Sonnenberg frustrated as session closes
With just one more year left as a state lawmaker, state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling finds the most-recently concluded General Assembly session to be one of the most frustrating in his 15 years.
“There were things we did that were good, to help stimulate the economy, to help those who need it, and in areas that needed help,” Sonnenberg told this reporter recently.
But his fear is that lawmakers did things that are unsustainable in future years, such as investments in day care, early childhood and even K-12 education. “I don’t know how we sustain some of the attempts we’ve made to help education funding.”
In 2020, the General Assembly cut $572 million from education, among the most painful cuts, in order to balance the 2020-21 budget.
As it turned out, the $3.4 billion in general fund cuts was more than was necessary, so lawmakers were in the position of restoring those funds, and education, through several different changes, got back everything that was cut.
The problem is that those dollars are one-time only, dollars from individual income taxes in 2019, for example, that exceeded expectations, and at some point that could mean having to go back to cuts again.
It isn’t the only thing that irked Sonnenberg. He called the $5.4 billion transportation bill signed last week by Gov. Jared Polis one of the biggest mistakes the General Assembly has ever made. That’s because the bill sets up a series of four enterprises — state-run businesses — that all have a revenue cap of $100 million per year. Those enterprises will all fund a different aspect of the transportation bill, through a slew of fees on delivery services increases in the gas tax. That’s to get around a voter-approved ballot measure in 2020 — Initiative 117 — that requires voter approval for any state enterprise above $100 million.
“We continue to thumb our noses at the voters of Colorado,” Sonnenberg said. “Voters very specifically said if you’re going to charge a bunch of fees, we want to have some say in that.”
The bill sends a message to voters that “we don’t trust you,” he added.
It’s not the only slap at voters in this session, Sonnenberg said.
He’s teamed up with Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute on two ballot measures that would reduce the state income tax rate. But General Assembly Democrats (and two Republicans) approved a bill to require that ballot measures, in the nonpartisan Blue Book, show the top three programs that could be impacted by measures that aim to reduce taxes and by how much.
Sonnenberg indicated the bill is deceptive since that money that would be reduced would not necessarily be in those areas. It’s another thumbing of the nose at voters, he said.
Democrats “want to spend it all” and those voters get in the way of that agenda, he added.
Then there’s the bill to provide, for the first time in years, general fund support for the state division of Parks and Wildlife. That division has been self-sustaining through park fees for years. Yet the General Assembly approved a $25 million boost to their funding.
Sonnenberg gave that as an example of spending like drunken sailors, on new land acquisition and to create access for a handful of hunters.
But no bill frustrated him more in 2021 than the failure of the conservation easement reparations bill, Senate Bill 33, which died on the day before the end of the session.
“We spend money on diapers (Senate Bill 27) but we can’t make right what the government screwed up?” he said. “It blows my mind that we would spend money on diapers and not take care of the people who were screwed over by Mark Weston,” an appraiser who recommended denial of easements when he was on the state’s conservation easement commission, despite telling those same landowners they should apply for easements.
The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.