'How conservative are you?' Some hard-line Republicans might murmur that question as a liberal-sounding plan for fixing TABOR looms in November's vote. But longtime Republican leader Bruce Benson won't back down from the fight to boost the state budget.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Fixing tabor

Bruce Benson, oilman and one of the state's leading Republicans, has a telescope pointing toward the state Capitol building on a tripod next to his desk in the 19th floor offices of Benson Mineral Group Inc. He says that, before Gov. Bill Owens took office, people would ask whether he used the scope to keep an eye on former Gov. Roy Romer, a Democrat.

William Mutch, a buttoned-down fellow Republican, has an office in a different building 10 floors lower than Benson's and overlooking a slightly less Colorado-centric view a few blocks away. Mutch, too, is working for passage of Referenda C&D in November. He is the executive director of Colorado Concern, an organization that represents about 80 chief executives from the most important businesses throughout the state. While many executives call up Benson on the phone, the much younger Mutch usually leaves his office to make face-to-face visits with the executive members of his group to convince them to spread the word that Colorado Concern wants Referenda C&D to pass. "The business community wants the state to be the best it can be," he said.

Yet both Benson and Mutch, powerful business advocates for C&D, hold in common a mutual friend who is an arch foe of the measures: former State Sen. John Andrews. Benson, as past Republican Party chair, helped put Andrews in office; and Mutch served as the former senator's chief legislative aide while Andrews was still in the Senate. Andrews, in an interview, concedes that many of his friends are on the opposite side from him on C&D. But he said, "You won't find me on record knocking any fellow Republican, be it my friend Bill Owens, Bruce Benson, or any of the others that honorably believe that this is the right way to go.

"This is not about personalities," Andrews said. "It's simply about a principle of good public policy, and while we're at it, winning politics. Both policy and politics lead me to believe that this huge tax increase and this huge public debt obligation are not the way for Colorado to go."

There are some business executives who agree with Andrews, but judging from the support the referenda have gotten from long lists of business-related organizations, many more business leaders agree with Benson and Mutch.

The business argument for passage of C&D is fairly simple:

The state needs to fund improvements to itself--especially to its roads and highways, public schools and universities--in order to make Colorado attractive to other people around the nation and the globe who might want to move here and add money to the state's economy. The referenda apply a "fix" to what has been called the "ratchet" effect of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR), allowing the state to keep and spend collected state taxes that exceed spending limits set by TABOR, which is an amendment to the state Constitution. Otherwise, the state is forced by TABOR to return the money to taxpayers. The "ratchet" effect has essentially shrunk state government--by keeping money from it--during a four-year economic slowdown. But once shrunk, Colorado's government spending under TABOR has not been able to grow fast enough to provide services citizens have come to expect: adequate roads, quality education, public-health services and health...