) and the effect TABOR has on this; I asked “would you characterize this as more of a broken revenue system instead of an education funding problem” to which Roberts responded “Overall I think its kind of a broken revenue system.” Do with that what you will.
When filled, the report stated in reference to fiscal year 2010-2011 “that’s when people are expected to start dropping off the Medicaid rolls”. Was this meant to be due to the economy picking up and thus naturally individuals no longer being eligible for Medicaid, or rather the situation become so dire that legislation would pass changing eligibility requirements forcing constituents off Medicaid. Clearly one answer is far more politically pungent than the latter.
Roberts said the referenced phrase was meant to refer to the natural effects of recovering from an economic downturn.
When asked to clarify that he didn’t mean policy change, Roberts stated “now they may get to the point where they do have to change eligibility”.
Clearly this is immediately sobering as “that’s not a popular thing to do”.
Of course all of this talk of Medicaid is really up to the Federal Government and the health care reform that is currently working its way through Congress.
Roberts had reserved opinions on the state’s Fiscal Stability Commission, which has been tasked with providing insight and solutions to the budget crisis.
“Whether they have the time or the resources to really do something, to really do something really comprehensive, to step back and to study this, and also take into account our local government system, I don’t think they are really doing that.”
According to Roberts, perhaps the greatest flaw in the Commissions current actions has to do with a lack of reporting on local governments, which is where a lot of taxes are collected, and an absence of a non-partisan comprehensive look at the states revenue system; an audit.
“We have recommended something more comprehensive, something that tries to take the partisanship out of it… We don’t think the partisan elements need to get involved.”
My partisan thoughts on how to fix the problem are to come in a later post.
Transcript of the full interview and a crapy recording after the break.
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Full Roberts Interview on his Paper and Colorado's Budget Tsunami:
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