What if the tea party was black?
July 19th, 2010 — Politics, Press
This rap nicely sums up the whole NAACP/Tea Party controversy.
July 19, 2010 No Comments
Race to the what?
June 5th, 2010 — Education, Federal
New doubts about the Chicago Public School's performance pay system for teachers make it clearer that Colorado is desperately trying to recreate a failure.
An early analysis of the system from Mathematica Policy Research "found no evidence that the program raised student test scores." The system "did not have a detectable impact on rates of teacher retention" either, according to the study.
Why should we care in Colorado? Because our entire anything-but-teaching education reform effort now centers on doing whatever U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan did while he was chief of Chicago's public schools. He started the new performance pay system.
We already know that he misled America about the academic results he got in Chicago's schools. This is just more evidence that his miraculous results in Chicago are no more real than the so-called Houston Miracle that led President Bush to pick Roderick Paige as his secretary of education.
The continuing and growing doubts about Chicago should get us thinking. Maybe we should work on really improving our schools, rather than blindly following the latest "reform" fad.
Not likely. For one thing it would cost us money to make sure every child in Colorado gets a good education. And we're broke. Blindly following the Duncan Dream could actually make us money. Last week the state reapplied for a Big Cash Prize in Duncan's Race for the Top contest. Winning could get us $175 million.
There's a catch, of course. We can use the money to restore any of our cuts or to teach students, it all has to go to "reform" administration costs.
On the plus side, wining doesn't require educating students, all we have to do is convince the Secretary that we'll adopt his free-market-solves-everything education ideology without asking any questions.
One question we're consistently not asking is "Race to the what?"
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June 5, 2010 No Comments
Help for Schools, Maybe
May 29th, 2010 — Budget, Education, Federal
Colorado could get up to $350 million from the federal government to avoid laying off teachers, without having to enter a contest. That amount could avoid nearly all of the cuts for next school year, if it comes through in time.
The money is in a bill the U.S. House will soon be debating. As of now, the bill would divvy up $23 billion among all 50 states. A preliminary estimate puts Colorado's share at about $350 million.
Of course the bill would have to pass for us to get the money, but at least it's a possibility.
The catch? It's only for one year. Our cuts to K-12 are permanent, so we'd still eliminate the jobs — just a year after we thought.
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May 29, 2010 No Comments
Talk Back: Union presses Ritter on pay-raise bill
May 21st, 2010 — Economy, Labor, Press, Talk Back
This story is getting a lot of press attention partially because the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Post management don't like it. It's frustrating because neither group has taken the time to learn about problems with the current state compensation system and how this bill addresses them.
It's hard to understand why either group even cares about this bill; they apparently believe the bill will give some benefit to state employees (beyond general good management) and that goes against their general bias against employees.
Talk Back responds to media coverage with my comments in blue.
___
By Tim Hoover
The Denver Post
Posted: 05/20/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
The largest union representing state employees has launched a campaign urging Gov. Bill Ritter to sign legislation revamping the pay-raise system for state workers. >The effort by Colorado WINS comes amid worry over whether Ritter, who has expressed concerns about House Bill 1409, will veto the bill. Ritter's office has said only that it is giving the bill careful consideration.
"We need to do our due diligence to let the governor know this (bill) is a priority," said Bob Gibson, executive director of Colorado WINS.
The union's website urges WINS members to call the governor's office and express support for the bill, which would move the state from a pay system that is now based primarily on performance to one that would, in theory, grant gradual pay increases as long as workers get satisfactory evaluations.
The current system is not "based primarily on performance." It was originally called "Pay for Performance," but it never lived up to that name, The Ritter Administration changed the name to "Achievement Pay" is partial recognition that it lacks a performance component.
It doesn't even matter if the system includes a performance component or not. The Governor's Deputy Personnel Director testified in committee that the state does a "very bad" job of evaluating employee performance. Very little employee compensation has been based on performance and the minute amount that has been is awarded almost randomly.
"In the final hours of the 2010 Colorado Legislative session, Colorado WINS members helped to pass House Bill 1409 to eliminate the broken 'pay for performance' system," the website says. "But we're not done yet — we need to call Governor Ritter and urge him to sign HB 1409 into law."
Ritter officials have expressed concerns about whether the bill diminishes the governor's power to recommend raises. Under current law, the governor — in his budget recommendations — can call for performance-based pay hikes for employees, but they still must be approved by lawmakers, who write the budget. Ritter then can veto line items in the budget, if he chooses.
The state's current Achievement Pay system included two components: salary survey and performance pay. The Governor can recommend whatever he wants, but the legislature decides whether salary survey, achievement pay, or both get funded and how much money goes into them. The Governor could line-item-veto either of them, but that would kill all of the salary survey or all of the performance pay, not the amount that goes to individual departments or employees. In practice, of course, we haven't been putting any money into either of them. We've cut state employee salaries for this year and next year.
The bill would qualify state employees who are meeting performance standards for 12 annual incremental pay increases, but any pay hikes still would have to be approved by lawmakers. No pay increases would take effect for at least three years, and that's assuming the state had money to fund them.
State employees have had no raises the past two years and had furloughs in the current fiscal year ending in June. They face 2.5 percent pay cuts in the next fiscal year, on top of higher contributions they must make to their pensions.
Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, sponsored the pay-hike bill and said its prospects are shaky.
"The indication I've had is that he (Ritter) is probably going to veto it," said Pommer, who said the governor's office initially agreed to support the bill but got cold feet when the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce came out against it.
"This is the weird thing," Pommer said. "We had an agreement."
But Evan Dreyer, Ritter's spokesman, denied the office broke any deal.
"Not true," Dreyer said. "What's true is that with every piece of legislation, the governor has an open-door policy — where lawmakers, interested parties and constituent groups have the governor's ear and the ear of his staff.
"Not true," says I. Evan Dreyer is wrong. We had an agreement. The Governor's office told us what we would have to put into the bill to get the Governor's approval, we put it in the bill and the Governor's office said he would sign it. Two days later, the Governor's office told us the Governor's position had changed.
The Governor may have an open door-policy, but he's rarely familiar enough with a topic to actually negotiate it. His staff does that. It would be impractical to negotiate with the Governor himself on every issue.
Negotiating with the Governor's staff can be difficult. They, and we, have to assume that they have the authority to negotiate for the Governor. We know that their views can diverge from the Governor's, and that the Governor can change his mind; we're always mindful of that, and the staff is pretty good letting us know when they have to check with the Governor on a point.
I'm using the term "Governor" here in a generic sense. "Governor" doesn't necessarily mean the person; it's usually the consensus among the person and all of his aides. "We need to run this by the Governor," can mean reviewing it with the Governor's legal counsel or chief-of-staff.
To get back to the point, we negotiate all the time and we all know that things change, this was different.
"The legislative process is a dynamic process," he said. "Bills change as they move through committee from one chamber to the other and back to committees."
May 21, 2010 No Comments
Et tu CDE? Et tu O’Brien?
May 12th, 2010 — Budget, Education, Politics, Taxes & Fees
Our official, state web page is pretty bland and not very informative. A few years ago I asked if I could substitute this site, or at least link to it. "No," was the answer. The state pays for the official page and state money can't support anything political or partisan.
I single out Democrats for an obvious reason; to vote for Senate Bill 10-191 – aka the teacher evaluation and tenure bill – means bucking the Colorado Education Association, the most powerful education interest group in the state. The CEA is pulling out all the stops – including fear-mongering, arm-twisting and fact-twisting – to defeat this bill.The organization obviously views SB 10-191 as an existential threat; not to teachers but to itself. Why? Because if SB 10-191 becomes law, it means the CEA failed to muster the political force to stop it, despite having both houses of the legislature and the governorship in the hands of the Democratic Party, CEA’s longtime soulmate.
Perhaps CEA should strive to be more honest, or at least to do its homework by reading this thorough and careful analysis from the Tax Foundation (H/T Free Colorado). Among other things, the analysis shows that Amazon taxes:
- Are “unlikely to produce revenue in the near-term”
- Make the playing field less (not more) level between brick-and-mortar businesses and their Internet-based counterparts “because they require Internet-based businesses to track thousands of sales tax bases and rates while brick-and-mortar businesses need to track only one”
- “Undermine legal certainty, burden interstate commerce, and harm economic growth”
So maybe CEA is ignorant of tax policy and chose to accept the official fiscal note that claimed Colorado’s Amazon Tax (aka HB 1193) would raise nearly $5 million more state revenue per year. Or maybe CEA is just trying to provide cover for its allies in the legislative majority at the State Capitol.CEA’s choice in supporting tax policies conveniently appears less dependent on how the policies affect school funding than on how they affect the interests of its Left-leaning political coalition.
May 12, 2010 No Comments
Picked clean
May 11th, 2010 — Bills, Budget
Ever wonder what happens when a cow falls into piranha-infested waters? It's probably something like what happened when HB 10-1338 moved through the legislature.
If you haven't noticed, we're broke. That makes it pretty hard for legislators to pass bills that cost money — "bills with a fiscal note" in legislative jargon. As a result, a lot of legislators are positioned to pounce on any money that becomes available.
HB10- 1338 increased eligibility for parole, and that saves prison costs: $2.3 million according to the bill's fiscal note. Think fat cow carcass.
Rep. Judd saw it coming; in House Approps he took $300,000 to to pay for a bill he passed last year (HB 09-1137) that had been languishing for lack of funding. The money will pay the IT costs of intercepting casino payouts to people who owe restitution from old crimes.
That started the feeding frenzy. JBC analyst Carolyn Kampman started worrying that we might overfeed and spend more than the bill is saving. She started keeping track. The negative (red) numbers are savings.
| Bill Expenditures "Tied" to Savings in H.B. 10-1338 | ||
| GF Impact | ||
| Bill No | Short Title | FY 2010-11 |
| H.B. 10-1338 | Probation Eligible Two Prior Felony | (2,233,182) |
| H.B. 09-1137 | Approp to implement HB 09-1137 | 336,057 |
| Approp for child welfare services | 1,020,806 | |
| H.B. 10-1081 | Money Laundering Criminal Fraud | 91,370 |
| H.B. 10-1176 | Require Government Recovery Audits | 161,643 |
| H.B. 10-1277 | Sexual Conduct in Correctional Facility | 83,861 |
| H.B. 10-1347 | DUI Penalties | 438,518 |
| H.B. 10-1364 | Sex Offender Management Board | 100,926 |
| TOTALS: | (1) | |
Extravagant? No way, we stopped appropriating with a dollar to spare.
May 11, 2010 No Comments
Senate update on tax break accountability bill
May 8th, 2010 — Bills, Taxes & Fees
In the Senate, accountability doesn't extend to us or businesses that get tax breaks and subsidies. The Senate on Friday killed a bill that would have taken the first step toward verifying whether our supposedly job-creating incentives actually create any jobs.
No surprise really. The Governor and the so-called business committee hated the bill. They, along with some House members went so far as to call it anti-business.
May 8, 2010 No Comments
