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I moved to Colorado several years ago, just about the time TABOR went into effect. At that time, Colorado was doing okay, not great, but there were government services and things worked pretty well. We put my then 10 year old step-daughter into public school, and she did okay in her class of 21 kids.
Each year, her class sizes have gotten larger, the books in her school library have gotten older (you know we have a problem when the history section is still talking about Kruschev.... as current), and we've had to pay for more and more of her annual basics. Not that I mind, we could afford it, but a lot of her peers have parents who are struggling. Her text books, too, keep suffering. We've seen her schools struggle for funding, finally selling out to Coca-cola, Pepsi, Burger King, and other fast foods and such, putting advertising on the school busses, drink machines in the halls ( the ones in the elementary school bother me a lot) and fast food in the cafeteria. This isn't to buy new equipment, or to do something neat, like take the kids on a week long field trip to Dinosaur National Monument. This advertising revenue is to meet the budget. This is to buy books, pay the electric bill, and pay salaries.
Drop out rates are the 48th worst in the country, one in three students falls behind to a point where s/he can't catch up, and there's less money every year for them. We lose a lot of bilingual and immigrant kids to dropping out because we just don't have the resources to keep them in school. Those kids usually ended up in my hands. (more about what I do below.)
Teachers are terribly underpaid, even when compared to the national average, which isn't great. And because of the advertising issues, teachers have to allow sodas, candy and other junk and snack foods into the class room during school hours. Pair this rush of sugar with over-crowded, over-heated in spring and fall, under heated in winter classrooms, and yes, it's hard for the kids to concentrate or the teachers to do a good job. We lose a lot of very good teachers every year to burn out and the fact that they can make as much or more money with fewer headaches working as a bartender or a meter reader.
We moved here because I wanted out of the (criminally underfunded) community mental health system in Arizona. I'm a therapist, and I like community mental health, or I did until I got here. I quit a couple of years ago after not getting a Cost of Living raise since I started (this with stellar reviews) because TABOR had not allowed for more funding of the community mental health care system, though the population was growing. I was promised a small raise every quarter, but the money could never be found. We always needed another staff member more, and I wasn't the only one who couldn't get a raise. Comm care is critical to the functioning of the community - it keeps domestic difficulties from blossoming into domestic murders, prevents significant amounts of escalating child abuse, prevents suicide and homicide by treating depression and anger management issues and helps members of the community who would otherwise be forced to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol turn their lives around, cope effectively with stress, and be productive members of the community. It's not a luxury. The fact is, the situation here is worse than it is in Arizona. That's hard to do.
Every kid that came into my hands is there basically on a last chance. I was their last stop before they start the process of juvenile prison, adult prison, home monitoring, and/or death in a violent crime. I worked primarily with anger management, juvenile direction, and depression. They go together. At the beginning of my time in Colorado, I could see a specific client about twice a week, once for individual therapy and once for group. I also had about 10 family sessions a week. By the end of my work in comm care, I was seeing a client once every two weeks (if I was lucky) for group and once a month individually. My family session spaces were cut in half, but my client roster for family therapy doubled. Needless to say, my recidivism rates shot though the roof (as did those of my colleagues). In the beginning of my time in Colorado, most of my clients left my care because they didn't need me anymore and were pretty healthy. A lot went on to college, or back to high school to complete their diplomas. The year I quit was the year that my loss of client statistics reversed, and I lost more kids to what I consider "bad outcomes" (suicide, homicide, detention in a state or federal prison) than I did to either attrition or "has completed course and no longer needs care". (The percentages were 35%, 15%, 30%, respectively, and 20% "other" - moved out of state, changed therapists, moved to new clinic, etc.)
I went into private practice because we couldn't afford for me to continue in comm care. (The bubble killed my partner's programming job.) During my time in comm care, I went from a client load of 250 clients every two weeks (including group therapy and 15 minute "med checks") to more than 500. My work load doubled for less than the same pay (when you figure inflation.) The expectations were that I would be a de facto prescriber, handing out meds rather than doing any sort of cognitive therapy or real mental health work. I can't prescribe - I'm a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. (Our one psychiatrist spent all of her time writing scrips. She rarely saw the client she was writing them for, relying instead on our notes.)
I also saw the effect on my clients. As comm care helps primarily those who are under court ordered care or are using Medicaid/Medicare, I saw clients that were generally within 125% of the federal poverty line. I saw their situations get worse - food stamps would not increase, though the price of groceries would go up; they'd lose a section 8 or have it reduced; one family lost their school lunches and breakfasts. I have to be honest and say that one of the reasons I quit was because I can't fight the war on poverty by myself. And I can't fix the anger problems of a fourteen year old boy who has gone to bed hungry on many nights, who has never had a new pair of shoes, new jeans or a professional hair cut when he's surrounded by millions of images of wealth and people that are rich. He has a right to be angry. Emergency food pantries are suffering here because more and more people are relying on them regularly, because every day is an emergency.
Finally, our infrastructure is suffering. Our roads are in need of maintenance and reconstruction - the major north south corridor in the eastern part of the state is inadequate for our current traffic needs from north of Denver to Pueblo. They're inadequate NOW, and growth is happening. We need to extend and improve our mass transit system, now. Our mass transit system is strained, and while we need it if we are to preserve even breathable air or improve our chronic traffic congestion, the money's gone. Extending and adding to our mass transit system is going to be nearly impossible. Our schools, public buildings, libraries are all in need of repair. We have stopped improving our State Parks (which are a major source of income, in the form of tourist dollars) and are letting them deteriorate, or worse, selling them off. We're having problems preserving and acquiring parks and open space as we grow. Our water preservation and containment systems are inadequate, our conservation system's a joke, and this in an arid state that needs water.
I'm biased, I suppose. I've seen what this amendment does to the poorest of our citizens. TABOR doesn't affect me much directly - because I'm rich enough to own a car, to be able to escape to the mountains and the federal National parks when I need to be away from the stress. I don't need food stamps, Medicare or Medicaid, AFDC, or free school lunches. But I'm not everyone. If I had to say now TABOR affects me, I'd have to say, not that much. But how it affects me, in the context of my society, and how it affects my community? It's sucking the lifeblood out of us.
Update: This was written in May. I was writing primarily about the time period around 1998-2000. (I'm no longer married to my step-daughter's father, and my new husband - also a professional electron pusher - has weathered the economy somewhat better, well enough that I was able to go back to 90% research and 10% consulting and get out of therapeutic psychology entirely. I needed to, after those years in Colorado Springs. It was soul-sucking work.) In November, we did pass a sales tax increase to improve public transit via rail, but it will take 10 years to fully implement, and it will not serve the areas that need it most, the rapidly growing North and North East Metro areas. However, the economy is not improving and it's still hard to get even a McJob. I have a friend, a highly skilled technical illustrator, who looked for 15 months before she got a job at Target. There have been few job creation efforts. The state budget is still in arrears, and from what I know of my colleagues who are still working in comm. mental health, the situation has continued to deteriorate.
To finance TABOR budget shortfalls, we had to rescind the tax benefit that forgave property taxes to senior citizens. When property taxes can be as much as $6-7K on a 40 year old house, that hurts them.
The schools are spending far more of their time teaching to the state mandated achievement tests and less on critical thinking. They've also sunk into some right wing programs rather than teach (forced speech in the recitation of the Pledge rather than teaching civics, an attempt to put In God We Trust plaques in every classroom rather than teach the Constitution, sending parents to their ministers when a behavioral problem arises...). It's pretty messy.
Politicat.
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