Ooops! Another Hicken-Blooper!

The Denver Post dropped a bomb on liberal Governor John Hickenlooper this morning.  Remember that employee overhaul that we all voted on that he promised wouldn’t cost Colorado taxpayers money?  Yeah, not surprisingly, it actually costs taxpayers money – tens of millions, in fact. The bait and switch happened on Amendment S, which allows the Governor to staff up quickly to more “effectively” implement the policies that he’s charged with implementing.  Hindsight being 20/20, of course that would translate into a bloated bureaucracy.

While the blue book that accompanied the voting suggested that the financial impact would be minimal, The Denver Post‘s analysis found the reality to be far different:

However, new hiring and moving worker positions from rank-and-file to at-will, while also increasing rank-and-file levels, resulted in a net increase of more than 300 at-will employees — who serve at the pleasure of their bosses and don’t receive traditional state worker protections — in executive branch employees between November 2012 and January of this year, The Post’s analysis found….

…The increase for at-will executive branch salaries jumped more than 91 percent over total at-will salaries in 2012 — from $31.4 million to $59.5 million — for the period.

The natural question is who will pay for all of these salaries.  This analysis also brings up an important point – Hick is batting zero for two on the amendments.  He backed this in 2012 and, then, Amendment 66 – the billion dollar tax increase – in 2013.  Can Colorado afford another term of Hick’s hikes?