Why is public funding for services to individuals with disabilities so poor in Colorado?

Unlike most states in the country where a representative form of government allows elected officials to represent their constituencies and make fiscal decisions on their behalf, Colorado has decided that constitutional authority shall be in charge of tax revenues and how they are spent.

Put into the state’s constitution in 1992, the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights (popularly called TABOR) changed the way Colorado made decisions about caring for its citizenry and the beautiful state they lived in. You might compare what TABOR did to our state system of government to that of a sort of “differently functioning family” (to put it politely.)

Imagine that the state represents a large family.  The heads of the household, in terms of leadership and budgetary decisions are not the father and mother (compare them to the state senators and representatives in the legislature), but that of the children (the citizens).  The father and mother still identify the unmet needs of the family – such as - a brother who needs his tonsils out, a sister needing braces on her teeth, twins that are ready to leave their cribs and need new beds and the house needing a new roof. Imagine also, that there are 20 or more children in this family.  This family (in 1992) decided on a different way of approving decisions.

They believed, regardless of age or worldly knowledge, that everyone in the family should have a vote regarding how much money they could keep in terms of their combined incomes (tax revenues).  Despite the level of their wages they could only actually keep part of it. They set this part as a percentage limit.  The rest of their income (revenue) they had to give back to wherever the earnings came from. This they put in law (TABOR).

Additionally, they added another law (to TABOR) that they could only spend a certain amount of the income that they allowed themselves to retain.  They set a percentage rate for this amount too.   Thus, both their earnings and their expenditures were limited to a specific percentage rate UNLESS they all voted to change either of those amounts.

Instead of the children trusting the parents to know (in their experience and wisdom) that the family needs certain things and that getting those things will add to the health and sustainability of the family, decisions had to be made only upon the approval of all the children.

Before they could vote on changing the rules about keeping earnings or spending them at a different level, the family put in other criteria.  They required that a certain percentage of the children agree that the vote was necessary. They could voice their approval by signing their name on a petition (a ballot initiative).  Well, as you can imagine getting 24+ children in one family to agree on anything would be quite a feat  (imagine that being all of Colorado’s citizens)!

In order to convince each other that a vote should be taken, the children spent large amounts of their own money to advertise their favor or disfavor of having a vote (a ballot initiative costs upwards of $1 million dollars to get the issue being voted on, on the ballot).  And, naturally, the kids with the biggest allowances or wages have the most means to do the biggest advertising.

With the stakes being high, (the younger children wanting funds to be spent on toys and video games and the older children not agreeing with each other on anything) ballot initiatives often were defeated.  Thus, the family’s revenues and expenditures were difficult to change.  The roof continued to leak, the twins continued to sleep in their cribs, sister’s teeth “bucked” and brother bothered everyone with his awful snoring.

(Oh, and by the way, although this TABOR law was already pretty complex, the family added to it with about 156 other criteria and then as one last “explanation point” to secure its power, they made a rule that only one part of the law could be changed per ballot initiative. This is called the Single Subject Rule.)

Thus, like this “differently functioning family” (to put is politely) Colorado too functions a little differently.  Getting appropriate funding for services for individuals with disabilities is rather like getting braces on sister’s teeth.  It’s just one of a huge number of unmet needs because of a rule-making system that makes it hard to break the status quo.