About a week and a half ago we heard news that Colorado Governor Bill Ritter was going to make a big announcement about budget cuts in order to balance the budget that is $320 million in the hole. What was worrisome was that he was eying Amendment 35 monies to help fill it (among many other programs). Colorado Amendment 35 is the tobacco excise tax that was voted and approved in 2004 to go to health programs and specifically to combat the burden of tobacco in our community. It is also how my program at the health department is funded to do comprehensive, population based work to address the tobacco tolls in our local community.

Well, he made the announcement that they would be looking to cut $7 million from the STEPP -State Tobacco Education and Prevention Partnership- portion of A35. That means that his budget cuts could cost me my job!  This is after they already took $8 million earlier this year.  If they were to take an across the board cut that would mean about a 57% cut to all grantees. This is not the worst of it though. They underestimated the amount in grant reversions that would return to the state and so they are now looking at approximately $10 million in cuts. Then, lo and behold, maybe the estimates for the 09-10 year are low too, so let’s plan on $13 million. Sure, why not. That’s only an 80% cut.

What I don’t understand is why they allowed for the loophole which lets them use tobacco tax funds in a “declared fiscal crisis” to go to the general fund. The people who wrote Amendment 23 for K-12 education were smart and didn’t allow for that kind of pilfering.

The tobacco companies must be laughing their heads off. This seems like deja vu to the Master Settlement fiasco where they did a similar tactic and securitized funds that were meant to offset the health care costs from tobacco use and used them in general fund projects like building roads.

Anyway, our  fate will be decided on October 1st with stop-work orders probably being issued. There is no way with an 80% cut that FTE can be spared as it -mostly- was with the 8 million dollar cut. It seems crazy that in order to “balance the budget” you would create so much unemployment in its wake that will have to be paid out from some other pot (Federal and State Unemployment). What’s the saying? Rob Peter to pay Paul? I think that’s about what it comes down to. Take from a program that is funding itself -and voter approved- to pay for programs that don’t (and aren’t).

Britton and I have been talking about what this could mean for our Puerto Rico plans. It could either mean going there much sooner or much later depending on how we work it. We have to look at challenges like this as opportunities. If we don’t we could go crazy trying to figure out the insane “logic” behind decisions like this.