NoCoPolitics.com

It Ain't Over Yet

Check out this chart over at Powerline.

The shift of public opinion in the Republicans' favor is striking: a 12-point swing on the economy, a 10-point swing on national security, an 11-point swing on taxes, and so on.

Shrimp!

"Anyway, like I was sayin', shrimp is the fruit of the sea.  You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it.  Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo.  Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried.  There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich.  That.. that's about it."

Shrimp Boil!

Friday, June 12 from 5:30 - 8:30 in Fort Collins.

"Painful"

"I think this is something we need to do even if it is painful."

That's Ben Manvel last night, voting to raise your trash rates and put more expensive job-killing mandates on local businesses.

This will be painful for the people of Fort Collins as the City Council raises their rates.

It will be painful for the trash haulers as they struggle to make ends meet under a new series of city mandates.

It will be painful for the hundreds of trash hauling employees, as they wonder if the next government-mandated cost hike will mean the end of their job.

Make no mistake: The City Council wants to control what you throw away, and they're willing to extort the haulers into becoming the bagmen for their punitive fees.

("Nice little trash hauling business you've got here... it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it...")

California Says "No More"

The voters of California rejected a massive tax hike at the ballot yesterday, saying no to a package of propositions which would have increased taxes to cover for legislative overspending and fiscal mismanagement.  (Meanwhile, even as the budget has grown larger, the roads in California are still crumbling).

The pro-tax brigades massively outspent their opponents and lost by more than 30 points on most of the propositions. 

Something's going on here.

Quick Tax Roundup from WSJ

Here's what's in that budget.

FCN: The City Budget Three Step

My column this week is a prediction:

Out on the stump this spring, the mayor had a great talking point about fiscal responsibility. When we were working on the budget, he'd say, we came up with a 13-page “stop doing” list of programs to cut and not a single resident complained.

If no one complained, why did we stop at 13 pages?

Well, anyway, once again Fort Collins is facing a budget deficit, so it's on to page 14.

If only it were that simple. Instead, here's what's going to happen:

(Go ahead: Clip this column, post it on your refrigerator, and watch these predictions unfold over the coming months.)

Step one: The city will declare a looming budget deficit. (Obviously, we're already past step one. Let's note, however, that budget deficits are inevitable when your retail sales tax base can’t support your government programs. In other words, this is what happens when you shrink your tax base and drive business into the arms of Timnath in a down economy.)

Step two: The city staff will produce a package of budget “cuts” to match the deficit number. Of course, not all of the “cuts” will be cuts. Rather, the package will include a few cuts, a “fee,” and some sort of tax hike.

The cuts will be designed to hit high-profile programs with the most sympathetic constituencies. If there's a program that everyone loves, it will be on the list.

The fees will be marketed as going toward a specific program, but if you pay attention to the fine print, the money will actually be slated for the general fund as a way to balance the budget.

The tax hikes will come by way of a referendum asking the voters to approve a new tax to pay for the most sympathetic line item in the general fund.

Step three: The wailing and gnashing of teeth will begin.

So there you go. Follow along as this unfolds over the next few months. When all is said and done, you'll find yourself asking: How did Andrew know all of this?

Easy. It's exactly what happened the last time we faced a deficit.

Cuts to the most sympathetic programs? The last time this happened, the proposed cuts included closing the bathrooms in the city parks, eliminating recreation scholarships for underprivileged kids, closing the library one day a week and eliminating night time Dial-A-Ride.

A fee that's not really a fee? The last time this happened, the City Council considered a “transportation maintenance fee.” It was marketed as a fee on transportation to raise money for transportation, but it was actually just a per-home tax (you didn't even need to own a car to be eligible) and the money wasn't earmarked for, you know, transportation. It was slated to be dumped into the general fund.

A ballot referendum to create a new tax? The last time this happened, the City Council referred the library district to the ballot. By creating the new tax to pay for the libraries, a huge chunk of the general fund was suddenly available and the budget was “balanced.” (We still paid the same amount to the government. More, actually.)

There are plenty of places to cut the budget, but it would take political courage to pull it off. We could stop hiring outside consultants. We could cut all of the city programs that spend our money to tell us the things that our mothers should have told us. (Does anyone have any idea how much we spend on brochures and posters to tell us how to be better citizens of the world?)

Finally, we could take a realistic look at the salaries and benefits of our city employees. Right now we compare Fort Collins employees to municipal employees in other cities. What would happen if we started comparing compensation to similar job descriptions in the private sector? Payroll is the single largest expenditure in the budget.

Instead, we'll likely see some sort of rehash of the last time we faced a deficit. Sometimes these things are predictable.

First They Came for the Trash Haulers

(Trash Hauler)

The Fort Collins City Council is going to take up trash districting again tonight.  How about a brief recap:

• Trash districting eliminates the power of consumer choice.  The city will tell you who you must hire to pick up your trash.  Don't like your service?  You're not allowed to switch haulers.  Think you can get a better rate from a competitor?  Think again.  The power of consumer choice keeps rates low and drives customer service.  The haulers know that you can simply pick up the phone and call their competitor if you're not satisfied.  They have to work to keep you happy.  If you can't make that phone call, your service will suffer and rates will go up. 

• Districting will stifle innovations in customer service.  For example, say your pickup day is Thursday but you host a big weekend party and don't want all of the party refuse stinking up your garage for five days.  Did you know that you can call your trash company and they'll set up a special pickup?  One company offered the service and their competitors, in order to stay competitive, followed suit.  What happens when the city's in charge?  What incentive does someone at City Hall have to innovate?

• Trash districting is the first step towards the city being able to monitor your trash stream.  Forget to recycle an aluminum can, piece of cardboard, yard waste, plastic milk bottle?  The city will be there to penalize you.

• Trash districting will most likely drive two local family-owned companies out of business.  Gallegos and Ram are both locally-owned employers.  Districting will effectively kill these businesses, putting their employees out of work.  Districting is a job killer.

• Finally - and this might be the most troubling of the arguments - trash districting doesn't even solve the "problem" of multiple trash trucks running on the same street.  Why?  Because Colorado state law prevents districting of commercial trash hauling.  If you've got a convenience store, neighborhood pool, church, school, apartment complex or even a neighbor with a home-improvement project, their choice of trash hauler is not governed by any trash districting measure.  If they have a different hauler from your city-mandated district, guess what?  You still have multiple trash trucks running on the same street.

So what's this all about?  It's control.  The city of Fort Collins wants to control what you throw out, how much you throw out and when you throw it out.  They want to be able to determine if your family is producing "too much trash" and whether you're recycling enough.  They want to make sure you're being a good global citizen, and they're willing to take away your power as a consumer and drive two family-owned Fort Collins companies out of business to do it.   

Read This and Weep...

... for public education.

It's remarkably difficult to fire a tenured public school teacher in California, a Times investigation has found. The path can be laborious and labyrinthine, in some cases involving years of investigation, union grievances, administrative appeals, court challenges and re-hearings.

Not only is the process arduous, but some districts are particularly unsuccessful in navigating its complexities. The Los Angeles Unified School District sees the majority of its appealed dismissals overturned, and its administrators are far less likely even to try firing a tenured teacher than those in other districts.

Go ahead.  Read the whole thing.  The lede:

The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.

He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.

Polanco looked at the cuts and said they "were weak," according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. "Carve deeper next time," he was said to have told the boy.

"Look," Polanco allegedly said, "you can't even kill yourself."

...

But Polanco, who contended that he had been misunderstood, kept his job.

(From Kausfiles.)

Anybody Want to Write a Column?

(No, not mine.)

The Tribune is looking for columnists in Weld County.

9%

Tuition's going up at CSU:

The proposed CSU budget for next year spares workers from furloughs but forces about 40 layoffs and requires resident undergraduates to pay 9 percent higher tuition.

As I wrote a while back:

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.