Related story: Tire-recycling fee diverted to balance state budget
When Colorado motorists purchase new tires, they’re charged a fee of $1.50 per tire that’s supposed to go toward the clean-up of illegal tire dumps and encourage recycling and re-use of old tires.
The funds from the Colorado Waste Tire Program, which state officials said have averaged between $2.3 million and $3.1 million in recent years, are then divided up among cities, counties and school districts, as well as recyclers, tire haulers and other businesses.
Critics of the program, such as State Rep. Marsha Looper, a Calhan Republican, and El Paso County Commissioner Jim Bensbergcq allege that in recent years some of the money has been funneled to entities that have no connection to waste tires, including the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, which receives 10 cents of each $1.50 for what’s called the “Innovative Higher Education Research Fund.”
What’s got critics really steamed is Gov. Bill Ritter’s plan to use all the current funds – roughly $2.7 million – to balance the state’s 2009-2010 budget. “We don’t know when funding will be re-instated,” said Linda Rice, public information officer for the Department of Local Affairs.
Under a bipartisan bill sponsored by Looper and Dianne Primavera, a Democrat from Broomfield, there would be some changes made to how the waste tire program is administered and the funds distributed.
Under their bill, the program itself would be transferred from the state Department of Local Affairs to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
The funding allocation would be changed so that more money would be spent on cracking down on illegal tire dumps, developing more innovative uses of waste tires, and training firefighters to fight potentially catastrophic blazes, said Looper.
“More than $1.6 million from the waste tire fund goes to programs such as higher education, Dixie cup and pop can recycling instead of recycling waste tires,” she said.
