Well, it’s that time again. Time for us at the Independence Institute to say, “I told you so.” It’s quite easy to say I told you so when you have FasTracks around. Anyone can do it really. All you have to do is this: read RTD’s cost estimates and completion dates and… not believe a word of it. They continue to underestimate costs and completion dates for every single one of their rail lines. And why shouldn’t they? It’s the best strategy for selling an inefficient, bloated public works project to voters. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet caught on that “X amount of dollars” really means “X times 5 amount of money.” And “completed by year 20XX” really means “completed by year 20XX + 30 years.”

It’s been the same story, full of lies and deceptions since the 1970’s. Check out this short video we made chronicling RTD’s lies over the years.

The question remains: will voters be fooled a third time? We know RTD will ask for more money. That’s for sure. We just don’t know when they’ll come groveling back to voters to fund the same project yet again.

How many times are you willing to pay for the same project?

Hellooooo Intertube world! Things are exploding over here at Independence. It seems everyone around our little liberty village has something to say. First up, we’ve got some brand new Issue Papers. Under the guidance of Amy Oliver, Colorado’s Queen of Transparency, Kyle Huwa wrote Issue Paper number 6 titled, Governor’s Energy Office Needs a Dose of Sunshine. From the executive summary:

The Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) of the State of Colorado spent a total of $121,652,884.75 from January 2008 to November 2010. This report aims to clarify and provide transparency to the GEO’s spending. Despite best efforts, the exact nature of many of the expenditures remains unclear.

Indeed, the governor’s energy office’s spending remains unclear to the very people who made that spending possible – us taxpayers. Let us check the books!

Next up we have an extremely timely Issue Paper from Senior Fellow and ex-Professor of Economics at CU Barry Poulson. Along with co-author John Merrifield of the University of Texas, Barry wrote Issue Paper number 7, Proposition 103: What is the Cost to Colorado Taxpayers? It turns out (surprise surprise) that the estimated $2.9 billion tax increase known as Prop 103 will actually cost taxpayers closer to $6 billion. Not to mention over 11,000 jobs and a whopping $2,711 per household! But hey, it’s “for the children” right?

While we’re on the subject, I’d like to remind everyone about a free event coming up that will focus on our state’s budget issues with a long-term view. It’s called Colorado’s Long-Term Budget Dilemma: Two Perspectives. The event is this Tuesday the 11th, downtown at the Denver Press Club. So who are the two perspectives? One will be our very own Fiscal Policy Center Director Penn Pfiffner, who will talk about the findings from our Citizens’ Budget project. The other perspective will be Phyllis Resnick, principal economist for DU’s Center for Colorado’s Economic Future who will be presenting the findings from DU’s study, Financing Colorado’s Future: An Analysis of the Fiscal Sustainability of State Government. We hope you’ll join us for this informative and FREE event next week!

In other exciting news, Transportation expert and Independence Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole will be in town next week! In case you are unfamiliar with Randal, you can check out his blog, The Antiplanner and his latest book, “Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to do About It.” Randal will be in town for just a couple days but in that short time he’ll be hosting three events. The first is on Tuesday the 11th at Gander Mountain in Thornton. Randal will be presenting to Hear Us Now on his book, “The Best Laid Plans.” The event is free and will start at 6pm. On Wednesday the 12th, Randal will be heading up to the Olive Garden in Boulder for a lunch event. Here are the details for the Boulder event found on the Land Use Coalition’s webpage. Finally, that same Wednesday the 12th, Randal is going to be the featured speaker at a special Liberty on the Rocks event. Here are the event details:

The True Environmental Impact of Rail ProjectsConverse and drink with fellow liberty enthusiasts on Wednesday, October 12 at Choppers Sports Grill in Cherry Creek from 7-9 pm!

Our special guest for this bonus happy hour will be Randal O’Toole of the CATO Institute, who will spend 10-15 minutes (followed by Q & A) discussing the harmful impact high speed rail has on the environment (despite claims that it is about “going green”).

When: Wednesday, October 12 from 7-9 pm
Where: Choppers Sports Grill | 80 S. Madison Street in Denver (in the back room)

It’s no secret the cost of investigative journalism is becoming prohibitive in the 21st century. Gone are the days when newspapers employed investigative teams to dig up dirt on politicians and wasteful government. Sure you can blame the Internet, but you’d have to confess that the Internet simultaneously killed the old investigative journalist guard and replaced it with the new, more nimble Internet investigative guard. Now anyone who has a cheap netbook, Internet connection, and a hot tip can play investigative journalist. (Thanks WordPress!) Unfortunately, publishing great scoops on your own website doesn’t automatically mean that it will get the attention that it probably deserves. This is one advantage the old media and it’s decimated force of investigative journalists still has on us. Therefore, when Independence Institute investigative journalist Todd Shepherd breaks something on our Independence Investigates website, he is delighted when the old media picks up on it. And sometimes, when old media echoes a breaking investigation loud enough, real changes occur in the real world.

Let me give you an example.

In February of this year, Todd broke a rather sickening story about sex offenders registering addresses with the state at locations of state-subsidized child care providers. Take a look at the original report here. Chuck Plunkett of the Denver Post reported on Todd’s investigation that same day – on the virtual pages of the Post. Sure enough, five months later the state removed 12 daycare providers from the registry thanks to Todd’s investigation. No doubt Chuck’s write-up in the state’s largest newspaper helped give legs to Todd’s work, which lead to the subsequent action by the state to rectify the situation. This is but one example of how new media and old media help each other.

Let me present you with the latest example. This Sunday Todd broke a story showing emails from CDOT employees discussing possible gas tax hikes and new taxes on fuel efficient vehicles. The next day, semi-old media picked the story up on their website. The prolific Michael Roberts of the Westword echoed Todd’s story on the Latest Word. You’ll notice in Michael’s piece that he gives a lot of love to the Independence Institute as well (look at our logo in all its glory). This kind of exposure is great for us. And great for new media in general.

A big thanks needs to go out to the Denver Post and publications like the Westword for reporting on our investigations. We have a harder time effecting change without you guys. And of course, thanks to Todd Shepherd for continually breaking huge stories. Taxpayers, ratepayers, and fans of transparency owe a lot to your work.

If you’ve lived in the Denver metro area in the last decade, you’re likely to be familiar with the light rail fiasco called FasTracks. You’re probably aware that voters approved the project in 2004 and with it, many claims about hundreds of miles of rail in and around Denver. For just a few pennies on a $10 transaction, we were promised less traffic, better connectivity, easier living, convenience, and of course, a cleaner environment. You’re also aware that from the very beginning, the Independence Institute warned that this ambitious project was doomed. Our transportation expert Randal O’Toole predicted that FasTracks would be under funded and over budget. He was right. He also proved that empty rail cars would pollute a heck of a lot more than cars do. He was right. We also predicted that RTD would have to come back to voters for another tax increase to continue the failed rail experiment. We were right. They continue to mull tax increases each year.

Now it seems like Denver’s “success” in passing a tax increase to fund a failed public transportation project caught the eye of the central planners in Atlanta. Because of their heavy congestion, they are studying the fine art of selling a transportation tax increase according to this article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. They are looking to Denver for inspiration for their own tax increases and silly transportation projects. For some bizarre reason, the article heaps praise on our FasTracks project as if it were a success. Oh, I get it. That’s step number 1 in selling a tax increase to voters: pretend the massive transportation failures in other states were actually successes. By the time you reach the bottom of the article, I’m quoted – a lone voice in a wilderness of doomed central planning.

If I had to do it over again, I would have said, “Please study our tax increase in 2004 and our failed FasTracks experiment. Please! So that you don’t repeat the same mistake!”

Since the moment it was passed, politicians have been trying to circumvent TABOR and its restrictions on taxes and debt. Sometimes their attempts fail, but sometimes they are wildly successful. Take for example the 2009 FASTER legislation. This bill created the Colorado Bridge Enterprise – a government owned business tasked with fixing and maintaining bridges within the state. If that sounds eerily familiar to what CDOT is supposed to do, it should. FASTER was a quick way to bypass the restrictions that CDOT would face in raising money to repair bridges. In other words, FASTER was a quick way to grab taxpayer money without asking us first.

How did FASTER manage to do that? Easy. It established a new tax, I mean “fee” in the form of higher vehicle registration costs for every single car registered in the state. It amounted to about $23 per car, per year totaling almost $100 million. The evidence that this “fee” increase is actually a tax is quite overwhelming. Which means that this tax increase is flagrantly unconstitutional. In just a couple of pages, Tom Ryan makes the case in this Independence Institute Issue Backgrounder, Colorado Bridge Enterprise: A Case Study in Contravening Colorado’s Constitution.

In addition to looting taxpayers to the tune of almost $100 million in new car registration “fees,” FASTER raised $300 million in debt – also without asking. It’s the old double end-around TABOR: raising unconstitutional taxes AND debt! As Richard Sokol tells it in this Issue Backgrounder, on December 1, 2010, the citizens of Colorado were put on the hook for $300 million dollars… and counting. FASTER was an attempt to repair and maintain Colorado bridges. The car registration tax increase was going to collect around $100 million. Evidently, $100 million was not enough. Richard Sokol explains,

…with a payment of $1.9 million to Wall Street-based bond dealers, the Colorado Bridge Enterprise issued $300 million of debt. Of this amount, $43 million matures in 2027, and $257 million matures in 2040. The interest rate on the debt is about 6.1 percent. The Enterprise will pay about two-thirds (4.0 percent) of the interest rate, and the federal government, through the taxpayer-funded Build America Bond subsidy, pays the rest. So, without a vote of the people, a CDOT Enterprise has issued $300 million in debt that will not be paid off for nearly 30 years.

Pretty slick huh? Loot current taxpayers to the tune of $100 million now and loot future taxpayers for at least $300 million later.

This deceptive story was too juicy to leave for just two Issue Backgrounders, so we had both Tom Ryan and Richard Sokol on my TV show Devils Advocate last week to share the awful details of this scam.

Let’s not forget that what FASTER did to taxpayers was soooo 2009. The hot new trend is to repeal TABOR through the courts. Why attempt to circumvent TABOR with accounting gimmicks and legal fictions when you can just rip it straight out of our state constitution? (Along with every other citizens initiative that was approved since the dawn of time). It’s a bit ironic that some of the same folks who love direct democracy when it comes to political elections, somehow disdain “direct democracy” when it comes to a citizen petitioning their government. David Harsanyi points out in The Blaze that proponents of repealing our electoral college because it’s just too damn representative, also favor getting rid of our initiative process because it’s just too damn… democratic? Huh? Rep. Andy Kerr might want to explain that one to us because I still don’t get it.

This past legislative session was pretty ugly for citizens. And especially ugly for energy ratepayers. But one of the few silver linings to emerge was a bill that could serve as a beacon of transparency for years to come. The bill is HB 1002 sponsored by Rep. BJ Nikkel and Sen. Mike Kopp. Rep. Nikkel worked with CDOT to “develop and maintain a publicly accessible, searchable, online database of its revenue and expenditure data.” Translation: taxpayers can see how CDOT is spending their money. Transparency must be in vogue again because the bill passed unanimously! Transparency Czarina Amy Oliver caught a sneak preview of the website and said that this new CDOT transparency website is what our state transparency website (TOPS) was supposed to look like – but TOPS failed miserably. Hopefully the success of the CDOT website will encourage reforms in the awful state transparency website and encourage other departments to take on the honorable task of showing us citizens where they spend OUR money.

Tune in to Devil’s Advocate this Friday night as I am joined by Rich Sokol of Legacy Capital Group and Tom Ryan of Analyst Strategy Group for an examination of how the 2009 FASTER legislation has allowed Colorado to issue $300 million of new debt without bothering to ask permission from Colorado voters as required by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). That’s Friday, May 27 at 8:30 PM on Colorado Public Television 12. Re-broadcast the following Monday at 1:30 PM.

What do public-sector unions, highway traffic jams and gun rights all have in common? These are all recent topics of Independence Institute writers in the news.

First, in Friday’s Denver Daily News, Independence Institute education policy analyst Ben DeGrow points out, among other things, that while private-sector unions organize against management, public-sector unions actually organize against their fellow citizens. Something that even as pro-labor a president as FDR warned against.

Then in the Sunday Denver Post, transportation research associate John Aldridge makes the case for the use of “hard shoulders” to address congestion problems on both C-470 and the I-70 Mountain Corridor.

Finally, get a double-dose of Independence Institute research director Dave Kopel in the March edition of America’s 1st Freedom magazine. First, Dave explains the “Dark secret of Jim Crow and the racist roots of gun control,” then Dave points out Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s recent misrepresentation of James Madison as part of Breyer’s anti-gun zealotry.

Over a the Denver Post, traffic operations engineer and Independence Institute research associate John Aldridge examines the proposed plan to build an elevated train along Colorado’s I-70 mountain corridor.

Unsurprisingly, he finds a few flaws in the idea:

First, it’s going to take 20 years or more to implement, and second, it will do nothing meaningful to relieve the worst area of congestion from east of Idaho Springs to west of Georgetown.
The plan proposes construction of a passenger train from Golden to the Eagle County Airport, about 118 miles. The plan envisions an electrically powered system running on an elevated track adjacent to the highway. The estimated cost is an astonishing $20 billion, or about 20 times CDOT’s annual budget to manage and maintain the entire state highway system. CDOT freely admits it does not have any money for the project.

Read the whole thing here.