Sen. Michael Johnston will soon introduce a “school finance” bill requiring, news reports say, $1,100,000,000 in higher taxes for Colorado. Instead of raising taxes, we should sensibly curb spending by our public schools.

Ways to Save Education Dollars

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice reports that Colorado schools would annually save $526,492,634 if administrative staff had not grown more than twice as fast as our state’s student population. Such administrative cost restraint would cover about half of the tab for Johnston’s bill.

We are not talking classroom teachers here.  Our state has more non-classroom employees than classroom teachers in our public schools. 

Johnston’s not doing anything, however, about budget-busting numbers of bureaucrats.

Even more solutions exist.

Senator David Balmer tried to prevent raids on state support for public schools, but Democrats killed his bill. State Treasurer Walker Stapleton wants to reform the teachers’ retirement program so it won’t suck up one-fifth of all school district salary costs. Internet learning programs and having education spending follow each child (including to a private school) are also absent from the Johnston draft.

We Should Protect Taxpayers

The Johnston bill’s estimated cost is $567 per household in our state. Annually.

January’s Democrat-supported tax increases reduced Americans’ incomes by half a trillion dollars, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported.

Americans already said they would cut spending due to January’s tax hikes. Restaurants, entertainment venues, towns dependent on tourism and every retail establishment will take a hit. Coloradan’s who work in these places will see their paychecks shrink. Even after you’ve paid higher taxes, you could be harmed again by the Johnston bill.

To avoid playing Insta-Tax this November requires a different response than Johnston offered when he dismissively told a group, “We can’t solve every problem everybody wants to solve.”

Senator Johnston, the people of Colorado expect legislators to solve problems … not create them by raising our taxes.