CFOIC's end of session wrap up. Democrats talk about schools but fail to put their money where their mouth is. Even hydropower has problems (which cost us more).
CFOIC's wrap up of the 2023 legislative session...
For fellow fans of government transparency, I present the 2023 CFOIC legislative session wrap up.
Enjoy.
https://coloradofoic.org/wrap-up-colorado-legislature-again-shuns-cora-cost-reform-in-2023-session-but-removes-some-obstacles-for-records-requesters/
The Democrats running the state had the chance to fully fund education this Assembly session and they chose not to.
The link below is to a video recap of the 2023 legislative session with the Colorado Sun's political reporter, Governor Polis, and a pair of both state senators and reps.
I'll leave it to you to watch the whole thing, but I wanted to draw special attention to what Senator Kirkmeyer says between the 35:00 minute mark and the 45:00 minute mark.
I'll leave it to you to watch for yourself, but I can abstract it pretty quickly.
Funding for education in Colorado comes from 3 sources: federal, state, and local taxes.
The state is constitutionally required in Colorado to increasingly fund education according to the rules in Amendment 23.
The Assembly long ago voted a clever workaround for getting around Amendment 23: the budget stabilization (BS) factor. Basically an IOU that's never been paid.
Ever since, the Assembly has debated finally paying that off, fully funding education per the requirement of Amendment 23. Every year, they have not.
In these years of both Democrat control of all the levers of power in the state, in the years of record budget surpluses, the Democrats running things are not paying down the IOU we have against our schools.
The money is there. Their desire to fund it is not. Paying for schools would mean less money for other priorities the Democrats have put ahead of this.
More people chasing the same goods means prices go up. You could enlarge this to the level of states as well.
Hydropower, if we could get the stomach to dam more rivers, offers a source of energy (outside of the construction and production) that doesn't generate greenhouse gases.
As a line I heard in a throwaway movie a while ago has it, however, "relax Frankenstein, you ain't bulletproof". Hydropower ain't bulletproof either: as you'll note in the article below and in previous posts here, lower water levels mean less hydro.
And if California's available electrical from hydropower is cut in half by drought, they need to make up that shortfall. We've seen enough articles thus far to know that their renewables can't fill the gap, so they leaned on natural gas this last year.
With California chasing more natural gas (along with a bunch of other states), without an increase in supply, prices go up.
Let me reiterate that middle part in case you missed it. "without an increase in supply" more people chasing the same good drives up prices.
Get the point(s)? Maybe we shouldn't be leaning so hard on greenhouse gas free sources of energy just yet and maybe we should be looking to expand the supply of natural gas (along with exploring mitigation strategies for the carbon generated by NG combustion).
We in Colorado sit on tons of natural gas. Think of the boon it would be to our state if, gosh, we could tap that and sell it.
Governor, radical environmentalists, are you listening? Would it matter if you were?
https://coloradosun.com/2023/05/09/colorado-utility-bill-california-drought/