Colorado Governor Bill Ritter unveiled his latest budget, and it is a combination of an offense to common sense, paper thin pandering to conservatives, and more of the same budgetary manipulation to encourage tax increases that have been the Ritter trademark.

Ritter claims that the budget is “conservative,” which means a spending increase of 5%, about twice what TABOR would otherwise allow, mostly spent on over 1300 new state employees. Ritter has ridden the wave of Ref. C to explode the state budget during his tenure. Ritter’s budget is a 43% increase over the 2004 budget that preceded his election as governor. The State is not short on funds.

Ritter wants to establish a “rainy day fund,” which presumably would not be funded during this year of economic recession. Why, after years of submitting budgets did Ritter choose 2008 to introduce a reserve fund? Only because Amendment 59 just failed in the voting booth. 59 would have repealed TABOR forever, allowing the State to keep all tax revenues. Ritter’s goal is to avoid tax refunds and to expand spending. The next best solution, absent repealing TABOR, is to keep the money in a savings account. Ritter’s priorities are: 1. Tax, 2. Spend, 3. Hoard. Ritter would not have considered a reserve fund so long as he could have spent the money, hence the cynical timing. True fiscal conservatives should take note and remain cautious.

Ritter has not given up on a tax increase, as his transportation budget shows. Rather than cut wasteful spending on bogus “green” initiatives, or freeze the hiring of new bureaucrats, Ritter has proposed cutting road budgets. Again, this is a cynical manipulation of the budget process to encourage tax increases. Ritter and his Democrat allies will spend all the available tax money on their pet projects, and then claim poverty when spending on legitimate items, like roads, falls short. Indeed, Democrats are already calling for license plate fee increases to fund transportation. The money is already there, but Ritter’s shell game will try to deceive voters into passing yet another tax increase.

Every year, Colorado tax and spend Democrats plead poverty, try to raise taxes, all the while spending wastefully. Voters should say no to more waste, corruption, and lies.