So as the costs for improvements in transportation, health care distribution and competitive universities grow by the billions, Colorado’s leaders still act coy about the kind of revenue-raising measure they might have to take to the voters in November 2008.Gov. Bill Ritter keeps talking about limiting a money vote to a single ballot initiative.

But Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, insists that those listening to the governor are missing the subordinate clause in his speech.

“The singular word that gets lost is `if,’” Dreyer said.

As in, if there needs to be a revenue-raising ballot measure in 2008 …

Well, here’s another if:

If the governor intends to keep his promises to the people, it’s nearly impossible to see how he can avoid some kind of money measure next year.
Yet Dreyer says “it’s premature to say it’s premature” to talk about this a month before the start of the legislative session.

“The conversation is in process,” Dreyer assured. But it has to involve “legislative leadership and the business community.” It has to include “the temperature of the national economy and the housing market.”

That makes sense. What strains the brain is when Dreyer claims “it’s no slam dunk that there is a recommendation from the governor to go on the ballot (in 2008).”

The governor has had blue ribbon commissions working simultaneously on health care reform, higher education and transportation improvements. The recommended transportation program costs $1.5 billion by itself, paid for, in part, by recommended sales tax and fuel tax increases that must be approved by voters.

In his first state-of-the-state speech, Ritter told Coloradans they would have near universal access to health care by 2010. That’s two years hither. While the blue ribbon commission on health care reform won’t be offering options until the end of January, it is disingenuous to suggest that those options will come with a price tag that can be met in the near term merely by increasing efficiency.

Even the most cost-efficient and money-saving health care reform plan – a single-payer system – involves a tax increase to replace private health insurance premiums.

Looming in the wings meanwhile is a major fiscal policy reform pushed by Democratic House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. Romanoff expects a discussion in the upcoming session of his plan to simultaneously fix structural problems with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which cause the government to starve itself in bad economic times, and Amendment 23, which constitutionally requires automatic increases in funding for public education from kindergarten through high school.

Romanoff proposes to fix these competing mandates, along with a couple of other fiscal tweaks, in a two-pronged ballot measure. The first would ask voters to suspend the state’s “single subject” rule on ballot initiatives one time. The second ballot measure would bring permanent reform of TABOR and Amendment 23, as well as the other tweaks, to the voters in a single ballot item.

If you want to know how serious the structural problems are, consider that Republican state Rep. and would-be state Sen. Al White has suggested a constitutional convention to deal with the same concerns.

A constitutional convention could open every part of the Colorado Constitution to renegade proposals, Romanoff worries. A convention would also take three votes of the citizens rather than two to make the desired fiscal fix, Romanoff said – one vote to call the convention, one vote to approve a way to pick delegates and one vote to approve the actions taken to change the constitution.

But here’s the kicker: While Romanoff’s and White’s proposals will give the state badly needed flexibility in reallocating existing resources, neither will free up enough money to fund all of the transportation recommendations and health care and higher education needs.

That brings you back to new sources of revenue and ridiculously tight lips.

On the one hand, Romanoff says: “We don’t start with the presumption that there must be a (revenue-raising) ballot issue in 2008 at all costs.”

Then, he turns around and says that the existing revenue stream is not enough to fund the transportation recommendations, health care reform and higher education simultaneously.

“We’re out of gimmicks,” the Speaker admitted.

But unfortunately, not out of double talk.

“Transportation is like comfortable underwear. It’s not fun to buy. But you must have it. And you want it to be clean and without holes.”

That homespun humor will be needed to sell the commission’s recommendation to the governor. The billion-and-a-half-dollar program the commission likes must be paid for with tax and fee increases. The sources of money the commission suggests won’t bring a smile to many faces, and under TABOR – Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights – at least three of the five revenue sources will require a vote of the people.

The blue ribbon commission recommends an average increase of $100 in vehicle registration fees and an additional $6 per day tax on rental cars and hotel rooms. The General Assembly can probably take care of those two things legislatively.

But a 13-cent-per-gallon hike in the motor fuel tax, a .35 percent increase in the sales tax and a bump of 1.7 percent in the fossil fuel severance tax must go on the ballot.

With Gov. Bill Ritter’s desire to put only one revenue measure to a vote in 2008, that’s a problem.

“It could be multiple increases under one question and meet the single subject rule,” Carla Perez, Ritter’s liaison to the commission, told me.

And I could dribble like Allen Iverson.

With health care reform scheduled to kick in by 2010 and a higher ed program still needing lots more funding to remain competitive, the battle of the buck could leave taxpayers’ wallets wounded.

Convincing the public that adequate health care, great schools and good roads are the three prongs on which Colorado’s economy depends will be essential. That’s why when it finished debating its recommendations at a day-long meeting Thursday, the blue ribbon transportation commission got a PR lesson.

“Most people think transportation is free,” commission member and Chamber of Commerce big wig Joe Blake reminded his fellows.

“People need to understand what transportation means in their daily lives,” noted PR woman Kate Horle, who urged commissioners to talk to their fellow citizens as they would talk to her 95-year-old grandmother.

For sure, the simple approach is the best. But even if commissioners and the governor take Horle’s advice and never use terms like “multi-modal” in their conversations, this is going to require a heck of a sales job.

You could tell that in the debate over funding sources. The commission nixed a plan that would have increased the fuel tax 100 percent from 22 cents to 44 cents a gallon.

“It’s an easy `No’ campaign to run when you talk about doubling the gas tax,” one commissioner said.

Getting $500 million from higher vehicle registration fees and getting voter approval for three tax increases isn’t going to be any picnic either.

Only one option that the transportation commission considered would have allowed a strictly legislative fix. That was a half-billion-dollar plan billed as “safety only.”

The commissioners agreed that was not enough. Ironically, the toughest debate was not about the amount of money that needed to be spent, although commission co-chairman Doug Aden suggested that putting forward a $2 billion plan might “cause the report to lose credibility.” The toughest debate centered on the balance between mass transit and highway expansion.

It was a dilemma that the commissioners never quite resolved. But their recommendation to spend $450 million of their $1.5 billion program on mass transit does move the state in an unprecedented direction.

Provided, that is, that the taxpayers don’t get their underwear in a wad when they are called upon to pay for it.

Support for the bi-partisan plan to cover more children whose parents can’t afford health insurance will not be enough to turn the measure into law.So expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program – or SCHIP – gets to be the Achilles heel in the re-election campaigns of every member of Congress who opposed it.

Unless they undergo last-minute conversions, that will include Colorado Republican Representatives Marilyn Musgrave, Doug Lamborn and Tom Tancredo. The trio has spouted the White House line on SCHIP – that it is a step toward government-administered health care. You know, the bogeyman of “socialized medicine.”

SCHIP is no more “socialized medicine” than many current forms of health care finance, including the federal workers health insurance programs that Musgrave, Lamborn and Tancredo enjoy.

Don’t look for them to give that perk up for the cause.

Do look for the SCHIP veto to play not only in Congressional races, but also state elections in 2008.

“There has been a real shift in how the public cares about health care,” Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said Monday. “It is number one in the minds of Coloradans. The voting public is concerned about the uninsured. So I do think it will play a role in state elections. (SCHIP) may not be the only issue, but it will be a significant issue that can make inroads with independents and moderate Republicans.”

The governor’s take is based in part on a recent state survey by pollster Floyd Ciruli that showed concerns about health care have moved past taxes as the chief interest of potential voters in Colorado.

That should sound the alarm for opponents of SCHIP. Instead, at the state and federal level, they have decided to make a stand by denying preventive health care to kids. The right wing of the Republican Party has gone so far as to attack a brain-damaged 12-year-old who called out Bush on the veto.

They say the kid lives in a $400,000 house and represents the kind of person who doesn’t need government-subsidized insurance. The child’s family bought the house several years ago for $55,000 in a sketchy neighborhood that got better. But that is beside the point.

You can argue, as many opponents do, that expanding SCHIP coverage to kids whose household incomes are several times the federal poverty level gives government insurance to those who don’t need it. But in the end, you argue to deny children efficient and affordable medical treatment.

In other words, you argue to hurt kids. That is a huge political gamble.

“There is,” said Udall, “a moral component to this.”

There are also built-in savings, if that is all you care about.

“When you have children insured,” Udall pointed out, “they don’t go to the emergency room, which is expensive.”

And mandatory. The law requires that emergency rooms treat the sick regardless of their ability to pay. The costs of indigent care are passed along in the form of increased health insurance premiums paid by workers and employers. Those rising costs then force more workers and employers to have to cancel health insurance benefits, which then leave more uninsured families headed for the emergency room.

It is a vicious cycle.

This is why the Senate, divided almost equally between Democrats and Republicans, passed SCHIP expansion with 68 votes, enough to override a presidential veto.

With the looming defeat of the veto override in the House, children’s health insurance is about to become a huge wedge issue in the 2008 federal and state elections.

Ritter said he has never seen more bi-partisan support in the National Governor’s Association than he saw for expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“Forty-three governors supported it, including 16 Republicans,” Ritter said. “The president’s (alternative plan to expand the program by $5 billion a year) doesn’t keep up with medical inflation. That means less services for kids already covered.”

Or it could mean dropping kids from the program.

Either way, the president’s supporters have a big problem.

Udall remains focused on getting the override measure passed on Thursday. If it fails, he said, “my proposal is to pass the bill again, and send it back to the president.”

As for the 2008 elections, added Udall, “let the chips fall where they may.”

Or the SCHIP’s.