Twenty Years Ago This Week in The Colorado Statesman … A new welfare law was finally agreed upon and the Legislature narrowly averted a special session.

“That’s the art of compromise,” Gov. Roy Romer said. He added that he would sign the latest version of the state’s welfare reform law that had successfully met the requirements of new federal laws while passing muster on both sides of the Legislature’s aisle.

Earlier in the session, Romer vetoed HB97-1166 because it contained an opt-out program for four Colorado counties. He then threatened to veto SB97-120 as well because it let counties issue vouchers instead of giving minimum cash allowances set by the state.

House Speaker Chuck Berry, R-Colorado Springs, dropped his demands for more county authority and the final welfare reform compromise met with Romer’s approval.

Sen. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, the main sponsor of SB 120 and co-sponsor of HB 1166, said that he represented a middle ground between Romer’s insistence on statewide minimums and Berry’s wish to give complete authority to the counties. Coffman said the result both “pleased and relieved” him.

“We had the House with the focus on the taxpayer, and the Senate with a focus on the poor,” Coffman said. “Our challenge was to craft a bill that was fair to the taxpayers and compassionate to the poor.”

The final version allowed counties to set up benefit programs for welfare recipients, but only after meeting statewide minimums. The bill also included job training and eduction, designed to get people off welfare and into work within two years.

It called for individual counties to negotiate “Individual Responsibility” contracts with recipients and punish violators. Romer had set criteria that were required to be in any welfare reform bill before he signed it into law.

… Ten Years Ago … Gov. Bill Ritter signed his controversial School Finance Act into law and acknowledged that supporting his proposal to amend Senate Bill 07-199 — a move that froze mill levy rates — was politically risky for Democrats in swing districts.

“I’ll die in a foxhole with legislators who look me in the eye and say, I know this is difficult, but it’s the right thing to do and I’ll do it with you,” Ritter promised.

Republicans, however, had criticized the measure as a “massive tax increase.” House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker, wrote in a May 7 newsletter, “It would be a lot to ask the taxpayers to give up an additional $1.7 billion over the next ten years, but the governor didn’t even ask … Now, instead of mill levies (tax rates) adjusting down when your property value increases to keep your property taxes down, the rate stays the same. Translation: tax increase.”

The mill levy freeze’s purpose was to generate extra funding for schools over the next decade. “We were elected by the voters of this state to actually fix problems. One of those problems was the state education fund and what was happening with respect to the state chair of K-12 funding over time,” Ritter said.

May, along with other Republicans, accused Ritter of circumventing TABOR by passing a funding boost for the state through the Legislature instead of putting it on the ballot, as a normal tax increase would have to be approved.

Independence Institute President Jon Caldara, who led the fight against Referendum C in 2005, announced he would file suit to try to halt the bill before it was implemented. “They’ve thumbed their noses at the constitution,” Caldara said.

Caldara went so far as to equate the plan with “fiscal date rape” in a May 9 broadcast on 850 KOA, a remark that drew a sharp rebuke from Colorado state Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak.

Waak said the Democrats welcomed “spirited debate” on any topic, but that Caldara’s comments were “anything but respectful” because they equated taxes with an “atrocity committed against women.”

The Independence Institute seemed to have Colorado Attorney General John Suthers on its side though. Caldara cited Suthers’ April opinion that said Ritter’s mill levy freeze was indeed a tax increase and so must be approved by a statewide vote.