Toxic Twins Part 2: TABOR Caused Sharp Declines in Health Care Funding

Our latest report, co-authored with the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, details TABOR’s impact on education, communities, health, and transportation infrastructure. This post highlights some of our findings regarding TABOR’s disastrous effects on public health programs in Colorado.

In Colorado, TABOR greatly compromised a critical part of the public safety net – health care services. From 1992 to 2005, TABOR-induced shortfalls forced deep cuts in health care services throughout Colorado. The result:

• Between 1992 and 2004, the share of lower income children with no health insurance doubled from 16 to 32 percent, making Colorado the worst in the nation by this measure.
  


• In 2002, the state could no longer afford basic vaccines and had to suspend the requirement that all students be vaccinated against common diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough.
  


• In 2003, budget restrictions forced the state to temporarily stop the enrollment of children in the children’s health program and suspend the prenatal program.

TABOR had numerous adverse effects on health care and other public services in Colorado. For more detail, please click here to view the entire report.

Editor’s note: This post is the second in a series about the sharp declines in Colorado’s core public services that occurred as a result of the TABOR amendment. There will be two future posts: The next post will cover TABOR’s effects on transportation infrastructure; the final post will discuss economic growth in Colorado during the period in which TABOR was active.

Toxic Twins: I-1033 Mirrors Colorado's Corrosive TABOR

To understand how Tim Eyman’s I-1033 would undermine public investments and our economic recovery in Washington, look no further than Colorado. Our new report, co-authored with the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute finds that Colorado's TABOR amendment greatly undermined that state's capacity to maintain core public services such as education and health care. Initiative 1033, which will appear on the ballot in Washington State this November, possesses the same fundamental characteristics as TABOR and would have a similar impact on Washington.

Editor's note: This post is the first in a series about TABOR's impact on services and public priorities in Colorado. Future posts in this series will detail TABOR's impact on other crucial services -- including health care and transportation infrastructure. The final post in this series will discuss economic growth in Colorado while TABOR was in effect.

To view the full report click here.

TABOR's Impact on Education and Opportunity

Under TABOR, funding on K-12 and higher education declined substantially, leading to harmful budget cuts throughout the education system. As a result:

• The state fell from 35th to 49th in the nation in spending on K-12 education as a share of personal income.


• Average teacher’s salaries fell from 30th to 50th in the nation compared to pay in other occupations.


• Higher education spending per resident student declined by 31 percent after adjusting for inflation, from $5,188 to $3,564.

The shortfalls created by TABOR adversely impacted Colorado’s education system in numerous other ways. For more information on how TABOR led to steep declines in education funding throughout Colorado, view the entire report by clicking here.

Budget & Policy Center Launches Facebook Page

The Washington State Budget & Policy Center is pleased to announce the launch of our new Facebook page. Please become a fan and stay apprised of our latest media work, public appearances, policy briefs, and blog posts. We hope you will join us and share our work with your colleagues and friends!

Senate Climate Bill Should Redirect Resources from Business to Consumers

The federal government is working to pass climate legislation that would combat global warming by reducing the nation’s emissions of greenhouse gases. One impact of the proposals to cap emissions would be an increase in the cost of fossil fuel energy and energy-related goods. Low and moderate income consumers would be hit harder by these increased costs because they spend a bigger share of their income on necessities like energy than wealthier households do.

The House bill, which passed in June, sets aside 15 percent of the value of emissions allowances (the permits that allow companies to pollute) to provide financial relief to low-income consumers through an energy refund. Here in Washington State, there are 1.2 million people living below 150 percent of poverty* who could potentially benefit from the energy refund.

However, CBO has found that over 60 percent of the relief the bill would distribute through utilities would go to businesses, rather than individual households. Businesses would likely retain this relief as added profit benefiting high income owners and shareholders rather than pass it on to consumers in the form of lower prices for their products. Thus the graph below shows that the House bill would benefit higher income households, as a percentage of income, more than those in the middle.



According to this paper by the DC-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Senate bill which has yet to be voted on, should build on the House approach by adopting the consumer provisions and redirecting resources provided through utility companies for their business and industrial customers instead to moderate income households.

*Calculated from American Fact Finder ACS 2007 table B17002

Budget & Policy Center Urges Cantwell To Offset Consumer Costs in Climate Bill

Yesterday, the Budget & Policy Center’s Communication and External Relations Director Aiko Schaefer joined members of the environmental, business, labor and faith communities in a meeting with Senator Maria Cantwell to convey the urgency of passing climate change legislation this year.

The Budget & Policy Center has been working with a broad group of stakeholders to ensure that climate legislation serves to control greenhouse gas emissions and develop renewable energy technologies while also offsetting any increased energy costs to consumers.

In addition to discussing the concerns of consumers in climate change policy with the senator, Aiko also delivered this letter, signed by many of our partners, highlighting the importance of mitigating the impact of any legislation on low and moderate income households.

Stay tuned for more updates and analysis as the climate change debate in DC continues.

UPDATE: Official State Analysis Shows High Cost of I-1033

Initiative 1033 would negatively impact the ability of the state, counties, and cities to fund public priorities such as education, economic security, health care, and community development. This would come at a time when Washington is struggling to recover from a severe recession.

A new analysis by the Office of Financial Management estimates the fiscal impact of the initiative on the state, counties, and cities for calendar years 2010 through 2015 (shown in the graphs below). The results emphasize the fact that the impacts of I-1033 will compound from year to year.

At the state level, the cumulative impact is expected to be nearly $6 billion over the six years:



Counties stand to lose a total of $694 million in capacity to support essential public services by 2015:



Cities stand to lose $2.1 billion cumulatively:

BPC Report Shows I-1033 Undermines Public Priorities

A new paper by the Budget & Policy Center finds Initiative 1033 would impose strict spending limits on state and local governments resulting in sharp reductions in public investments in education, community development, health care, and economic security. By restricting resources, I-1033 would dramatically weaken the state's ability to fund important public priorities and would diminish the quality of life for all Washingtonians.

I-1033 would:

• Sharply limit public investments over time



• Lock in the current budget cuts and increase the deficit



• Exacerbate the effects of economic downturns



• Be fiscally irresponsible

To read the entire paper, click here.

KIDS COUNT Data Center: Higher Education and Future Prosperity

Editor’s Note: This post is the final in a series on the launch of the new KIDS COUNT Data Center in Washington State. The series is written by our colleagues at Washington KIDS COUNT at the University of Washington. The work of KIDS COUNT intersects well with efforts of the Budget & Policy Center to highlight the importance of state investments.

Higher education reaps numerous benefits for individuals and society including higher lifetime earnings, better health, and more civic participation. In Washington, less than 30 percent of adults over 25 have obtained a post-secondary degree.

Within the state, there are regional disparities in educational attainment. As the map below shows, in some urban counties like King and Whitman, close to half of adults (44 and 48 percent, respectively) have earned a bachelor’s degree. In contrast, in 13 of the state’s rural counties, less than one in five adults have completed a BA.



Find hundreds of indicators of child and family well-being for your county at the new KIDS COUNT Data Center.