By Mark Larson
State Representative

The sine die gavel fell on the 62nd General Assembly at 11:56 p.m. Wednesday, May 3. A scant 4 minutes remained in the legally allotted 120-day session. While it sounds very close, much of the day was spent honoring term limited legislators, Speaker of the House Russell George, R-Rifle, and all of the excellent staff that make this system work. Accolades, praises, and pomp consummated, the question repeated by all was, "What did we accomplish this session?"

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Education was the highlight of the session. More contentious than guns, growth and even oil and gas, education was the premier issue. I voted for SB 186 because I saw it as a change to the status quo that was rendering unfavorable results. I never thought it to be teacher bashing. Rather, I saw the bill as an attempt to raise the standard, address the causes for unsatisfactory results, rally the necessary resources to address the problem and recognize that this is just the first step toward comprehensive reform. SB 186 is not a panacea, it is a start.

Comprehensive reform requires appropriating the necessary funding to support such change. For the second year running, education was fully funded at more than inflation and growth. When the initial numbers came out less than desired, the entire legislative focus centered around increasing the funding. The end result was a 7.9 percent increase in total K-12 Department of Education funding. This included the teacher development program, an increase for the Safe Schools Initiative to enhance the Expelled Student program, Read to Achieve, a tremendous last minute increase for special education, and the expanded Student Assessment Program (CSAP) testing. The key here is to work together to correct those components not right with SB 186 and enhance those things that are. New numbers: Colorado is now 37th in education spending as a percentage of personal income (was 49th, the number everyone knew), 8th in pupil-to-teacher ratio, 26th in per-capita spending for public education, 47th in total taxes paid by Colorado citizens.

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Transportation continues to perplex and challenge the legislature. Every attempt to increase funding to help reduce the $13 billion — yes, with a "b" — shortfall was sidelined by education or the fear of long term increased appropriation steps. Many citizens don't realize that the recently passed TRANS Initiative was only for spending on the Seventh Pot projects (or Corridor projects). Executive Director Norton has been fighting for capital development dollars to be spent on highways. We fended him off three times in the Capital Development Committee only to have the governor move the much needed "emergency'’ repairs and maintenance projects to the budget. The squeeze for highways to compete with higher education, prisons, state buildings and the badly needed State Mental Hospital will heighten next year.

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I was saddened to watch the many growth bills be defeated one by one. The only successful growth bill creates the Office of Smart Growth in the Governor’s office. The failure of the legislature to adequately address the growth issue has resulted in no less than four growth initiatives being promulgated. They include initiatives to regulate future areas of development, reallocate GOCO money to open space, placing limits on construction on new housing and limiting new development. Term limits will help with some of the legislatures failures to address growth. The voters will do the rest and what we get may not be what we wanted. Everyone has an opinion on growth and that is what stymied the General Assembly.

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Other areas important to Southwestern Colorado include tax reductions in income taxes and sales tax. There were so many tax bills this year it literally took us to the last day to work out which taxes would pass and what the impacts of those tax cuts would have on other functions of the budget. Permanent tax cuts totaled $212 million with the remaining $150 million or so being temporary cuts for agriculture, business personal property, child care, etc.

Gun show checks will be left to the voters by initiative. Tobacco money will be channeled largely to children’s health and education programs. Powerball (if approved) will help repair crumbling schools. Our tax structure still needs reform. There will be a whole lot of new faces in the legislature next year.

All of the above and more will be discussed at soon to be held town hall meetings. Please take the time to attend. And, if you can't, please let me know if there is anything I can explain, research or work to change.