TABOR

Home of TABOR in a pinch

March 1, 2009

The Denver Post

By Karen Auge

If you're swimming in El Paso County this summer, try not to swallow much water — nobody will have checked it for contaminants.

Be gentle with that playground equipment, too, because once it gets banged up, it's gone for good.

Anyone dining out might also want to take a peek at the restaurant's certificate of inspection, because the health department isn't getting around to eateries like it used to.

As property-tax rates tumble and sales-tax revenue evaporates, residents in the backyard of Douglas Bruce — the state's leading evangelist of small government and small taxes — are learning just how small government can get. So far, voters have shown no inclination to part with any more tax dollars.

Now, local leaders are warning that with no fat left to cut, basic services such as law enforcement, courts, public health and child-abuse investigations are all in jeopardy.

El Paso County's budget has shed $45 million over the past three years, clipped by the generosity of past tax-cutting county commissioners, stretched by the demands of a surging population and perpetually in the sights of limited-government forces.

"We don't have enough funding to sustain our government at the level we need," said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark.

With the nation's economy imploding, the city of Colorado Springs is feeling similar pain.

The impacts are widespread:

• For years, the health department has lacked the staff to inspect restaurants and other food providers twice a year, as required by state law. Department director Kandi Buckland said it's no coincidence that "in 2008, preliminary data showed El Paso County had the largest number of food-borne illness" in the state.
• The health department has stopped inspecting day-care centers and won't inspect swimming pools this summer. That might make swimmers queasy, considering that last year, the department closed 80 pools — including six contaminated with E. coli.
• The Sheriff's Office has the same number of patrol deputies it had in 1998, when there were 70,000 fewer residents. In some parts of the county, it takes deputies 22 minutes — more than double the ideal time — to arrive when someone calls 911.
• Most county offices are closed on Friday.
• When gas prices peaked last summer, Sheriff Terry Maketa ordered patrol cars parked. Deputies stopped cruising and instead waited for calls to come in. DUI arrests plummeted.
• The coroner's office, where space is so cramped that human-tissue samples are stored in a garage behind the main building, has only four investigators. Two of them have to be on duty at all times.
• The city of Colorado Springs has cut 173 jobs since December — out of a workforce that once numbered 632.
• The county clerk's office employs the same number of people it did in 1994. That partially explains the recent dust-up when County Clerk Robert Balink was accused of telling staff not to answer the phones.

Actually, according to county spokesman Dave Rose, the phone- bank staff who used to answer those calls were laid off, and remaining staff are swamped.

Voters rejected sales-tax hike

A group that called itself Citizens for Effective Government hoped to put the brakes on some of this by persuading voters to pay another penny per dollar in sales tax. They estimated that would have generated $75 million a year.

Then, in a monumental achievement in bad timing, the the issue made the ballot last November.

"From September to November when the true campaigning was going on, people were scared to death. They were being told over and over that the economy was the worst it had been in decades," said Stephanie Finley, of the group that spearheaded the effort.

The proposal was routed by voters.

And rightly so, said the anti-taxman himself, Douglas Bruce.

"I know how much money they waste," Bruce said. He writes about that topic on his website, which includes a 42-item list of what he calls wasteful county spending.

"They're pouring money out like it's a broken fire hydrant," said the former county commissioner, who disputes the notion that the county budget is shrinking.

He also questions the need to pay county staff so much and for paid vacations. "Why are we paying people to have a vacation?"

Others who may support staff vacations nevertheless question the severity of the situation.

"They've been saying there's a crisis for as long as I've been in Colorado Springs, and I've been here six years," said Sean Paige.

Paige, a former Colorado Springs Gazette editorial writer, didn't oppose the sales-tax hike. But as founder of Local Liberty Action, he has tangled with the city over efforts to ease spending restrictions.

"They've been pushing these buttons for so long and so repeatedly that a lot of people have tuned out," he said.

"I think these alleged crises are an opportunity to think differently about how local government is run."

That argument resonates.

Many yet to feel impact

Colorado Springs has a two-layered TABOR — a city ordinance that restricts spending in addition to the state's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, which limits government revenue growth and requires that excess revenue be refunded to taxpayers.

Finley acknowledges that, even in good economic times, tax hikes and government programs are a hard sell here.

"Philosophically, our community is about limited government. So if your whole premise is limited government, you're going to be suspect of anything that is going to increase government."

Despite the prevailing sentiment, and despite voters saying no twice in the past 15 years to paying for a new jail and new officers, Sheriff Maketa believes residents understand the need in his department.

"I didn't get a lot of feedback that people didn't believe we needed the money," he said.

He needs a new jail. He needs more officers to guard those inmates, more to prowl the county's highways and back roads.

But right now, he can't afford to even daydream about adding employees; he's worrying about keeping the staff he has. The problem isn't just money, he said.

"The biggest complaint among deputies is that they don't have cover when they answer calls," Maketa said.

Maketa contracted to house up to 150 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees. Without that, "I would have had to close two wards in the jail," Maketa said.

"The public has to decide what level of crime they can live with," Maketa said.

Finley said city and county departments have done such a good job of making do with so little that many people haven't actually felt the effects yet.

"I don't think they understand until it impacts them directly. Until they walk up to the DMV and pull on a door and it's locked because it's Friday, and they have to pay a late fee because they waited until the last day or until they call 911 on the Eastern Plains and the sheriff can't respond for an hour."

People will only get it, Finley said, when it impacts them.

"We don't have the dollars"

Tere Holmes and Kelley Salazar get it. Holmes' company, The Sunshine House, is building a 17,000-square- foot day-care center on Colorado Springs' north side. Holmes hired Salazar to run the center, which will care for up to 300 children.

To open the center, Holmes needs a license. To get that license, she needs a county health department certificate saying it's safe for children.

But the county health department has stopped doing day-care inspections. When Holmes learned that, she and Salazar hustled over to the county commissioners' office.

There was no fist-pounding, but she got her message across: If Sunshine doesn't open, the county loses tax-revenue and 30 or 40 people don't get hired.

The message got through, and Holmes will get her inspection March 26, in time, she hopes, to open April 6.

But the issue is not resolved.

"We currently have 33 child-care centers due for renewal. And that's just the January and February numbers," said Buckland, the health department director.

The department has cut back on tuberculosis monitoring and handed sexually transmitted disease investigations off to the state.

"The decisions that we made are not good public health, but there wasn't any other option," she said.

That may be a matter of opinion. Bruce says the government has no business monitoring STDs in the first place. "It's not the role of government to go out looking at people's genitals."

Nevertheless, some people across the county are clearly frustrated by what they are getting for their money.

Recent letters to local newspapers question why law enforcement can't respond more quickly to emergencies, and people have complained that the sheriff eliminated the D.A.R.E. program. Sandy Way, spokeswoman for the coroner's office, said people sometimes get upset about waiting up to eight weeks for death certificates.

Commissioner Clark understands the frustration.

"We would like to do a better job at what we're doing," she said. "But we don't have the dollars."