FLEXIBILITY TO USE STATE REVENUES

SB 228 provides more money for the General Fund by eliminating the statutory Arveschoug-Bird (AB) 6% provision.  The AB provision, named for the Representative and Senator, respectively, who sponsored it as a bill in 1991, allows the General Fund to grow only 6% over the previous year, and any additional revenue that comes in must be appropriated for a couple of specific items, namely the Highway Users Tax Fund and the Capital Construction Fund.   

If the AB provision is eliminated by the passage of SB 228, the General Assembly would be able to spend funds over the 6% cap in the regular budget process. Eliminating AB would not increase overall spending or taxes, just give us more flexibility in spending state revenues.  Furthermore, because AB is calculated on the previous year’s appropriations and would lock future appropriations to the level of recessionary spending, eliminating it would allow us to recover from the economic downturn much more quickly. 

After the passage of TABOR, many assumed that AB was subject to the provision of TABOR disallowing the “weakening” of any spending limits already in law.  But since eliminating AB doesn’t allow more spending, it cannot be subject to that provision.  

I support SB 228 because I believe the Legislature should have more flexibility to appropriate state revenues.  I don’t want the General Fund cuts made because of the economic downturn to be permanent.  I believe that we should be able to spend state revenues on whatever the priorities might be at the time – like education, health care, and human services – and not have particular allocations locked in. 

SB 228 passed 2^nd Reading in the Senate on Tuesday, March 3, at 2:30 a.m. after a grueling process that reflects a challenging aspect of lawmaking – and which was quite a surprise for a “freshman” legislator like myself.  Consideration of the bill lasted many hours – some people said it was unprecedented how long it took, how late into the night it went, and how early in the session it occurred.  It happened because the minority party members did not want the bill to pass, so they initiated a sort of filibuster.  First they asked for the 38-page bill to be read out loud in its entirety (normally, only the titles of bills are read out loud by the Reading Clerk); this took 45 minutes.  Then they debated with the bill sponsor and the other majority party members about whether the bill should even be considered – this debate took nearly 2 hours.  Next they introduced over 100 amendments, giving prolonged speeches supporting each one.  Every amendment they introduced was defeated on a 21-14 party-line vote.  Finally, after the bill passed on a party-line vote, they produced over 30 amendments to the Committee of the Whole report (the official approval of all actions taken on 2^nd Reading), all of which failed on a party-line vote.

Read full bill:

Here