NoCoPolitics.com

Budget Transparency Goes Statewide?

Diggs Brown was able to pull it off in Fort Collins. 

Last month, City Councilmember Diggs Brown started asking questions ... spending questions. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to get some simple questions answered. So he set out to change the city's expenditure reporting system. He did his own research, put together a proposal, and within a few days had presented—and passed—NoCOST, the Northern Colorado Spending Transparency act. By June 2009, Fort Collins residents will have a way to keep track of how government spends their money. The program will cost less than $10,000 to implement and will most likely pay for itself as ordinary residents help identify cost savings. City contracts that go out to bid will now have greater competition and lower costs: vendors and suppliers will be able to compete for contracts in a transparent marketplace.

“The citizens have a right to know how tax dollars are being spent,” Brown said. “After all, it's their money. Taxpayers need to be confident that there is a high level of transparency and accountability in their municipal government.”

Now Rep. Don Marostica and Sen. Mike Kopp want every citizen in the state to be able to serve as a spending watchdog.

For those of you who have a lot of time on your hands – and we mean A LOT of time – state Sen. Mike Kopp has the bill for you.

Kopp and state Rep. Don Marostica, both Republicans, plan to introduce a bill this year to put the state budget in all its dense, wonky glory online. Residents who are so inclined could click around in the budget to find examples of waste or places where the state could save money.

“The idea behind the bill is to let every citizen become an auditor of the state budget,” Kopp said.

Here Come the Higher Rates

Utility rates in Fort Collins are going up as the city tries to reduce its "carbon footprint".

Rates are likely to increase as the policy is implemented, said Brian Janonis, director of the city's utilities prior to the council meeting.

The policy calls for an annual reduction in energy use by 1.5 percent a year through conservation and efficiency programs. It also calls for setting "competitive" but not necessarily the lowest electrical rates.

But over time, residents might see lower bills if they take advantage of energy-efficiency programs, he said.

Of course, by "energy-efficiency programs" they mean, in part, "higher rates".  Get it?  Higher rates will teach you to be better at conserving your energy - you won't be able to afford to heat your house.

And in other news from 1933, the new agricultural policies are expected to drastically lower the rate of obesity among Ukrainian peasants.

An AG from Northern Colorado?

With current Attorney General John Suthers gearing up for a U.S. Senate run, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck is making the rounds, lining up early support for a run for Colorado Attorney General...

... more updates to follow.

"And we thought we'd seen everything."

NRO comments on a WSJ report that the ethanol industry is lining up for a bailout:

Years’ worth of billions in subsidies and import tariffs apparently are just not enough to keep afloat the boondoggling bust that is corn ethanol.

"The amiable Althusserian scholar asked the aardvark for absinthe."

(Predictive sentence technology).

"I like how the e-mail automatically says 'Sent from a Mac Book Wheel', that way people know you have one."

(Pure genius from The Onion, via the Corner)

Bikes in Old Town

Left unmentioned in this Coloradoan story: Try taking a toddler through Old Town some day. 

As a six-foot tall adult, it's annoying.  For a two-year old, it's dangerous.  Holding the hand of a toddler as bicyclists swerve around you is a pretty harrowing - and infuriating - experience. 

If the City of Fort Collins won't address this adequately, the retailers should.  It is already affecting their business.  We're more wary of venturing into Old Town, and I've talked to other parents who feel the same way.

Business owners in the Old Town area of Fort Collins say private security guards have helped reduce bike riding in the pedestrian zone, but cyclists ignoring the law remain a problem.

The pro-cycling group Bike Fort Collins this fall and winter surveyed about 80 Old Town business owners and reports that almost 70 percent of owners and workers said they want more to be done about riders on the sidewalks and in the dismount zone in and around Old Town.

Anyone ticketed for violating the law faces a $50 ticket and $25 in court costs. Police say they are unable to easily tell how many bike tickets they wrote this summer because they are coded within the larger category of "trespassing."

The dismount zone runs generally from LaPorte Avenue on the north to Olive Street on the south, and from Mason Street on the west to Remington on the east.

"It's better than it was," said Jeanna Remmick, manager of the John Atencio jewelry story at 1 Old Town Square.

Like several other store owners and managers interviewed by the Coloradoan, Remmick credited the private security guards with raising the level of awareness about the bike-riding ban.

Cindy Clarke of Specialities said she worries about the speed conflicts between her walking customers and people riding or skateboarding through the square.

Higher Ed Funding

The Denver Post editorializes:

In the latest chapter here in Colorado, several presidents of higher-education institutions have voiced support for a proposal to free them of tuition increase constraints. They want the ability to raise in-state tuition without approval from the governor or state legislators.

Fund us or free us, they've said.

We have no shortage of sympathy for the dilemma facing higher education, but what do they have in mind? This year, tuition at the University of Colorado went up 9.3 percent.

Here's what I wrote last year on the topic last March:

Colorado State University is one of the economic engines driving the Fort Collins economy.  The university is our largest primary employer.  CSU employees live, work and spend money in our community.  CSU also brings in an additional 25,000 residents each fall, consumers who need housing, food, supplies and entertainment.  The CSU-driven highly-educated workforce and the economic development provided by such innovations as the clean energy “supercluster” may grab the headlines, but the larger impact might be on the small mom-and-pop enterprises that surround the campus: the sub shops, the retail stores, rental housing close to campus.

If CSU drives the economy, Front Range Community College is the tune-up shop that keeps us moving forward – especially when times are tough.  Our economy is dynamic.  Jobs are created; jobs are lost.  New skills are needed; older vocational skills regularly come back into demand.  Front Range provides essential job training and re-training.  With its focus on nuts-and-bolts, career-driven courses, it provides a low-cost opportunity for just about anyone to make a tangible investment in their future.  A degree from Front Range is a ticket to a new career or that next raise.

Fully funding public higher education also has two less-discussed, longer-term benefits for our economy: It guarantees quality, and it prevents the “brain drain” of our best and brightest.  Both benefits require keeping tuition low.   

How does low tuition guarantee quality?  There are obvious components to a quality education, such as skilled faculty and state-of-the-art facilities.  However, the quality of your education also depends on the caliber of the person sitting in the seat next to you.  If your college class contains the best and brightest from Colorado’s high schools, that competition adds value to your degree.  Attracting those students requires low tuition – public higher education’s competitive advantage when it comes to recruitment. 

Colorado State was recently ranked 124 in the list of national universities by U.S. News.  Princeton was first.  If you’re a graduating valedictorian from a Colorado high school with high SAT scores, however, there’s a good chance that you’ll choose Colorado State over Princeton.  Why?  Tuition and fees at Princeton are $33,000 compared to $5,418 at Colorado State.  Remove that competitive advantage by raising tuition at CSU to the point where there are no savings for students, and many will end up going for the “big name” school with the higher ranking.  Quality will suffer. 

Affordable tuition also prevents the “brain drain” of graduating seniors.  For our economy to flourish, we need to keep our best and brightest in Colorado.  We can’t expect to compete long-term if we export our smartest 18-year olds each September. 

Recycling Goes Belly-Up

Uh oh.  The New York Times reports that "trash has crashed".

The economic downturn has decimated the market for recycled materials like cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals. Across the country, this junk is accumulating by the ton in the yards and warehouses of recycling contractors, which are unable to find buyers or are unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices.

Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life.

Whoa: A $300 Billion Tax Cut?

A $300 billion tax cut as part of Obama's stimulus package?

Jennifer Rubin of Commentary Magazine notes:

So let’s get this straight: Robert Gates will be the Defense Secretary, we’re ramping up U.S. forces in Afghanistan and providing a reasonable period of time for a hand-off in Iraq, there isn’t going to be a windfall oil profits tax or income tax hike but there is going to be a huge set of business tax cuts – and Rick Warren is giving the invocation at the Inauguration. Who won in November?

It's not all those promised $500 and $1,000 tax credits.  Here are some of the details of the business tax cuts, from the WSJ story she cites:

As for the business tax package, a key provision would allow companies to write off huge losses incurred last year, as well as any losses from 2009, to retroactively reduce tax bills dating back five years. Obama aides note that businesses would have been able to claim most of the tax write-offs on future tax returns, and the proposal simply accelerates those write-offs to make them available in the current tax season, when a lack of available credit is leaving many companies short of cash.

A second provision would entice firms to plow that money back into new investment. The write-offs would be retroactive to expenditures made as of Jan. 1, 2009, to ensure that companies don't sit on their money until after Congress passes the measure.

Another element would offer a one-year tax credit for companies that make new hires or forgo layoffs, which could be worth $40 billion to $50 billion. And the Obama plan also would allow small businesses to write off a broad range expenditures worth up to $250,000 in 2009 and 2010. Currently, the limit is $175,000.

Of course, Obama's also considering adding 600,000 new federal employees.

But still, for all of the progressives who spent the last two years arguing against cutting business taxes...

UPDATE: Heritage: Don't Take the Bait

It Begins

That's right, ladies and gentlemen... it's time for a highly-targeted Colorado Senate race!  (It's been a full ten weeks since the last one ended, and you're probably already missing the campaign, right?)

Governor Ritter's choice to replace Ken Salazar is already ramping up his campaign. 

He needs to.  He's never run before.

Republicans are champing at the bit to take on Bennet, who is untested as a campaigner and fundraiser, and isn't as well known as the man the GOP had been expecting to face, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.

Many political analysts and Democratic and Republican insiders have said they were surprised, even perplexed, that Democrats would take a chance on holding the seat in 2010 with a political rookie, however talented, intelligent or likable.

I don't care how talented you are, the frenetic pace and constant glare of a big-time campaign can do funny things to people.  Will Bennet be a good candidate?  Who knows.  But his appointment - over more proven politicians like John Hickenlooper, Andrew Romanoff and John Salazar - is a big gamble.