Schwarzenegger a TABOR fan?

Say this about California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: The man knows how to make an entrance.

With a flair worthy of his A-list status, Schwarzenegger, or at least his image, came hurtling through space and into the Colorado Convention Center today for the announcement of a new program in partnership with the automotive industry to help improve fuel economy. (You can read about that program here.)

Schwarzenegger is locked in a fight with the California legislature over a state budget that is laden with a $15.2 billion shortfall and is already more than a month overdue. But in explaining why he had to appear at the news conference via satellite instead of showing up in person, Schwarzenegger, perhaps inadvertently, appeared to endorse the Colorado method of budgeting.

“In Colorado, you don’t have these problems,” Schwarzenegger ad-libbed on California’s budget quagmire. “You have a spending limit and a rainy-day fund and all those other things.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Bill Ritter chuckled on stage. Ritter has been outspoken about the need to untangle the fiscal policy knots in Colorado – including the ones Schwarzenegger apparently just endorsed.

TABOR, or the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, limits the revenue the state can collect every year. Meanwhile, another measure, known as Arveschoug-Bird, limits how much the state can spend in its general fund. Working together, those two often receive at least some of the blame for constraining Colorado’s budget and creating headaches for legislators trying to figure the whole thing out.

A proposed ballot initiative this year would permanently undo TABOR’s revenue limits, while keeping the measure’s requirement that voters approve tax increases.

(As for a rainy-day fund, the issue exploded during the last legislative session when Republicans accused Democrats of nixing a last-minute deal to create one. Democrats say the state has put money away for lean times in other ways.)

Ritter said he and Schwarzenegger chatted about budget issues during an event earlier this year in San Diego. Asked, after Schwarzenegger’s comments, whether he needed to go back over his Colorado budget talking points with the California governor, Ritter just laughed.

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