General Assembly considers spending cap

The resolution is referred to as COMPASS – Common Sense Obligation to Missourians for Providing Accountability and Stabilizing Spending – and is a version of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights passed by Colorado voters in 1992.

If passed in Missouri, it would create a statewide ballot issue asking voters to amend to the state constitution to cap state appropriations. Session ends May 18. This is the third straight year Missouri legislators have considered such a bill.

Proponents say the bill would promote long-term fiscal responsibility and create a rainy day fund with excess revenue. Opponents say it would unnecessarily cut spending for state services, such as education and health care, which already have been slashed in recent years.

State Rep. Carl Bearden, R-St. Charles, sponsored the legislation in the General Assembly and changed the bill’s identity to COMPASS from TABOR to avoid any negative connotation attached to Colorado’s system.

“I believe COMPASS would prepare the state to be in a better situation to deal with (economic downturns),” Bearden said.

Missouri Budget Project, a statewide, nonpartisan organization that analyzes budgetary and fiscal options, is strongly opposed to the proposal. The group says that, if passed, it would require more than $3.8 billion in spending cuts over the next six years, mostly in education, health care, and transportation and road improvements.

MBP Executive Director Amy Blouin said one reason is redundancy. Missouri, she said, already has the Hancock Amendment, which prohibits legislators from passing spending bills without needed appropriations to pay for them.

“That amendment has done what it was intended to do – it has kept state spending in check,” she said. “We are not in a position where the state is throwing money around.”

She added that the state also has not fully recovered from its budget crisis of several years ago; higher education spending, for example, was less in fiscal 2006 than in fiscal 2001.

“What TABOR would do is tie us into this (state funding) crisis,” Blouin said. “Missouri would never be able to recover using the current low revenue levels as the basis to start the TABOR mechanism.”

Rep. Bearden, though, said that Missouri’s version would allow legislators to freeze the spending limit, safeguarding against a quick drop in revenues.

Impact on schools

Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Norm Ridder knows the impact TABOR can have. Prior to joining Springfield’s schools, he was superintendent in Colorado Springs, Colo., and experienced first-hand the results of a state spending-limit system.

Because TABOR usually sets an annual spending cap based on a certain percentage of growth over the previous year’s revenues, Ridder said public entities have difficulty recovering from statewide recessions.

“During my experience in Colorado … University of Colorado and Colorado State University were among the lowest funded in the country,” Ridder said. “In Colorado they were losing their education, they were losing their road structure, (and) tourism was spiking downward.”

Bearden, however said that Colorado’s TABOR has been unfairly blamed for economic problems caused by a national recession.

He said the bill allowed the state to handle the economic situation better than most.

“Had TABOR not been there, Colorado would have suffered much more,” Bearden said. “Because the state had restrained its spending, Colorado weathered that recession very well.”

Business opinions

Associated Industries of Missouri, which lobbies for pro-business legislation, has come out in favor of the proposal. AIM President Gary Marble said the group’s general policy is to support any bill that limits government’s ability to increase taxes.

“It’s been our position that less government is the best government, and anything to manage the increase of taxes on our state and our members is a good thing,” Marble said.

Not all business groups, however, support the measure. Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce officially voiced its opposition to TABOR after a forum on the issue last fall.

Sandy Howard, the chamber’s vice president of public affairs, said the chamber board didn’t have a lot of confidence in the idea, based on its track record in other communities.

“Two key areas that we have historically had as chamber priorities are education and transportation, and the impact could be critical in both areas if TABOR were to be implemented,” she said.

HJR 20 is currently in committee in the Missouri House of Representatives, and Springfield schools’ Ridder doesn’t think it will pass this year.

“There’s too much uncertainty this late in the game, and the message I’m getting is it isn’t going to happen,” he said.