Even if the federal and state governments pitch in with money and assistance, local governments still will shoulder an enormous, and unreimbursed, burden. Such a crisis, unfortunately, would strike the Colorado counties least able to handle additional budget demands. Even now, some Eastern Plains counties barely have enough cash to run their jails and fuel their snowplows. Yet a provision in the state constitution, misnamed the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, requires local governments to repay their own emergency funds, apparently within the same fiscal year. For rural counties, that requirement could prove impossible.
Rural counties have almost no sales tax revenue so rely almost exclusively on property taxes.
But some rural counties run on such starvation-level budgets that they barely can fulfill their legal duties now. As the counties slashed basic services ever deeper, businesses would find it increasingly difficult to remain in their communities. The result would be a cycle of continued catastrophe, from the Eastern Plains to the Western Slope. The legislature should immediately start to draft a referred constitutional amendment, leaving in place the requirement that voters must approve any tax increase, but removing the onerous demand that local governments repay emergency funds in a short time frame. The amendment then could be put on the ballot for a public vote by November 2002.