Colorado education community braces for deep cuts in state funding
By Tim Hoover
The Denver Post
POSTED: 02/13/2011 01:00:00 AM MST
UPDATED: 02/13/2011 03:56:00 PM MST
On Friday, Feb. 11, 2011, Clayton Early Learning preschoolers deliver political advice to Governor Hickenlooper in a book they made for him titled "If I Were Governor." (Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)
School districts and public colleges are bracing for what are expected to be deep cuts in K-12 and higher education to be announced Tuesday as Gov. John Hickenlooper unveils his first set of budget recommendations.
Hickenlooper, a Democrat, will outline his recommendations for the 2011-12 budget at a meeting of the legislature's Joint Budget Committee on Tuesday. The new governor's recommendations are essentially revisions to the spending plan first proposed by then-Gov. Bill Ritter, also a Democrat, in November.
A downward revision is likely, given a December revenue forecast that showed sluggish state revenues and the fact that Hickenlooper's administration wants to hold a higher portion of the state's general fund in reserve than Ritter's office did.
Multiple sources in the education community expect as much as a $400 million net reduction for K-12 education, which would be the largest single cut to public schools since the start of the recession. K-12 education took a $260 million cut — a 6 percent net reduction — in the current 2010-11 budget year that ends in June.
Henry Sobanet, Hickenlooper's budget director, said he could not discuss the details of the governor's budget revisions yet, saying only: "We have a billion-dollar issue, and next week begins the process of handling it."
The state faces at least a $1.1 billion shortfall in the 2011-12 budget year. In the spending plan Ritter recommended in November, he proposed a $43 million, or 0.8 percent, net increase for public schools for 2011-12.
That was a relatively meager increase for schools compared with what they've received over the past decade but still an improvement over the $260 million cut in the current year.
Now, even that small bit of light isn't coming, education officials say.
"We're bracing for what could be a cut that's equal to or greater than what we experienced this year," said Bruce Caughey, executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives.
"At a minimum, there will be significant layoffs, and many people will lose their jobs as a result of the cut of the magnitude that's being discussed," Caughey said.
Savings unlikely elsewhere
Ritter's 2011-12 budget had proposed keeping state spending for higher education at the current year level of $555 million, but sources at the Capitol said Hickenlooper may propose a cut to higher education of around $50 million.
K-12 and higher education are expected to bear the brunt of any cuts Hickenlooper proposes for a few simple reasons. First, it is difficult to find big savings in other departments because 97 percent of the state's general fund is devoted to just five areas of the budget: K-12 education, health care for the poor, human services, prisons and higher education.
All other state departments account for only a few hundred million in spending from the state's roughly $7 billion general-fund expenditures.
K-12 education, with $3.2 billion in general-fund support, represents nearly 46 percent of the state's general-fund spending, the largest single expenditure. While K-12 funding traditionally had been viewed as protected by the state's Amendment 23 mandate for increased annual spending on schools, Ritter's office last year believed it had found a way to cut K-12 funding without violating the constitution.
That legal doctrine led to the $260 million cut.
"Everybody . . . scared"
Meanwhile, higher education has never had any such constitutional protection, so it has been vulnerable to continual cuts.
Prisons are governed by federal mandates on staffing and care for inmates, and lawmakers are loath to cut staffing to the point of threatening public safety.
Health care for the poor, primarily spending on Medicaid and the state's CHP+ plan for kids and pregnant women, is also governed by many federal mandates on how much can be cut. Also, the programs are heavily matched by federal funds, so cutting state spending even where it can be reduced means a corresponding loss in federal funds.
Finally, lawmakers and state officials generally have not touched human-services funding because they believe it aids the "most vulnerable" populations of people — such as the severely disabled — who cannot fend for themselves.
None of this is to say that Hickenlooper's budget recommendations won't touch areas of government besides K-12 and higher education. But the bulk of the cuts are expected to fall hardest on education.
Hickenlooper's office on Thursday gave a general briefing about the budget recommendations to lobbyists and other stakeholders for education groups and institutions.
The news was unsettling.
"Everybody in the room was scared," said one education lobbyist. "They (Hickenlooper's office) said you need to go back to your clients and say the cuts are going to be bad."
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
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