Higher ed not disappointed over Amendment 58 defeat

A proposed amendment to the Colorado constitution that would have collected about $300 million annually from oil and gas drillers to help students from low and middle-income families pay for college went down at the polls by a nearly 3-2 margin.

And intended recipients of the money that would have come through increased enrollments at Northern Colorado’s biggest institutions of higher education say they didn’t have any high expectations for the increased enrollments that Amendment 58 might have brought.

“The way the proposal was laid out it was too raw for us to do any numbers,´ said Robin Brown, vice president of enrollment and access at Colorado State University. “There just wasn’t enough information for us to predict anything.

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“We were worried about how it would get implemented because it was just too cloudy to do any predictive modeling,” she said, adding, “We didn’t think it would pass.”

Tobias Guzman, director of enrollment at the University of Northern Colorado, said UNC supported Amendment 58 but was not disappointed it did not pass.

“At UNC we’re always looking for ways to make student access a reality,” he said. “We’re not resting on the fact that 58 did not pass but we’re taking proactive measures to see what is the right process for students to attend UNC.”

Guzman said UNC is always trying to increase its enrollment and access to those seeking higher education training, with about 80 percent of the student body receiving some kind of financial aid through work-study and scholarships.

He said UNC, which has about 12,000 students enrolled this fall, has the capacity to increase its enrollment by 2,000 students and is working aggressively to do so. But he acknowledged that won’t be happening with Amendment 58.

Tax was concern

The proposal, which was backed by Gov. Bill Ritter, would have ended an exemption in the amount of severance tax paid by the oil and gas industry, increasing the industry’s tax by about $300 million per year.

The oil and gas industry spent about $12 million to defeat Amendment 58 with an advertising campaign that suggested that Coloradans would pay higher taxes if the measure passed. Backers of the failed proposal spent less than half that amount.

Dan Hopkins, spokesman for Coloradans for a Stable Economy that defeated Amendment 58, said he believed voters were put off by the word “tax.”

“I think anytime you have a tax question on the ballot voters will weigh the benefits against the tax increase and if they don’t see the benefits of it, they’ll reject it,” he said.

Hopkins said the fact that the proposed amendment would have allocated money to other projects besides higher education assistance “raised some questions” in voters’ minds. About 40 percent would have been allocated to wildlife habitat and renewable energy projects.

Hanging over everything, Hopkins said, was an uncertainty about what might be the impact on an industry that provides more than 70,000 jobs in the state.

“It’s probably one of the few sectors in the state that’s actually prospering right now,” he said. “I think voters did consider that, with the economy in the tank, was it worth tampering with one of the prosperous parts of the economy right now.”